Oh boy, this shall be fun, it's a little disappointing that people are downvoting this, as I think it's a fairly reasonable question given the idea's spat out about economics from politicians and journalists.

Edit (this paragraph is the edit, not the huge wall of text, that was always there): Also I think one of the other problems seen is often it's not actually the economists who even get to make the important decisions in the end, time after time I have seen politicians implement policies that economists will repeatedly facepalm over. My biggest issue with modern day politics is that it is a popularity contest, rather than vote between the most qualified people of who we think could do the right job, we vote mostly on unqualified people who we think would do the least bad job, or for most people, who they think appeals the best to their self interests. I don't have a perfect solution, but fuck, there must be a better way.

(also part of edit) I guess you also have the problem of the agenda of the economist, are they trying to optimise social welfare, their own interests, or the interests of someone providing for them by other means.

I myself am still only an undergraduate, I graduate at the end of this year with majors in analytical economics, computer science and pure mathematics. Next year I am doing an honours year in just mathematics, followed possibly by a 2 year masters in the same three area's my undergrad is in, then I'm not really sure what I will do my PhD in yet, other than the topic will most probably be on game theory. I also work as a research assistant for a somewhat well known macroeconomist at my uni who also has a research position at Cambridge (they're actually over there for a month at the moment).

What I will say I have come to find holds across all fields of science, only in the social sciences there seems to be a greater number of pseudoscientists (my personal branding of them). Basically, any of the topics termed a science, whether they be a natural or social science, are really complex. Most of the mathematics scientists find useful can be used across any of these fields, and one can't necessarily say that a physicist is smarter than say a political scientist, or that the work the physicist is doing is harder than that of the political scientist.

One can however, obviously, point out that the average (take any measure of that you want) person that studies physics is generally smarter, knows a lot more maths etc. than the average political science or economics student (hell, I even think the average economics student learns a lot more than the average political science student). I think this is sad, I don't necessarily expect quite the same level, but people are given economics degree's these days without even taking a multivariable calc course, that should be illegal! (only half /s).

Okay, now to kind of move onto what you were asking. If you want resources that debunk economic models, then you merely need to find an economic model you have a problem with and search for criticisms of that, I expect it works much the same for any other science.

If you as a mathematician were interested in actually learning a bit about how real economists model different aspects of the economy, here is a bit about some of the main subject areas (there are a lot of sub-areas to these and somewhat large area's that fit into multiple or none of the areas well), any of the texts linked you could acquire off rapidlibrary for a look if you want, or should be in the library of any uni you are at.

One must remember that economics deals with a subject that has a lot of randomness (much like biology, giving a natural science counterpart), so a lot of the models don't give an exact answer, or even model anything that you can assign good specific numbers to, a lot of the time you are just trying to model as many of the effects of different things as you can, then trying to see what happens when you control certain things like interest rates, or how consumers can optimally make decisions etc.

Microeconomics tends to deal with the economic decisions faced by individual entities, whether it be people/consumers or firms/producers etc. This is where game theory is probably used more than any other area of economics, but it certainly isn't the only area.

Consumer theory is basically built up on the idea of utility, which is basically defined as someone's "enjoyment" of consuming something (one can have negative utility for something, sometimes referred to as a bad rather than a good for obvious reasons). Utility is only defined to be ordinal, so one can say someone strictly prefers one good to another for example, but not that they like it twice as much or anything like that.

Utility also has to satisfy a few assumptions (which is where it is mostly criticized) for the theory that gets developed to mostly hold, but on the most part they aren't too bad if the person is actually trying to make an optimal decision, they are things like preferences should be complete, transitive, consistent etc.

One of the simple first models one would be taught in microeconomics is that of a simplified world where there is one consumer trying to pick a consumption bundle out of 2 existing goods that will maximise their level of utility (very straight forward constrained maximisation problem). If you ever hear someone say that microeconomics is just one simple constrained optimisation problem, it's because they are under the impression that "microeconomics == n-good utility maximisation problem", which it is not.

A lot of the main theory for micro now works with general equilibrium models, which has n-consumers and n-producers. The maths for this gets rather messy, and I wont try to explain it here, if you want to learn more about microeconomics with a background in mathematics I would suggest you pick up Microeconomic Theory. This is essentially the text used by most post grad micro courses at the better universities.

Macroeconomics tends to deal with the aggregate effects in economy. What's going on with the interest rate/price level, what is the aggregate level of income inside the economy, what is the average level of welfare for a person. For example a model I did in my third year macro unit was the central banks problem of setting the interest rate to help optimise an objective of the bank. Basically the bank has a target interest rate and target level of output, then it models the effects in the economy (which direction the forces are on inflation and output, given any output gaps and the interest rate) and sets the interest rate to minimise the weighted sum of difference from target inflation and target output. Looking back it was very much an optimal control problem in disguise.

From what I have been able to gather (I have managed a postgrad micro unit during undegrad but not macro) most of modern day macro models are built up using dynamic programming methods (I just took a course on calculus of variations with a large chunk on optimal control theory which was awesome, I love it). If you want to learn more about that go look at Recursive Macroeconomics.

Game Theory (which you might have actually learnt something about) is also vital for modern economic theories, as essentially it is the study of agents optimal decisions when interacting with other self thinking agents. This is where my main interest is along with micro, if you wanted to learn about this I would suggest Myerson's Analysis of Conflict book, or possibly Fudenberg or Tiroles, as it covers more, but I don't think it's as good for an introduction, and trust me, game theory takes a bit of work to learn properly.

There are many different kinds of games, strategic deals with situations where all players make their move (surprise) simultaneously, extensive form will allow turn based games. Then you have a whole array of others, Bayesian games deals with players having multiple possible types, differential games is basically multiplayer optimal control theory (set of state variables and control varaibles, each player tries to find optimal control function given others will be doing the same to maximise their utility of the terminal state), stochastic games is similarly pretty much multiplayer dynamic programming I think.

Like I previously mentioned, game theory is my main love, I am currently working on a fairly large game theory library in c++ which I'm hoping may end up being the standard tool for research in game theory, and economics certainly isn't the only area currently interested in game theory, there are biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, political scientists etc. that are doing research with it as well. (<3 Von-Neumann!).

This is by no means either academic or comprehensive, but it's short, fun, and just might kick-start your interest, so give it a watch. There are a couple others following up. I seriously recommend you get one of the more accessible books on economics. NPR's Planet Money has a reading list of books they recommend, and a quick peek at top results in Amazon also indicate bestsellers like Basic Economics, Economics in One Lesson, or the humorously titled and fun Naked Economics.

Any of those will do wonders. Just select whichever looks like a good time.

Or don't -- what to do with scarce resources like your own time is of course your choice. An economic choice ;)

"Masters Level" Economic Textbooks.
---

I've picked these texts as they are ones that I ran across in the year I spent as a masters student, or in advanced economics classes when I was an undergraduate/undergraduate tutor.

Hal Varian, Microeconomic Analysis Relatively outdated graduate level textbook in microeconomic theory. I'd imagine his intermediate book would prepare you well for this text. It requires understanding of partial derivatives and some matrix notation to get through, but compared to today's texts comes off comparably light. I'd imagine it'd old and used enough that there exists comprehensive answer guides online that you can track down.

David Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics is used in some undergraduate programs, and some masters/graduate programs. Again, compared to standard texts, it is wanting, but does a good job of covering many of the introductory models that are used in modern economic analysis. This text requires knowledge of at least single variable integration (might require multiple in the later chapters, but when I was tutoring students with it classes never got that far), and the usual multivariate calculus.

Jeffrey Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach this was the textbook that I first saw econometrics through, and I still think its a fantastic applied text. It has a decent mathematical appendix covering some probability and math topics required for the text. On the flip side, the text gives you some pretty good how-to methods to implement a lot of the common econometric techniques and some intuition behind why they are used.

Simon & Blume, Mathematics for Economists This text is usually used in graduate programs math camps as a book saying "you should feel comfortable using these techniques before entering the program." Covers a wide range of topics from calculus, optimization, and linear algebra, to differential equations and some topics in real analysis. It has a fair amount of exercises to work through, and again, the book has been used enough that answer guides may be available online.

