Economism
Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Here is a bracing deconstruction of the framework for understanding the world that is learned as gospel in Economics 101, regardless of its imaginary assumptions and misleading half-truths.
Economism: an ideology that distorts the valid principles and tools of introductory college economics, propagated by self-styled experts, zealous lobbyists, clueless politicians, and ignorant pundits.
In order to illuminate the fallacies of economism, James Kwak first offers a primer on supply and demand, market equilibrium, and social welfare: the underpinnings of most popular economic arguments. Then he provides a historical account of how economism became a prevalent mode of thought in the United States—focusing on the people who packaged Econ 101 into sound bites that were then repeated until they took on the aura of truth. He shows us how issues of moment in contemporary American society—labor markets, taxes, finance, health care, and international trade, among others—are shaped by economism, demonstrating in each case with clarity and élan how, because of its failure to reflect the complexities of our world, economism has had a deleterious influence on policies that affect hundreds of millions of Americans.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, asserts this treatise from business law professor Kwak (coauthor, with Simon Johnson, of White House Burning), which observes how simplistic and misleading economic models migrate directly from undergraduate economics to Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. This is a book that has begged to be written for some time, although perhaps only today now that the Great Recession has cast doubt on the free market's infallibility will it find a receptive audience even among economists. Kwak brings a refreshing irreverence to this upstart challenge to dogmatic ideas. He first sketches the supply-and-demand curves familiar to students of Economics 101, then goes beyond the "frictionless world" of the charts to explain how taxes, minimum wage laws, and international trade work in the real world. (Kwak, cofounder of a software company, has substantial business experience beyond the ivory tower, something all too rare among professional economists.) He also rightly questions modern economics' moral underpinnings, arguing that material prosperity should not be society's overriding goal. He has written a thoughtful counterargument to the classical economic ideas frequently encountered in public life. It should be companion reading to every introductory economics text.
