“Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell.
Thomas Sowell, “Basic Economics” and “Applied Economics.” Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” is a good read, too, although dated.
Basic Economics
Applied Economics
Thomas Sowell
Both well written and accessable.
Get my book, its easy to understand and has a section on economics that explains capitalism. It also gets into the need for God in the free market. I have been a free market capitalist my entire life and written so a teenager could understand. Capitalist plug.
Pray for America
Harry S Dent’s The Great Depression Ahead
and bray’s book...
Go to Amazon and look up both these guys. They both have soem great books out there!
Do the right Thing: The People’s Economist Speaks, William Walters and
Basic economics, Thomas sowell
Here's an oldie but goodie...Milton Friedman explains why capitalism works (video)
Thomas Woods’ “Meltdown” for a good analysis of what has happened recently with our economic situation.
For a good analysis of the backbone of our economic system, “Creature from Jekyll Island” by Griffin is required. It analyzes the Federal Reserve (a clever term for our Central Bank) and central-banking vs. banking. This book completely opened my eyes to what is happening economically in the Western world. It also filled in a massive “missing piece” that I discovered in my years of studying the history of global statism since the mid-19th century.
Along with that, Murray Rothbard’s “Case Against the Fed.”
Ludwing von Mises’ “The Anti-Capitalist Mentality” is excellent.
Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” is excellent. A lot of free-marketers who support 100% open and free trade and offshoring of manufacturing/labor refer to this work a lot. But if you read this book, you’ll notice that the “sweater manufacturing” sector that he uses as his case for this argument includes the fact that it is only one very specific industry (not an entire strata of industry like “programming” or “IT”) and that he admits that even letting one specific industry be taken over by another country that can produce more cheaply may affect the people who were in that industry for up to three generations.
Sowell’s “Basic Economics” is excellent. I didn’t find his “Applied Economics” as valuable.
Milton Friedman’s works on Capitalism (”Free to Choose” and “Capitalism and Freedom”) are excellent. However, you will probably notice a huge disconnect between his support of Capitalism as the most democratic of economic systems and his support of central banking, which is the socialist version of banking. This is because he was throughout his life a Monetarist, which means controlling economic sways through monetary policy. Toward the end of his career, he began to intimate that Monetarism may only work if we put a Constitutional Amendment in place that would limit the amount of money that could be printed to a certain percentage of GDP. While I was hopeful at this change, I was disappointed that he still had so much faith in Central Management (Socialist economics). Couldn’t he see that if the government wanted to increase the amount of newly printed money next year, and they had to abide by the “percentage of GDP rule,” all the government has to do is increase spending by X% THIS year in the budget. Because government spending is 1/3 of GDP, if they increase “spending,” voila, they increase GDP and expand the money supply.
Something to keep in mind: Woods and Rothbard are of the Ludwig von Mises school of economics, which is the Austrian school. I used to believe the Monetarists had the best grasp on what is happening until I started studying the Austrians. I am now convinced they have the best grasp on what is happening economically and politically and why.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/10/walter_williams.html
Download and then burn as a CD, and give as a gift.
Still can’t beat Uncle Milton’s “Free to Choose”.
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1097148W/Principles_of_political_economy_and_taxation
Principles of political economy and taxation
By David Ricardo
“economics in one easy lesson” - Hazlitt
good explanations, easy read.
Personal education ping-thanks everybody
Anyone know of a good conservative college economics textbook?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1333439/posts
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? by Richard Maybury.
Austrian based philosophy. Conservative philosophy. Simple to understand. Use by many homeschoolers for high school level education. I’ve read it twice. Highly recommended.
I know it’s been a while.. but just had this posted from my blog rss...
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/09/if_i_taught_gre.html
His list of books for a freshman seminar in economics includes a diverse selection, including Bryan’s Myth of the Rational Voter, which is the only one that I would duplicate. Offhand, I would pick
1. Jerry Muller, The Mind and the Market. My choice for history-of-economic-thought book is much more difficult than Heilbroner (Mankiw’s pick), and far meatier.
2. Robert Frank The Economic Naturalist. Replaces the McMillan book on Mankiw’s list. Could be a close call.
3. Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, Information Rules. Price discrimination explains everything. I like it much more than Dixit-Nalebuff (Mankiw’s choice in what I would call the business economics category).
4. Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist. Yes, Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom are classics, but this works better today. Or should I propose From Poverty to Prosperity?
5. Kevin Lang, Poverty and Discrimination. A left-leaning book, with a good dose of statistical methods provided along the way. My preference over the Okun classic.
6. Ed Leamer, Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories. As you know from recent posts, I like his perspective on macro, and he has a good sense for methods. Replaces both Farmer and Krugman from Mankiw’s list.
7. Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Students should be conversant in finance and how economists think about it.
8. Tyler Cowen, The Age of the Infovore. This would replace Landsburg in the category I think of as “economists outside the box.” Many alternatives here, none exactly right. What I really want is The Best of Robin Hanson, a collection of six essays (any more and the students’ heads would explode), but that book doesn’t exist.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/09/this-years-freshman-seminar.html
Thursday, September 02, 2010
This year’s Freshman Seminar
My freshman seminar starts today. Here are the books we are reading this year (in this order):
The Worldly Philosophers, by Robert Heilbronr
Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets, by John McMillan
Thinking Strategically, by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff
Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman
Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff, by Arthur Okun
Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
How the Economy Works, by Roger E.A. Farmer
The Return of Depression Economics, by Paul Krugman
The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek
The Myth of the Rational Voter, by Bryan Caplan
The Big Questions, by Steven Landsburg