As you've probably heard, graduate school is very mathematical, and very little that I learned in intermediate micro ends up bridging the gap outside of some of the intuition I gathered through it. Most of the books I cited above are a solid jump up in difficulty from most intermediate books I've seen, and still a solid jump away from the common PhD level texts (Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green "Microeconomic Theory". Sargent and Ljungqvist "Recursive Macroeconomic Theory". Greene "Econometric Analysis", respectively).

As a result, depending on what you plan on doing in the near to short term, its usually better to take more calculus, linear algebra, and other mid level mathematics classes.

"Saltwater" and "freshwater" are terms that grew out of the late 1970s and early 1980s and reflected substantive disagreement in macroeconomic modeling and methodology.

"Freshwater" schools were located near the Great Lakes and included Minnesota, Chicago, Rochester, Carnegie-Mellon, and Penn. These schools focused their training on dynamic macroeconomic models and emphasized rigorous microfoundations and then-cutting-edge mathematical techniques. Their models tended to be broadly "conservative" in their policy implications.

"Saltwater" schools were located on the coasts and included Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, and Stanford. These schools favored a more ad-hoc approach to macroeconomic modeling and were slower to adopt cutting-edge mathematical techniques. Because their models admitted "Keynesian" features more easily, their policy prescriptions tended to be more interventionist than their freshwater counterparts.

This all basically vanished by the mid-1990s, where the freshwater guys won on technique and the saltwater guys won on substance. Everyone now learns the dynamic mathematical tools in their first year and learns a healthy mix of modeling techniques, and everyone learns standard New Keynesian models that were initially developed in saltwater schools.

The terms just aren't meaningful now - there has been convergence in technique and there is more agreement on what constitutes policy-relevant modeling. That's not to say that "all is well" in macro-land, but it is to say that graduate training in the field has largely moved on. There are some holdouts. "Minnesota Macro" (that is, the ethos of the freshwater school) remains alive and well at, um, the University of Minnesota.

But you're going to use Sargent-Ljungqvist (a quintessential "freshwater" book) in your first year and Woodford (a solidly saltwater text, but with all the dynamic math) in the money block or in your second year, pretty much wherever you go to school.

A good popularly-accessible book-length treatment of these issues is available in David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, which I highly recommend to those who are interested in the history of modern economic thought.

OP, you have to read Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973) by E.F. Schumacher (1911 - 1977). The book has been regarded as one of the top 100 most influential books since World War II.

Schumacher was widely recognized as an important figure in heterodox economics, and is known for promoting what he called "Buddhist economics". Many of his views sound pretty close to what you have described:

> There can be no doubt that the idea of personal enrichment has a very strong appeal to human nature. Keynes . . . advised us that the time was not yet for a "return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable". Economic progress, he counselled, is obtainable only if we employ those powerful human drives of selfishness, which religion and traditional wisdom universally call upon us to resist. The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction.

>It is of course true that quality is much more difficult to "handle" than quantity, just as the exercise of judgment is a higher function than the ability to count and calculate. Quantitative differences can be more easily grasped and certainly more essay defined than qualitative differences: their concreteness is beguiling and gives them the appearance of scientific precision, even when this precision has been purchased by the suppression of vital differences of quality. The great majority of economists are still pursuing the absurd ideal of making their "science" as scientific and precise as physics. As if there were no qualitative difference between mindless atoms and men made in the image of God.

The standard grad school text these days for dynamic macro is Ljungqvist & Sargent's Recursive Macroeconomic Theory. You won't need to go through the whole thing necessarily, but to be able to tackle the Woodford book, I would think chapters 1-4, 7-8, 12-13, 16-17 and 24-26 would be quite helpful.

There's also Simon & Blume's Mathematics for Economists, which is a good reference book should you need it. For example, the discussion and motivation of Lagrange multipliers and the Kuhn-Tucker optimization conditions is very good.

One noteable omission from both of those books which you will likely encounter at some point is continuous-time optimization/optimal control. This topic is often covered in the appendices of various grad-level macro textbooks, but perhaps the best I've come across is Chapter 7 of Daron Acemoglu's Introduction to Modern Economic Growth. The appendix to Barro & Sala-i-Martin's Economic Growth also has some pretty good coverage.

By the way, if you hunt around, all of these textbooks can be found online for "free".

> but the difference in health care costs between Japan and the US are not anywhere near so easily explained, I believe

They are statistically very well explained by AIC or disposable income and they are very credible as causal factors because economic theory, long term historical data (elasticity of HCE prior to evolution of modern health care system, 3rd party payers, etc), common sense, and more supports this too. It's also worth pointing out that this (AIC|disposable income) not only explains the moment-in-time levels between countries but the long term growth rate patterns within the US and other countries exceptionally well (CMS and other agencies routinely use disposable income as their main go-to exogenous variable for historical and projected growth) and quite a bit at a sub-national level too (although elasticities are usually slightly less than 1 overall this is to be expected due to transfers, in-kind subsidy, and spillover effects). One could further add other factors to this model like, say, % of population sick/injured (see: obesity & diabetes rates, historical smoking rates, car accident rates, etc), age structure, prevailing wage rates, etc, which I suspect would make the US health expenditures look even more reasonable on balance, but these are pretty marginal as determinants of the overall health expenditure levels.


> Also, there is the issue of comparing a population with massive income disparity with one with relatively little.

No, probably not because (1) the national elasticities are typically much larger than one whereas whereas individual income elasticities are typically pretty close to zero and (2) careful estimates by individual income within the US find very little difference in health expenditures associated with income -- in fact without controlling for health status lower income actually consume somewhat more care and with extensive controls for health status the higher income consume slightly more. Like lots of other things in economics, the mean level of disposable income in society ultimately determines expenditures far more than the individuals own. Third party payers pay the vast majority of most health expenditures in the US and other developed countries. Differences in coverage, reimbursement rates, etc by payor associated with income are quite modest in the scheme of things (especially if you control for mean disposable income in a given nation and/or subnational area).

The US actually has below average out-of-pocket expenditures as a share of health expenditures. If we did more of this we'd probably have lower total expenditures, but these aren't popular either.

My two favorite books which introduce economic thinking are Armchair Economist and The Undercover Economist. They're quick reads, they're jargon free, and actually teach some of the thinking. Unlike the pop-econ books (Freakonomics and its ilk), which are simply about strange results from research (some of Landsburg's later books suffer from this problem). For an introduction to behavioral economics, you can't do better than Predictably Irrational, which is a bit more like pop-econ books (e.g. Freakonomics) than books that teach some thinking (e.g. Armchair Economist), but it is an easy read.

For substance, textbooks are probably best unless you have a carefully chosen list of academic articles. Wooldridge for Econometrics, Mankiw for introductory macro, and Mankiw's micro book is good too (Nicholson & Krugman's micro books are fine too). Mankiw writes my favorite econ textbooks. For game theory, I used Rasmusen's textbook, and it was very accessible (most of it is online), but I don't know how other game theory books stack up. Get old used versions, or else you'll pay too much, especially with Mankiw's books.

If textbooks are a bit much, but you still want some substance, the first chapter of Thomas Sowell's introduction is good, the rest is repetition. If you want a some discussion of partially-discredited economic theories that are still trotted out regularly (like supply side), Zombie Economics is a really fun read.

>The real interest rates tells us the real cost of the loan. It doesn't matter what the inflation or deflation is, as long as it is steady and known.

i serious don't understand what are you trying to say.

I provided you the math showing you that deflation adds up to the (real) cost of loans while inflation can be subtracted. The % risk markup that a lender wants covers his effort and the possibility that the borrower will default which is the same regardless of the inflation or deflation rate.

I'm not sure if you understood the concept of real and nominal and deflation and inflation itself.

>banning people from keeping money

I never said anything about banning. I just said that inflation gives an incentive for people to bring their money to banks where it can be reinvested in businesses.

>I just did. Inflation is no incentive to invest. It's an incentive to spend.

debatable. There is no math behind i know that can prove this since its more of a psychological thing.

