Economic Sense And Nonsense

The past twenty years have been an era of economic disappointment in the U.S. They have also been a time of intense economic debate, as rival ideologies contend for policy influence. But strange things have happened to economic ideas on their way to power--they've been hijacked by policy entrepreneurs who offer easy answers to hard problems.

Economic Sense and Nonsense comprises a collection of sixty essays written by Anthony de Jasay for his monthly column "Reflections from Europe," on Liberty Fund's Library of Economics and Liberty website [ http://www.econlib.org/] (Viewed 29 March 2015) "The Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib) is a free online library of economics books and articles of interest to libertarian views. It is sponsored by the private Liberty Fund."]. The articles span the years 2008 to 2012 and focus on economic issues of topical concern in Europe. In this collection Jasay continues his explorations of a number of themes that he developed in his earlier articles, such as the importance of property rights, the role of contracts in economic activity, the proper limitations of the state, and the attitude of intellectuals concerning the regulation of the free market. With the outbreak of the economic crisis of mid-2008, Jasay spends considerable\ time discussing its origins, the reactions of governments in both Europe and the United States, and the ensuing euro crisis, thus adding another dimension to his analysis of the economic woes of the industrialized world. Jasay's analysis demonstrates that the post-World War II experiment in building welfare states in Europe has reached a crisis point that will require deep and radical changes in thinking both by intellectuals about the nature of free markets and by policy makers about the intended and unintended impact of the regulations they adopt. Anthony de Jasay is an independent theorist living in France. Publisher's note.

The past twenty years have been an era of economic disappointment in the United States. They have also been a time of intense economic debate, as rival ideologies contend for policy influence. Above all, they have been the age of the policy entrepreneur - the economic snake-oil salesman, right or left, who offers easy answers to hard problems. It started with the conservative economists - Milton Friedman at their head - who made powerful arguments against activist government that had liberals on the defensive for many years. Yet when Ronald Reagan brought conservatism to power, it was in the name not of serious thinkers but of the supply-siders, whose ideas were cartoon-like in their simplicity. And when the dust settled, it was clear that the supply-side treatment not only had cured nothing, but had left behind a $3 trillion bill. Meanwhile, the intellectual pendulum had swung. In the 1980s, even while conservatives ruled in Washington, economic ideas that justified government activism were experiencing a strong revival. But the liberals, it turns out, have their own supply-siders: the strategic traders, whose simplistic vision of a U.S. economy locked in win-lose competition with other countries proved far more appealing to politicians than less-dramatic truth. And it seems all too likely that the new patent medicine will do as much harm as the previous one. In this provocative book, Paul Krugman traces the swing of the ideological pendulum, from left to right and back again, and the strange things that happen to economic ideas on their way to power.

This is a book for managers who know that their organisations are stuck in a mindset that thrives on fashionable business theories that are no more than folk wisdom, and whose so-called strategies that are little more than banal wish lists. It puts forward the notion that the application of uncommon sense - thinking or acting differently from other organisations in a way that makes unusual sense - is the secret to competitive success. For those who want to succeed and stand out from the herd this book is a beacon of uncommon sense and a timely antidote to managerial humbug.

Argues that the economic debate is often won with faulty messages and personification of the economy, leading to uncertainty as to what the economy actually is.

Economics is like a tyre lever: it can be used to solve a problem, or to beat someone over the head. What is econobabble? We hear it every day, when politicians and commentators use incomprehensible economic jargon to dress up their self-interest as the national interest, to make the absurd seem inevitable or the inequitable seem fair. This book exposes the stupid arguments, bizarre contradictions and complete lack of evidence upon which much ‘common sense’ about the economy rests in Australia. Econobabble is for those who, deep down, have never believed that it makes sense, economic or otherwise, to help poor people by slashing public spending on the services they need. It’s for those who have a sneaking suspicion that it would be cheaper to avoid the effects of climate change than to let them happen and then ‘adapt’. And it’s for those who think pitting public health and aged care against the economy is a false dilemma, one that’s short-sighted, callous and potentially dangerous. In this new edition, Richard Denniss demolishes the tired and misleading arguments of right-wing economic ‘experts’ with humour and precision, empowering you to cut through the babble and reach the truth. ‘The best guide you’ll find to the literal non-sense that usually passes for economic debate in this country.’ —Ross Gittins

Economic Sense and Nonsense comprises a collection of sixty essays written by Anthony de Jasay for his monthly column "Reflections from Europe," on Liberty Fund's Library of Economics and Liberty website [ http://www.econlib.org/] (Viewed 29 March 2015) "The Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib) is a free online library of economics books and articles of interest to libertarian views. It is sponsored by the private Liberty Fund."]. The articles span the years 2008 to 2012 and focus on economic issues of topical concern in Europe. In this collection Jasay continues his explorations of a number of themes that he developed in his earlier articles, such as the importance of property rights, the role of contracts in economic activity, the proper limitations of the state, and the attitude of intellectuals concerning the regulation of the free market. With the outbreak of the economic crisis of mid-2008, Jasay spends considerable\ time discussing its origins, the reactions of governments in both Europe and the United States, and the ensuing euro crisis, thus adding another dimension to his analysis of the economic woes of the industrialized world. Jasay's analysis demonstrates that the post-World War II experiment in building welfare states in Europe has reached a crisis point that will require deep and radical changes in thinking both by intellectuals about the nature of free markets and by policy makers about the intended and unintended impact of the regulations they adopt. Anthony de Jasay is an independent theorist living in France. Publisher's note.

The author of "The Age of Diminished Expectations" returns with a sobering tour of the global economic crises of the last two years.

Permeated by the author's delightful humor, this little book explains, with nearly no mathematics, the main conceptual issues associated with quantum mechanics: The issue of determinism. Does quantum mechanics signify the end of a deterministic word-view? The role of the human subject or of the "observer" in science. Since Copernicus, science has increasingly tended to dethrone Man from his formerly held special position in the Universe. But quantum mechanics, with its emphasis on the notion of observation, may once more have given a central role to the human subject. The issue of locality. Does quantum mechanics imply that instantaneous actions at a distance exist in Nature? In these pages the author offers a variety of views and answers - bad as well as good - to these questions. The reader will be both entertained and enlightened by Jean Bricmont's clear and incisive arguments.

Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.