Ha Joon Chang’s ‘Shortest Economics Textbook Ever’
The 5 things they don’t tell you about economics…
At the time of writing this textbook, he was Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, UK, now with SOAS University of London? Chang has created some great resources, I’ve linked to some more of his work, below this one page, 5 point economics textbook.
And here they are…
You don’t need a degree to understand it.
We’ve got this profession wrong; a lot of professional economists think what they do is too difficult for ordinary people. You’d be surprised how often these people are stupid enough to say things, at least in private, like ‘you wouldn’t understand what I do even if I explained it to you’. If you cannot explain it to other people, you have the problem.
People express strong opinions on all sorts of things despite not having the appropriate expertise: climate change, gay marriage, the iraq war, nuclear power stations. But when it comes to economic issues, many people are not even interested, not to speak of not having a strong opinion about them. When was the last time you had a debate on the future of the euro, inequality in china or the american manufacturing industry, despite the fact that these issues can have a huge impact on your life, wherever you live?
Economics is not a science
Despite what the experts want you to believe, there is more than one way of ‘doing’ economics.
People have been led to believe that, like physics or chemistry, economics is a ‘science’, in which there is only one correct answer to everything; thus non-experts should simply accept the ‘professional consensus’ and stop thinking about it.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