> Investment is incentivized through the real interest rate. Inflation and deflation do not change the real interest rate.

see top...
i linked you a Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_interest_rate) saying:

>If, for example, an investor were able to lock in a 5% interest rate for the coming year and anticipated a 2% rise in prices, they would expect to earn a real interest rate of 3%.[1] The expected real interest rate is not a single number, as different investors have different expectations of future inflation. Since the inflation rate over the course of a loan is not known initially, volatility in inflation represents a risk to both the lender and the borrower.
In the case of contracts stated in terms of the nominal interest rate, the real interest rate is known only at the end of the period of the loan, based on the realized inflation rate; this is called the ex-post real interest rate. Since the introduction of inflation-indexed bonds, ex-ante real interest rates have become observable.[2]

there is clearly there is a link between the inflation rate and real interest rate

>But my main point is, I have still not seen sufficient theoretical groundwork,

you could start with the college lecture about this topic

Its 500+ pages thick and covers all the basics of our "current system" that is based on Keynesian

Your opinion isn't how capitalism works.

I actually wrote a paper that touches on this topic a little bit. Here is an excerpt. I site this book throughout it.

"The book uses the example of Brad Pit being an insurance salesman rather than an actor. It explains how he is “one of a handful of people in the world who can ‘open’ a movie”(13) and how “millions of people around the world will go see a film just because Brad Pit is in it.”(13) It would therefore be a waste of his talents to sell insurance. There are many people who are able to sell insurance, but very few who can ‘open’ a movie with such high rates of success. This is why Brad Pit is paid so much money."

Similarly, (and I don't want to dismiss the hard work of many around the world but...) it is more likely that an individual will become a scientist than the next great basketball player or superstar of sorts. My point is that these people are valued more because they, in and of themselves are a very valuable commodity to many companies. In the brad pit example, a ton of companies would want him in a movie because he can basically guarantee that movie's success and make hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hi, Econ undergrad here!

Econ is a little special when it comes to education because the vast majority of books in bookstores and youtube videos are not based on mainstream orthodox economics as you would learn in a university. Most of it is bunk and if you attempt to learn economic theory from youtube you'll probably end up misinforming yourself(It's happened to me firsthand). I would highly recommend you pirate 1 college micro and 1 macro textbooks and go through the math problems chapter by chapter. If you want a quicker intro to econ I highly recommend reading Naked economics since it summarizes intro micro and macro very well.


I wrote up a small explanation on how to debate economics a few days ago. Here's a edited version of why theory is so important.

• First: If you don't have a foundation in theory you won't understand why a policy is favored even if you understand what economists support. What makes the current generation of new Keynesian macro models so great is that by manipulating the microfoundation a economist can adapt the model for different situations and assumptions to get varying accurate solutions.
  
• Second: Models will oftentimes give welfare maximizing answers. Therefore economists who've gone through the math beforehand can just argue about tradeoffs of policies and picking the right model, and not argue about the equations themselves.
  
• Third: The effects of policies vary heavily the longer they're implemented. Using short term models to describe changes decades in the future will oftentimes give wrong results. Some mechanics and theories from econ 101 are used even in advanced macro but you gotta have the intuition to know what is relevant and what is deceptive in order to pick optimal policies.
  
• fourth(not included in previous post): While theory may tell you roughly the effects of policies and their tradeoffs for different groups at the end of the day you still need to make choices between those tradeoffs. A good example is trade policy as theory will tell you in most circumstances that its unambiguously better to lower tariffs and redistribute the efficiency gains to the losers but in practice those who immediately lose will fight with every part of their being to stop greater free trade even if in the long run they'd be better off. That kind of struggle requires political choices in which it may be better to favor the protectionists even if the economics says its not the optimal answer.
  
  
  Edit:
  
  To answer your question of how to form good economic opinions. If you learn micro and macro theory for the short and long term you can use it to form opinions on a wide variety of policies. It's extremely important that you study the long term growth models immediately after you learn the short term growth models as their policy recommendations oftentimes directly contradict.
  
  Edit 2: Changed "current generation of macro models" to "current generation of new keynesian macro models"

Where are you in economics right now? Undergraduate? Graduate?

Advanced mathematics appears everywhere in economics, though your mileage may vary depending on your definition of "advanced". As a mathematician, I suspect that quantitative finance contains the most advanced mathematics, since in modern mathematics research the majority of interaction with economics is through quantitative finance. But unless you plan on doing the most advanced math, there's more than enough advanced math in non-finance economics to keep you interested.

Generally speaking, professional economists build up some skill in real and functional analysis, as well as a variety of other skills like optimization, stochastics, and PDEs, depending on their specific research interests. These are all graduate-level math topics, so I'd consider them reasonably advanced. Take a look into econ PhD prelim coursework. When I took the sequence, we used the texts Microeconomic Theory by Mas-Colell-Whinston-Green, Recursive Macroeconomic Theory by Ljungqvist and Sargent, and Econometrics by Hayashi. I think they're good springboards for you to evaluate the math in higher economics.

In quantitative finance, I'd maybe start by checking out Portfolio Risk Analysis by Connor, Goldberg, and Korajczyk, then if you're still interested, I'd pick up measure-theoretic probability. I recommend Probability with Martingales by Williams. Once you're comfortable with measure theory, look through Stochastic Calculus and Financial Applications by Steele. You'll very quickly enter the area of research mathematics while studying quantitative finance, e.g. jump-diffusion models and Levy processes appear in the pricing of exotic derivatives, and they're heavily studied by even pure mathematicians.

Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Science-Revised/dp/0393337642

Doesn't really address e-commerce, but honestly one of the better intro into economics books out there written in modern times.

For Globalization topics I also like:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1118950143/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=BPHV27XJSYHBS8RKBT3J

For virtual currencies and such I think your best source that is not academic papers will just be the Internet.

Good Luck, and remember Economics is a social science and is not the only field with ideas and solutions to social problems.

> how the economy works is detrimental to stock investment

Incorrect word usage but I digress.

As far as books go, I have two helpful macroeconomic textbooks and study sheets that you might find helpful. I go to NYU currently and here is the macroeconomic textbook we use, as well as a cheat sheet for economic principles.

http://www.amazon.com/Macroeconomics-Principles-Applications-Robert-Hall/dp/1111822352

http://www.amazon.com/Microeconomics-Quickstudy-Business-Inc-BarCharts/dp/1423208552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450065997&sr=1-1&keywords=macroeconomic+cheat+sheet

In addition, the Kahn academy videos on Macroeconomics are super helpful,

I recommend starting out with kahn academy and following along with the textbook.

Feel free to ask me any questions, I am leader of the stock investing club and I got an A- in Macro with Professor Edward Steinberg this past summer.

> This is classic supply side economics

No its not.

> The largest driver of the deficit since 2008 was not the mortgage crisis, it was the Bush Tax cuts

o_O CBO estimates the combined loss in revenue of EGTRRA & JGTRRA at $1.1t. At peak (2007) lost revenue was $120b. Do you math?

> Tax cuts -- particularly tax cuts for the wealthy -- are a horrible way to attempt to stimulate the economy.

Read this and this. Then go read about this which is what causes this effect to occur which in turn means models like this emerge. I never stated anything about tax cuts for the wealthy, nice strawman, but positing that tax cuts don't have a positive effect on growth is simply empirically nonsense (Note how I am citing real sources?).

Your reference to "supply side economics" to refer to something you clearly don't understand when I was referring to something which is part of mainstream economics rather then heterodox nonsense like supply-side BS leads me to believe you don't have a particularly good grasp of economics.

> My turn to say "irrelevant." I don't even know that it is true, but it's pretty much beside the point.

The purpose of taxation is to raise revenue to support spending not to simply raise revenue for no purpose. With a balanced budget over the business cycle effective tax rates can fall long term while supporting precisely the same level of spending. That is called growth.

Rather then understanding economics from places like /r/politics, HuffPost and Alternet pick up a textbook. This and this are both extremely good.

Sure! But before I make a recommendation, do note Econ is typically split up into two worlds - Micro and Macro. I will specializing in Micro after I get done with my first year. With that said, the book I’m going to recommend is a Principles of Macro textbook. Why a Macro text? One main reason:

The book I’m going to recommend is very well written: it cuts out a lot of distracting features like “news clippings” that no one ever looks at; the explanations respect the fact the book is for people new to the subject; and the book does a great job of highlighting the most important facts. I can attest to this because this was the book I used years ago in my first economics course: Principles of Macroeconomics.

