Economics in One Lesson
About 15 years ago, I purchased a hardcover copy of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, published in 1946. Inside the cover was the following inscription: Ambassador Douglas (in pencil) Geyelin, 4511 Cath. Ave. N.W. (in pen) Intrigued, I started researching the names and dates. Here's what I pieced together. In 1947, Philip L. Geyelin, then working at the Wall Street Journal, gave the book as a gift to Lewis Williams Douglas, who had recently become the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom. (Geyelin had joined the Journal in 1946 and probably would have known the book's…
It gives you an interesting perspective on things which is always good. You will see a lot of the subchapter type arguments mentioned in the news and the like and at least now you have one perspective on the issues which even if you don't agree with it forces you to articulate your own side better. It's a really good book for a layperson to start thinking about the economics section of the news. It's written well, too. I have given away ~20 copies of this book so far and have gotten nothing but praise even from Marxists. I don't know why I even bother to make this long post since…
Legal ebooks and audiobooks of various formats provided gratis from some fine nonprofits: Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in One Lesson': https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson-2/ Mises - 'Theory of Credit and Money': https://mises.org/library/theory-money-and-credit Adam Smith - 'Wealth of Nations': http://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf Murray Rothbard - 'For a New Liberty': https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto And for those who want to really go deep (some might say, far into the weeds!), I'll add Ludwig von Mises - Human Action:…
To start, you need to have a correct grasp of economics. Hazlitt (Economics in 1 lesson), Mises (Human Action/Money and the Theory of Credit), Austrian Business Cycle Theory, Thomas Jefferson's letters to Thomas Cooper, Carl Menger (SVT) to start. Adam Smith provides the requirements for factors and producers to operate in a market, also describing markets pre-fiat in a five volume set. The observations made are invaluable when comparing against the non-reserve modern monetary mechanics where they departed from fractional reserve in 2020 under Basel3. In terms of actual monetary…
You are talking in circles while missing the point, and ignoring quite a lot of established literature on economics. I'd suggest if you are limited on time that you read Hazlitt. Economics in One Lesson. You seem to conflate need for demand in your examples. The two are not the same. Need includes anyone who could benefit/find valuable from the use of something, the value being derived from productive human action. Demand in reality includes only the people who would make an actual exchange at a specific price point. The former is a superset of the latter. You end up misleading others,…
Not trying to be reductionistic, but you might start with "Economics in One Lesson". Yes, a lot of Libertarians accept all the premises prima fascie, but that doesn't mean it's not worth reading. PDF: http://leeconomics.com/Literature/Henry%20Hazlitt%20Economic...
My grandparents lived in rent controlled apartments in NYC that they could not have afforded to stay in This is selection bias. Suppose the government raised the federal minimum wage to $50/hr. This would cause massive unemployment (and, no doubt, a thriving black market for labor), but some lucky low-income workers would keep their jobs. You could then point to one of those workers and say, "Hey, I know someone who has a high-paying job that wouldn't exist but for the new minimum wage." But this ignores the damage done to everyone else through unemployment and higher prices. And so it…
Yes, it will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy. "There is no limit to the amount of work to be done as long as any human need or wish that work could fill remains unsatisfied. In a modern exchange economy, the most work will be done when prices, costs, and wages are in the best relations to each other." (Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson is probably also a good book related to this. It mainly argues against subsidies, minimal basic income, price regulation and gives some good arguments against government inventions in general. As someone with quite different viewpoints regarding these topics it was a very interesting read with very well formed arguments against some held beliefs of mine.
There will be a big questions to answer: Will the basic income be paid in addition to standard gov't subsidies? If yes, how do you make up for the shortfall of money? "Taxing the rich" is nice in theory but IMHO it doesn't work right now, what are you going to do to change that? If no, it might be worth it, if you also fire the bureaucrats currently working on gov't subsidies (freeing up the money thereby) But I don't see how your study will account for this, nor do I think this is feasible because gov't tends to increase in size and has no incentive to decrease. Other beneificial aspects…