Without further ado, here’s the book I recommend:

Macroeconomics: Principles and Applications by Robert E Hall and Marc Lieberman. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1111822352/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_ioCEAbB18FXKE

Surprisingly, it doesn’t look like they’ve put out a new edition since the 6th (the edition I used). Even so, it’s not like the content has become irrelevant. However, some of the examples might seem a bit dated (e.g., a common event referenced throughout is the 2007 Financial Meltdown - although imo this is still a very relevant topic to discuss and analyze.)

Also, if you want to “check the book out” before buying...Google can be your friend.

I'm going to recommend that you read a book, not as a way of implying that 'ugh u so dum', but because it does a fantastic job of explaining away your concerns, in a way I couldn't possibly do better. The ebook is like $7, the paperback is $7, or you can get it used for even cheaper.

https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Science-Revised/dp/0393337642

You've hit upon a quite complex topic. The gist of things though, is that when automation kills one job, it is really just freeing up that labor to fill some other niche. Let's start with a hypothetical stone-age society. Everybody gets by, on their own, but planting their own crops by hand. The grow just enough to live.

One day, someone comes by, and introduces the plow. This is a machine that automates some portion of the farming process, letting farmers create more crops with the same amount of time. Those farmers would have a surplus. The plow guy starts selling and repairing plows for the community, in exchange for some of the future surplus crops. All parties are better off.

I think the list amassing here is going about things the wrong way. I(a not so humble econ major myself) would argue that if you want to start at the beginning you should pick a book on the history of economic thought.

The best ones for your level of understanding would be Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers(and his Teachings from the Worldly Philosophy). Unfortunately Heilbroner was very much a socialist, and though it does not come through so much in his analysis of the various economists it is fairly obvious if you look at which economists that make his cut and which don't.

But lucky for you(not your free time) Mark Skousen(a raging libertarian not satisfied with Heilbroner's text) has done a reasonable job covering the history of economic thought. If it weren't for his overbearing attitude I would say that his is the superior text.

So ~750 pages worth of material will catch you up to the latter part of the last century(great). Unfortunately(theres a lot of that in economics) if you want to keep up with what is going on now you are going to need to invest a great deal more time.

All of this is only if you want to get all the historical context(which is great). But you should take it all in with the knowledge that in mainstream modern economic thought knowing the works of Adam Smith and Malthus is almost entirely unnecessary and most economists will get their PhD's with only a perfunctory class on history of thought. This is because the pre-WW2 stuff is seen very similarly to the idea of the Luminiferous aether(interesting, but not required). The basis for which is the idea that it has all been picked over so many times that anything of worth has been carried over and all else is chaff.

My suggestion(if you want to learn undergraduate economics) is to pick up a micro economics textbook, because micro-economics is generally uncontested(and those bits that are are uninteresting to the beginning student).

After that pick up a survey of macro text. I used Modern Macroeconomics Which just goes over the various schools in roughly chronological order(classical, neoclassical, keynesian, neokeynesian, austrian, monetarism there might be others but these are the big ones you'll want to know). Unfortunately this book is pretty dense(with plenty of math) and will require a greater time commitment than everything previously mentioned. But, on the plus side, there are wonderful little interviews at the end of each chapter to reward yourself with.

If you get bored during all of this try some of the lighter econ books, my favorites are the Invisible Hook(the economics of pirates-yarr!!) and the Not So Wild Wild West(Hollywood is a piss poor educator don'cha ya know).

Textbooks are your best bet, for pretty much any subject, once you're past the layman's understanding. Just look up what textbooks they are using for Econ 101/102 in a solid University, then find a used copy.

When I was tutoring 101/102, the course used Krugman's Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, which were decent. It was interesting getting the introductory perspective from a prominent, Nobel Prize winning economist.

Take a look at "corporate economics" or "finance" blogs or books.

Another great book that is absolutely amazing is Naked Economics. I highly recommend it. You should buy it but you can find it on the internet easily. It goes into economic concepts first, and then once it tells you although economic concepts are self-evidently powerful, they are misused so many times and result in the fuckups we see everyday.

The issue above is called the Agency Problem. Where agents/managers' incentives do not align with the health of the company. Stock options is a huge culprit of this. Where an exec's bonus pay is tied to the stock's performance.

>I said to incentive greed. You want to save money? Well the cheapest way is to respect the environment. Want to avoid taxes? Put work in on social issues. Your company fucked up in the past? Lesser sentences if you do better right now.

Since none of these are currently true, we would have to lay a hell of lot of unpopular political groundwork (and dealing with the flight of business as a result) to make them true. Currently, every business has plenty of incentive is to bend the rules, avoid the consequences, hide the money offshore, basically take the money and run. Shortsightedness is the order of the day, and "cash flow is king" as they say.

>Market growth is a healthy thing...

You are correct about this - the reason we get into a disagreement on this is that we don't measure growth in that linear way. We are in a system that is making all their financial bets based on percentage growth (which could be expressed as having the ability to repay a loan with interest), and expecting returns as such before giving money out to business loans or aspiring homeowners, before buying stock. Percentage-based growth is exponential growth and that cannot go on forever. I believe that living in a system of debt-based money and interest is what prevents any real change from happening as long as we continue playing within the rules of fractional-reserve banking and our entire monetary policy based on lending.

This economist has said what I believe needs to be said, and thought about. There are ways for us to approach prosperity without the economic pressure that comes from racing to keep GDP growing at ~3% annually.

Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics is a pretty standard textbook that I bet you'll find in any future macro course you take. I think it's pretty clear and understandable.

For more mathematically heavy macro and Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibirum models, you should go for Ljunqvist & Sargent and/or Stokey, Lucas & Prescott. I know that at least in the former you have programming exercises and probably in the latter as well.

I think those are all very well known textbooks from very well known authors and they should fit what you're asking for.

In terms of economic modelling and stuff, here: http://www.amazon.com/Modeling-Monetary-Economies-Bruce-Champ/dp/0521177006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334165283&sr=8-1 is the textbook I used for my Macroeconomics Theory 3 class (in the UK, so no idea how it compares). It's really good and really helps teach you stuff with nice problem sets all the way through. You need to understand utility curves and isocurves for it, but beyond that I think it's pretty explanatory and doesn't treat you like an idiot.

There's always Tim Harford, though you're probably beyond popular economics books by now. I, personally, loved "Economic Gangsters", by people I can't remember, but that's because I love development economics.

I recommend reading Snowdon and Vane (2005), "Modern Macroeconomics: Its Origins, Development, and Current State." Very concise textbook that covers the history of modern economic thought, from the Classicals to Old Keynesians to Monetarists to New Classicals to New Keynesians and everywhere in between, including an entire chapter on Austrian Econ! In the mainstream econ world, devoting a textbook chapter to a fringe school of thought is rare, indeed, but the book is widely used and even appears on /u/Integrald's recommended reading list in /r/Economics, which you should also check out if you want to learn more about econ and are new to the discipline.

Note: This book is for the advanced undergraduate level, but it's not too mathematical at all and gives a good grounding if you're confused by all these schools. Rest assured, though, that a lot of these controversies have been resolved. On the internet, Austrians and Marxians and sometimes Post-Keynesians seem like they have a lot of influence, but when it comes to publishing in mainstream journals that's not the case.

The reason why you often see "funny maymays" about Austrians and Marxians on this sub is because Reddit Austrians and casual Marxists are often ignorant of the mainstream economic paradigm they are so critical of. In reality, praxeology and dialectics are not inherently bad, but have been used to make some pretty stupid arguments at least online.

> they will be leeching your precious energy with their 0.1x powers. 0.1x * 10x = 1x

You're joking but...

> The longer and more complicated the game, the more clearly a pattern emerged: having one high-IQ player was moderately good, but having all the players be high-IQ was amazing: they all caught on quickly, cooperated with one another, and built stable systems to enforce that cooperation. In a ten-round series run by Jones himself, games made entirely of high-IQ players had five times as much cooperation as average.

So according to Garett Jones and his book Hive Mind, your assessment is precisely correct.

Much truth is said in kek

As an Economics PhD student, I agree with most of what you've written, but I'm not sure I would characterize the texts you recommend as introductory. Unfortunately, until the graduate level, most economics texts are lacking in formalism, largely because the undergraduates they are aimed at tend to lack background in mathematics. The texts written at the graduate level have the formalism, but presuppose a degree of familiarity with concepts and jargon.

The Mas-Collel is indeed the standard for formal micro, and I would direct the OP to Hirshleifer for a companion that fills in the background and intuitions that might be lacking in that text.

Macro is definitely less accessible, at least to me, but for a recommendation, I think basically everyone uses Romer as the first heavy-duty macro text right now. I can certainly share the sort of Socratic feeling towards macroeconomics, though, the more I learn about it the less I feel confident in saying about the world beyond the models.

Specifically, my focus is in applied econometrics, and I recommend Kennedy to everyone who expresses any interest in the topic. Kennedy employs an approach that I particularly enjoy, where he divides each section into thirds: one for an intuitive explanation, one for an overview of the math, and one for in depth consideration of the method and citations.

EDIT: I was looking over your comments about peppajac217's recommendation, and I scrolled down to examine them. I would second your advice about avoiding those texts, as they are Austrian pop-econ, and involve no formalism at all, making them particularly ill-suited to this request.

Omg you've moved again revealed your profound ignorance. Are you capable of reading? That quote regarding supply effects was referring to earned income rather than capital gains. Cmon at least read if your going to try to pull a gotcha.

Your land isn't being taxed, the property on your land is what is taxed. It's an important distinction and no I shouldn't have to explain basic economic terminology to you. If you deem yourself qualified to comment on economic policy you should have at least an intermediate level understanding of microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis. I'm not going to spoon feed you.

I like how you didn't address the border adjustment tax as I linked. It is very much like a VAT tax, just sold under a different name. Please read before commenting.

I have no reason to entertain beginners mistakes. You went into this discussion in bad faith. I've caught you several times being unaware of economic concepts that even undergrads know. You've been spouting talking points hoping for them to stick. You're the reason the economic discourse in this country had dropped to the level of Donald Trump.

When I was an undergraduate, then had us read a very straightforward book that doesn't require any knowledge of advanced mathematics. It conveys the complex models underpinning economics in a very digestible format. I hope you abstain from commenting on matters of economic policy until you've acquired a bare minimum understanding. The political discourse in this country is abysmal and lacks rigor. I hope you decide to take steps to buck the trend that you're clearly contributing to.

https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Science-Revised/dp/0393337642

I don't know how to say this nicely, but have you taken Econ 101? none of what you said is consistent with modern economic theory.

Here are some resources i like to recommend in cases such as this. this this. Good luck HF

Hopefully OP is still checking in on this thread.

You'll need to start with the basics by registering for 100 level courses at your school whether or not you're already familiar with the subject, so Intro to Microecon, Macroecon and International Economics would be a start.

If you'd like to do some independent reading (which I personally recommend), here is the recommended reading list from /r/Economics. Their wiki lists books by increasing difficulty starting form the basics.

I'd also like to throw in some non textbooks I've read (and are reading) that helped me get an understanding of important fundamentals and obtain an idea of how economists think.
Both of these authors do a great job of grabbing the reader with their outlandish and interesting examples to explain various theories.

Freakonomics - Steven Levitt
Naked Economics - Charles Wheelan

Unbelievable work. One of my all time favorites.
I'd recommend checking these out as well:

Modern Macroeconomics by Brian Snowdon (Really good historical overviews of Economic thought)

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles by Jesus Huerta de Soto

Man, Economy, and State by Murry Rothbard

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (EXCELLENT if you are just beginning to study Economics)

If you have the motivation and discipline to stick with it, working through a good Principles (introductory) textbook would probably be your best option. You can get used old editions off Amazon for about $10. I use Mankiw when I teach, but Krugman and other options are good too.

There are some decent free online courses out there:

• MR University
  
• Stanford
  
• MIT (This one is probably a bit much for most people to handle)
  
  If you want a mass-market book, start with The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run--or Ruin--an Economy. Even if you go the textbook option, it's probably worth supplementing with this one.

I'll be wrapping up a B.S. in Economics with a minor in statistics this December.

Books:

• One of the best books that I've found is The Armchair Economist by Stephen Landsburg. It's very low tech. which makes it very accessible with respect to the rest of the subject.
  
• I've heard good things about both Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science and New Ideas from Dead Economists
  
• http://www.amazon.com/The-Armchair-Economist-Economics-Everyday/dp/1451651732/ref=pd_sim_b_2
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Science-Revised/dp/0393337642/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
  
• http://www.amazon.com/New-Ideas-Dead-Economists-Introduction/dp/0452288444/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
  
• You can get all three of these in a "bundle deal", and this is a great starting point written in laymen's terms.
  
  
  I also highly recommend the Open Course series to develop the fundamental skillset. You can generally get these texts cheap:
  
  
• Intro Micro/Macro: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/
  
• Money and Banking: http://www.virtualprofessors.com/financial-markets-yale-shiller (Shiller is a very famous financial economist)
  
• As always, the Khan Academy is a great intro resource http://www.khanacademy.org/#microeconomics
  
  
  Blogs are also okay, but be wary of partisan biases. These are what I check daily:
  
  
• Krugman (Left wing biased) - http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
  
• Cowen/Tabarrok (Libertarian biased) - http://marginalrevolution.com/
  
• Scott Sumner (NGDP Targeting biased) - http://www.themoneyillusion.com/ (possibly my favorite)
  
• Greg Mankiw (GOP biased) - http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
  
• Karl Smith/Ozimeck (Interesting) - http://blogs.forbes.com/modeledbehavior/
  
• Jodie Beggs (Interesting) - http://www.economistsdoitwithmodels.com/
  
• Becker/Posner (Law and Econ) - http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
  
• Brad Delong runs a famous blog, and there is never a shortage of highly qualified economists willing to tell you what they think you should believe.
  
  
  
  Ultimately when it comes to econ, there's no perfect substitute for a set of intro micro/macro texts and a university framework. This is contrary to what most pundits/americans seem to believe (seemingly everyone has strong opinions on issues best-explored in an economic framework, no matter how little they've studied it). Also, it's important to note that 98% of what's posted on this subreddit is NOT what economists are talking about. This subreddit is full of news links to stories that promote partisan agendas.
  
  
  
  I'll also warn you that any legitimate study of economics requires a decent handle on math. Through at least half the calc sequence. "Good economists are reborn as physicists, mediocre economists are reborn as psychologists, and bad economists are reborn as sociologists."

Something doesn't add up here.

Here is the syllabus for Cornell's Econ 302 macro course

It says they use Greg Mankiw's book (which is pretty standard) and it covers all of the topics I mentioned in the GP in great depth (table of contents here). But no one covers that whole book in a semester though because it is like 600 pages. Krugman/Well's macro book is also good about covering fiscal and monetary policy in detail in chapters 12 and 13. For example, figure 12-10 in this book shows the debt/GDP ratios of various countries. As I said, these are basic concepts.

Also, I should point out that much of what I learned about macro I learned by reading the textbooks almost in full (I'm a nerd like that) and then non-textbook books (and blogs for the modern guys) from various people like Keynes, Samuelson, Friedman, Mankiw, Krugman, Stiglitz, Simon Johnson, De Long, Akerlof, etc. There is only so much time in class (and I was not an econ major, so I didn't get the upper level stuff).

But, back to the point, nothing I've said in this thread deviates from standard macro. The current US public debt/GDP ratio isn't that high historically and relative to other modern first-world economies (Japan, France, Germany, UK, Canada, Italy, etc.).

Great book by Garett Jones disputing that

http://www.amazon.com/Hive-Mind-Your-Nation%C2%92s-Matters/dp/0804785961

The belief is free trade results in net economic gains. Free movement, especially in a welfare state, is not widely accepted as a net benefit by economists.

In Economics "investing" is investing in capital such as factories, equipment, or training. -- Basically, "new production".

---

edited to be more accurate:

From Principles of Macroeconomics by Robert Frank & Ben Bernanke.

>Investment is spending by firms on final goods and services, primarily capital goods. Investment is divided into three subcategories:

>* Business fixed investment is the purchase by firms of new capital goods such as machinery, factories, and office buildings. (Remember that for the purposes of calculating GDP, long-lived capital goods are treated as final goods rather than as intermediate goods.) Firms buy capital goods to increase their capacity to produce.

• Residential investment is construction of new homes and apartment buildings. Recall that homes and apartment buildings, sometimes called residential capital, are also capital goods. For GDP accounting purposes, residential investment is treated as an investment by the business sector, which then sells the homes to households.
  
• Inventory investment is the addition of unsold goods to company inventories. In other words, the goods that a firm produces but doesn't sell during the current period are treated, for accounting purposes, as if the firm had bought those goods from itself. (This convention guarantees that production equals expenditure.) Inventory investment can be positive or negative, depending on whether the value of inventories rises or falls over the course of the year.
  
  ---
  
  > People often refer to purchases of financial assets, such as stocks or bonds, as "investment." That use of the term is different for the definition we give here. A person who buys a share of a company's stock acquires partial ownership of the existing physical and financial assets controlled by the company. A stock purchase does not usually correspond to the creation of new physical capital, however, and so is not investment in the sense we are using the term.

For textbooks, any recommendation would depend on your mathematics background. If you are just starting out (say, high school level calculus background), then this is the book I would suggest.

If you are familiar with more advanced calculus techniques and are decent at mathematics, then I would suggest you try this book.

This is a decent free macro textbook available online. I have only read a couple of chapters of this and its pretty decent for being free.

How comfortable are you with reading a textbook for the fun of it?

While people will argue about his policy proposals and career history, Greg Mankiw writes one mean introductory text on economics. It's well-written, thorough and pretty easy to read, as far as textbooks go. It's a Macro book though so I would suggest making sure you know your Micro fundamentals, but you would probably be fine without it.

EDIT: If anyone is interested, he's also got a semi-decent blog, if a bit sparse in his postings.

You're very welcome. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. These would be a good start

Varian on Micro

Dixit on Optimization

Dixit on Game Theory
Romer on Macro e.g. Solow, ISLM, MF, RCK, etc


Schaum's Outline to Math


Mises on Human Action


Alchian on Micro


Hirshleifers on Price Theory

Learner on Macro

I highly recommend the books below. Both focus on consumer behavior via an evolutionary lens and provide a great intro into evolutionary psychology.

http://www.amazon.com/Consuming-Instinct-Burgers-Ferraris-Pornography/dp/1616144297/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373402559&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Spent-Sex-Evolution-Consumer-Behavior/dp/0143117238/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373402620&sr=1-3&keywords=geoffrey+miller

Enjoy!

Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan got me interested in the subject. It's a great place to start. Then I recommend reading an intro-level textbook, such as Mankiw's Principles.

Yeah macroeconomics is a very chaotic field right now and it can be very overwhelming, especially when you are first starting out. If you are interested in DSGE and have a decent mathematics background, this book Recursive Macroeconomic Theory is a good starting point.

I would also add that you should ask your professors for input. They are usually very supportive and will help give you research ideas as well as to refine them.

GMU Econ PhD student here.

Read this.

It's big, but I've never before read anything that explained as well as that book does, where the different schools came from, why, who was involved, etc. It's even got a chapter for Austrians. It's a great book.

Well this is a sad story. I am sorry your husband is so cruel.

I would recommend watching Ted talks to introduce yourself to new ideas. I would also recommend reading Western non-fiction books. This book is a very good introduction to capitalism and economics.

idk why people think adult sweatshops are so wrong. They typically have better labor conditions than other options in their area, and even if they don't, sweatshops are usually by far the highest paying job the people in those countries will have access to. Third world countries have far lower costs of living, and it's really not the job of major corporations to lift people from poverty.

but $1600/month in the US? That is fucked

Edit: I definitely recommend reading this if you don't believe me

I think everyone should have to read this book or at least take an Econ 101 class before voting on anything. A lot of it is about overcoming real problems with plausible solutions, rather than just spouting idealistic concepts that sound great in theory, but could never be put in practice.

Also, child sweatshops are bad news. Adults have a choice, though. They don't have to work in sweat shops, they do it because its their best option. Its better than starving, which is what they'd likely be doing otherwise.

Naked Economics is a really great, approachable book that i've read and re-read before taking the test. I highly recommend it!

I'd recommend Varian for Micro, https://www.amazon.com/Microeconomic-Analysis-Third-Hal-Varian/dp/0393957357?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0, and either Wickens, https://www.amazon.com/Macroeconomic-Theory-Dynamic-Equilibrium-Approach/dp/0691152861?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0, or Romer, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0073511374/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687642&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0691152861&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=6BKPTEX4BHMM69GVSK4F, for macro. These texts are typically used in master's degree programs, but it is difficult to find really math intensive intermediate textbooks for undergrad (I once ran into someone that didn't even have to use calculus for his economics degree). Good luck in your studies!

Have you already read some mainstream books on economics? I'm not sure going straight to the fringe is the best way of understanding how money works, if that's your goal. Personally, my own introduction to economics was through socialism and the works for Marx and Engels, but that just made it harder to understand how things work economically. If you're looking to understand economics in the context of a capitalist society I wouldn't jump straight into looking at anti-capitalists.

Personally, I've found Naked Economics to be extremely enlightening.

I'd recommend a growth textbook, like Weil's Economic Growth or Jones and Vollrath's Introduction to Economic Growth.

I'm an environmental sociologist, but I focus mostly on macro-level issues so the following suggestions are somewhat biased in that way. For sustainable consumption research, you should check out the work of Andrew Szasz, he does very interesting work. There is also Juliet Schor, Gill Seyfang, and Tim Jackson. There's also a huge literature on environmental concern/environmental behaviors that has paid considerable attention to the role of social class/income. For a start, see the work of Jenniver Givens (Univ. of Utah), Sandra Marquart-Pyatt (Mich. State Univ.), and Riley Dunlap (Oklahoma St. Univ.).

You're being too general, and shifting the topic of our conversation.

Your original comment was that prejudicial judgments and stereotypes were part of "how we as a species have survived," specifically in relation to a comment reading, "Shes got one of THOSE faces. So vapid, not suprised at her response," which was a response to a comment about looking like "bootleg Kylie Jenner."

My point about quackery and nonsense goes for almost all evolutionary psychology, but in this case it was related to the idea that evolution somehow prepared us specifically to have prejudices about intelligence based on resemblance to kylie jenner - or some unspecified way of looking "vapid."

Your point requires that judging people based on whether they look like kylie jenner has been an advantageous survival strategy for AT LEAST the tens of thousands of years that are required for genes to change. Which is obviously not true.

Now, your more recent comment is suddenly just talking about "having a preconceived idea about someone's personality" and "making assumptions about people based on their appearance." That's completely general. It could mean anything. We can talk about evo psych work on stereotypes and prejudices in general, if you want - and there definitely is SOME reasonably high quality work there, although not much - but you have effectively changed the topic.

I was arguing that you can't claim evolutionary origins for modern sexism, which is true. Modern sexism is too specific, and there's no good evidence suggesting that sexism has remained stable over evolutionary time. Our specific forms of sexism are not the same thing as heuristic-based perceptual strategies, which is the general topic you're referring to in your most recent post. "Gender and beauty standards" were the exact topic under discussion in the chain of posts we started with, which I why I mentioned the evolutionary psychology pseudoscience that deals with those topics. Which is, as I said, complete fucking quackery and nonsense. Check out, e.g., this sack of garbage.

So, tl;dr, no, modern sexism is not a genetic trait. That is an incoherent and unsupported position. Heuristic judgment is maybe an evolved trait, but there's good reasons to think that psychological traits in general don't evolve the way anatomical traits do.

FINAL NOTE: saying that x "is so obviously" y is not a very strong form of argument.

I enjoyed reading Naked Economics. It talks about the big concepts in economics (mostly macro) in an intuitive way, and it's a pretty quick read, although it's lacking in math as a result.

God I love you for linking this. this book is what turned me on to a more humanistic way of thinking

https://web.archive.org/web/20101119160912/http://www.treasury.gov/education/duties/treas/sec-treasury.shtml

>The Secretary of the Treasury is the principal economic advisor to the President and plays a critical role in policy-making by bringing an economic and government financial policy perspective to issues facing the government. The Secretary is responsible for formulating and recommending domestic and international financial, economic, and tax policy, participating in the formulation of broad fiscal policies that have general significance for the economy, and managing the public debt. The Secretary oversees the activities of the Department in carrying out its major law enforcement responsibilities; in serving as the financial agent for the United States Government; and in manufacturing coins and currency. The Chief Financial Officer Ryan Anderson of the government, the Secretary serves as Chairman Pro Tempore of the President's Economic Policy Council, Chairman of the Boards and Managing Trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, and as U.S. Governor of the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

I mean...you could go a quick 20-second google search of his job before commenting on it

>Obama didn't set rates, but he set the agenda and appointed the guy who set the rates.

Nope. You should do some studying

Du henviser i dit indlæg til begrebet grøn vækst ti gange, på trods af at Dragsted slet ikke nævner det. Han forsøger netop at gøre op med ideen om vækst som et mål i sig selv, f.eks. ved at foreslå, at højere produktivitet fører til nedsat arbejdstid frem for lønstigninger.

Idéen om, at vi kan have fortsat økonomisk vækst mens vi reducerer vores belastning på miljøet, forekommer mere og mere utopisk. Tim Jackson skrev en udmærket bog med udgangspunkt i debatten om relativ vs. absolut decoupling for snart ti år siden, og senest har tyske forskere endnu engang afvist hypotesen om grøn vækst gennem forskellige modelfremskrivninger

Edit: Fandt en god forklaring på relativ vs. absolut afkobling på videnskab.dk:

• ’Relativ afkobling’ er mulig, fordi BNP ofte vokser relativt mere end miljøproblemer - pga. øget effektivitet.
  
  
• Det giver dog ikke anledning til ’absolut afkobling’, hvor miljøproblemerne falder, mens BNP stiger.
  
  
• Det skyldes ’Rebound-effekten’: øget effektivitet giver ofte øget forbrug. En bil, der kan køre længere pr. liter kører man ofte mere i, fordi det er billigere.

Naked Economics does a very good job of explaining some complex economic ideas in very simple ways. It's probably the most engaging take on the science I have ever come across.

Umm, what?
I think you are confusing types of interest.

• Interest where a bank pays its liabilities (depositors). This is partly where the banks in Iceland got into trouble, they promised high returns (high interest rates) on the deposits.
  
  
• Interest which a borrow pays the lender. This is where Iceland is having issues. The lenders, generically called the market, have demanded a higher premium for lending Iceland money to cover their deficit spending. Thus, so as to not to take on even higher levels of debt, Iceland appears to have chosen to cut back on spending, based on my observations only.
  
  
• The interest you are referring to in this line
  
  >keeping intrest rates super low for so long has worked wonders in EU & USA, eh?
  
  Is the rate at which the central bank is lending to banks, so that they can predeterminer levels of capital at the close of business each day via market pressures. Thus creating less expensive capital for banks to secure and able to further loan to the greater market at a lower rate.
  
  I could go on, and i may have missed a few items or gotten some wrong, but i have work to do.
  
  Tl;dr: I am going to assume you don't know what you are talking about, please read this

> My focus in the podcast was on ethnic diversity. The ethnic diversity results within that meta-analysis

It seems reasonable to me that there might be differences of this sort around - am open to further input in that regard.

Did actually purchase your book a few months back, although I haven't gotten to reading it yet - its still in the to-read pile (also had the podcast downloaded but not yet listened to). Not quite sure how well you focused on the topic of this thread in your book.

>what education matters, math, reading skills, knowledge of Shakespeare?

I would argue all of it. Education is about learning one specific skill: critical thinking.

I am only aware of two ways we learn this now: life experience and education. Hive Mind is a good review of all the lit out there on it. If you know of a better way to make an 18 year old gain the life experience of an 85 year old that doesn't involve some sort of education, I am all ears.

The same view is expressed in Charles Wheelan's book Naked Economics.

Also, Paul Krugman's In Praise of Cheap Labour (mit.edu) is worth reading.

If you like this, I would also recommend Spent by Geoffrey Miller!

http://www.amazon.com/Spent-Sex-Evolution-Consumer-Behavior/dp/0143117238/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371226040&sr=1-2&keywords=spent

I absolutely loved "Naked Economics" by Charles Wheelan. The book provides great real-world context for so many fundamental economics concepts.

EDIT: Whoops; someone already mentioned this text. Apologies for the repeat, but 100% co-sign this suggestion.

You could try the Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
Frederick Copleston wrote a fantastic history of philosophy in 11 volumes.
Anthony Kenny has done a somewhat more concise history.
Brian Magee has done it in one volume

Will Durant is also a good bet and a segue into history.

Read a People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and/or Lies my History Teacher told Me.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is also good.

Read some theology. Not many people do. Try Rowan Williams. I'd recommend his Resurrection, but he's also written a book on Dostoevsky.

Read Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment. Notes from the Underground. Brothers Karamazov. Take your pick.

Might check out Edward Said's Orientalism. Maybe some Foucault.

Learn about economics. Naked Economics is a good start. Hazlitt's Economics in one lesson is also popular.

I'm not a huge fan but this one is a pretty standard intro book.

You should find older students or see if you can rent them.
Chegg is a good resource as well.

That calc book is somewhat old so you can probably find it used for cheap, and the principles of macro is supa old as well.

This is the previous edition: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B002WLQ9JQ/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

You can probably get problems from the prof.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0324589999/sr=8-1/qid=1347336913/ref=olp_pg_used?ie=UTF8&colid=&coliid=&condition=used&me=&qid=1347336913&seller=&sr=8-1&startIndex=0

Please read this book, it explains how very very important national IQ is:

https://www.amazon.com/Hive-Mind-Your-Nation%C2%92s-Matters/dp/0804785961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446638531&sr=8-1&keywords=hive+mind/marginalrevol-20

Snowden and Vane? Inty recommended it to me a while ago, and I found it helpful as a map: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Macroeconomics-Origins-Development-Current/dp/1845422082

Its worth noting that while Friedman supports something closer to IVP than "property en toto", his system does not rely on this assumption. People will retaliate over what they will, and there is nothing in Machinery which mechanically favors physical property over social capital. Friedman only predicts his system would result in largely libertarian law; its really quite ethically-neutral.

> lack of consideration for how people change institutions.

This does seem to be a hole in traditional econ, though it is being filled. However just because I see a hole doesn't mean I'm going to reach for the first thing I can to fill it - Propertarianism has holes as well, I'd argue a lot more than mainstream econ.

Naked Economics is really good and absolutely matches your criteria.

I highly recommend Naked Economics as an introduction/overview. It should give you an informed, working knowledge of how economics works without getting lost in textbook details.

Might I suggest reading Mankiew’s Principles of Economics? You might learn why fiat currency and central banking are so widely supported by economists. You then might be able to more clearly see the flaws that crypto has as a currency.

https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Macroeconomics-6th-Gregory-Mankiw/dp/0538453060/ref=nodl_

On the topic of anecdotes, anything by Malcolm Gladwell.

Naked Economics is a good layperson's primer to Econ itself, while Freakonomics is more applied/fringe.

What economics? Like this?

• https://www.amazon.com/Small-Beautiful-Economics-Mattered-Perennial/dp/0061997765
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Industrial-Revolution-CAPITALISM-Paperback/dp/B00QPR7PC8
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Going-Local-Creating-Self-Reliant-Communities/dp/0684830124/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Debt-Updated-Expanded-First-Years/dp/1612194192/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Economics-Money-Society-Transition/dp/1583943978/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Buddhist-Economics-Enlightened-Approach-Science/dp/1632863669
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Economy-Wealth-Communities-Durable/dp/0805087222
  
• https://www.amazon.com/End-Laissez-Faire-Economic-Consequences-Peace/dp/1607960869
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Das-Kapital-Critque-Political-Economy/dp/145388632X/

Since we're recommending books, I think everyone in the sub needs to read these two books before mouthing off in their respective topics.

Naked Economics

White City Black City

i might suggest a basic macro-economics text.
https://www.amazon.ca/Principles-Macroeconomics-N-Gregory-Mankiw/dp/0538453060

is popular.

If you think group differences in IQ don't matter, you should check out the book Hivemind. GDP and average IQ correlates at something like .75.

You have the wrong outlook on this. In order to have an appropriate moral response, you need to understand the role that such industries play. Switch "exploit" with "employ" in your title. Child labourers are exploited by western standards, but it's a displacement to judge child labour in other parts of the world by those standards. Let me give you an example,

> In 1993, child workers in Bangladesh were found to be producing clothing for Wal-Mart and Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation banning imports from countries employing underage workers. The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets - and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.

(As quoted in this book from Paul Krugman, "Hearts and Heads")

That's not to say that it's none of our business - the fact that child workers make products to sell in western countries necessarily makes it our business. Likewise, we are not exactly helping them directly by pumping money into their economy. However, such institutions show the beginnings of industrialization, which is a positive economic development.

I figured that was what you were thinking but didn't expect you to admit it openly.

> Spoiler: it's black people.
>
> I don't know if there's a single perfect book, because it's a difficult problem and nobody knows all the answers. Here's a decent book that tackles the politically correct part of the problem. For the politically incorrect part, you can read between the lines of books like this or you can delve into the horrible dark corners of the Internet like this. As to the validity of the politically correct and politically incorrect theories, who knows. Maybe it's a combination?

everyone needs to read this book. You can pay $300 for jeans and it's still going to be made in a "sweatshop" in Cambodia. There were sweatshops in the US before we had an industrial revolution. That's how economies start. it's natural.

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science was pretty good.

Advanced Macro

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Macroeconomics-Mcgraw-Hill-Economics-David/dp/0073511374

This is worth a read...

Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Macroeconomics-McGraw-Hill-Series-Economics/dp/0073511374/

Its hard to get a solid introduction to the subject without a hidden political view. Most people I know have enjoyed Naked Economics (http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Science-Revised/dp/0393337642). Also, Colander's economics textbook (http://www.amazon.com/Economics-David-Colander/dp/0073375888) tries very hard to present a wide variety of view points, which is sadly not typical

See http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/22/weekinreview/in-principle-a-case-for-more-sweatshops.html

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393337642

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html

I don't do macro, but someone suggest modern macro to me the other day as something that isn't a text book.

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Macroeconomics-Origins-Development-Current/dp/1845422082

Any introductory textbook will cover this stuff. The gold standard is Mankiw's Principles (micro & macro), though I've recently been using Mateer and Coppock (micro & macro).

Your library might have copies, and old editions of Mankiw can be found online for less than $10.

For graduate (at quals-level) courses my undergrad institution used Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green's Microeconomic Theory and Ljungqvist and Sargent's Recursive Macroeconomic Theory.

https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Macroeconomics-6th-Mankiws-Economics/dp/0538453060

When I was in grad school, the book we all read to get a intuitive understanding of the various schools of thought was Snowdon and Vane's Modern Macroeconomics: Its Origins, Development, and Current State. That was a while ago, though, so it may not be the most current resource.

https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Macroeconomics-6th-Mankiws-Economics/dp/0538453060/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1522307220&sr=8-7&keywords=introduction+to+macroeconomics

http://www.amazon.com/Recursive-Macroeconomic-Theory-Lars-Ljungqvist/dp/026212274X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291526398&sr=1-1

Spoiler: it's black people.

I don't know if there's a single perfect book, because it's a difficult problem and nobody knows all the answers. Here's a decent book that tackles the politically correct part of the problem. For the politically incorrect part, you can read between the lines of books like this or you can delve into the horrible dark corners of the Internet like this. As to the validity of the politically correct and politically incorrect theories, who knows. Maybe it's a combination?

http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Dismal-Science/dp/0393049825

http://www.amazon.com/Spent-Sex-Evolution-Consumer-Behavior/dp/0143117238

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1429218878?pc_redir=1409316902&robot_redir=1

Modern Macroeconomics by Snowdon and Vane

Sorry I know there's a PDF somewhere online but I couldn't find it.

The book "Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science" by Charles Wheelan explains this in depth. It is an excellent book. (http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Dismal-Science/dp/0393049825)

Here is the source for my claim that things do work in the same way for gas and pizza.

http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Macroeconomics-N-Gregory-Mankiw/dp/0538453060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369697144&sr=8-1&keywords=principles+of+macroeconomics

read the chapter about supply and demand

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Poll-Jews-highest-earning-religious-group-in-US

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income

http://www.harbornet.com/folks/theedrich/JP_Rushton/Chart_06.jpg

I'm sure left wingers will handwave away the economic-cognitive stratification by race, but its no coincidence. You should read 'Hive Mind' if you want more info

For instance, Per Capita GDP and IQ have a correlation of .73(!) which for the social sciences is huge

http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm

No, it's not. Read this book and it will all make sense.

Eu acho livro texto besteira pra aprender o básico, tem livros de "divulgação" muito bons e muito mais agradáveis de ler. Pra recomendar dois que eu gosto muito:

Naked Economics - Explica os básicos da economia: micro e macro, papel do governo, externalidades, política monetária e fiscal, etc.

A Riqueza da Nação no Século XXI - eBook Kindle self published por um economista da GV, meio que fala sobre a economia brasileira atual. Ele tem uns problemas por ser self published (é meio confuso as vezes), mas é muito atual (foi escrito esse ano) e fala de Bolsa Família, BNDES, banco central, taxa de juros, etc. Eu achei extremamente interessante e custa R$8.

If a nation's IQ decreases, then the suffering increases. Huge links between low IQ and: crime, corruption, poverty.

https://smile.amazon.com/Hive-Mind-Your-Nation%C2%92s-Matters/dp/0804785961?sa-no-redirect=1

Yes crime is obviously tied to poverty, as well as low IQ / high-impulsivity, as well as genetics. These statements all say the same thing.

Of course the countries who have the lowest average IQ will be more poverty stricken.

Further reading...

Edit: OP has revealed the truth. He does not hate capitalism, nor does he support socialism. He sees flaws in capitalism but stil supports it, and wished to test the socialism jerk on /r/truegaming , and also admits to not know that much about economics. This makes me respect OP a bit more, but I'm also not a fan of this type of manipulation in general as I feel it can lead to a waste of people's time. Hopefully, we've collectively at least informed those who didn't know of how capitalism can deal with this situation.

OP /u/whatamidoing11 I'd love it if you (or anyone) read this;

I understand you. Do you understand capitalism?

TL;DR OP blames capitalism for next gen consoles and believes socialism is better

I just went on OP's user page and read all their replies in this submission, and it was eye opening.

OP, you're not just angry at the lack of economic understanding in Redditors (if that lack of understanding even exists). You're angry at the economic system of capitalism. You're angry at the lack of understanding that the problems of the new generating of consoles are, as you perceive them, based on problems in capitalism, or at least our implementation of it, which you do not support.

No wonder you were upset that people thought you were a hardcore Republican! You're pretty much the opposite! You hate our version of capitalism!

The economic systems that you do support are:

> (Social Democracy, Socialism, Resource based societies, etc...)

Let me tell you how I misunderstood your original post.

I thought you were asking us to just accept these problems because they unavoidably stem from capitalism; that we should accept them and move on. I thought you were mockingly appeasing those who were unwilling to accept the problems by offering them an alternative you did not believe in.

It was the opposite. You are unwilling to accept these problems, and you believe strongly in these alternative economic systems.

Firstly, I know some basic economics.

I took a course. I read the book Naked Economics. That's not much, but it's a start. Maybe I'm brainwashed, or maybe I'm informed.

Do you know economics? Do you really know capitalism?

Next, you said yourself that you

> don't know a lot about economics

And that concerns me, because I wonder whether you hate capitalism because you truly hate it and believe in these other systems, or because you misunderstand capitalism. I'm not an expert economist either, and don't know about your other economic systems. Maybe you're right, or maybe you're wrong.

Whatever the case may be, if you've only learned about capitalism from sources that hate capitalism, I urge you to learn about it from a source that loves and understands capitalism like Naked Economics. It may change your mind, it might simply re-affirm your beliefs, or maybe you already know it all and it's a waste of your time. That's why I said if.

A lot of the other comments are already defending capitalism, and I've got a defence of it too, but I better see what work the others have done first to avoid repetition.

Edit: Wait, Socialism?

Now, socialism instantly brings communism to mind. Now, I'm not one to immediately dismiss communism and anything related to it just because America had a war against it, and I recognize that socialism is not communism. But I am highly skeptical of it based on actual economic reasons which are supported by the real life evidence of its failures. I intend to look into social democracy, socialism, and resource based societies as you suggested, but with skepticism.

I'll also put some of the burden on you. Commenters here have explained how capitalism will solve these problems. How exactly can socialism solve them?

Edit: Formatting