Thinking Citizen Blog — Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) “Economics in One Lesson” (1946); Joan Robinson (1903–1983), John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Tuesday is Economics, Finance, and Business Day
Today’s Topic: Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) “Economics in One Lesson” (1946); Joan Robinson (1903–1983), John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)
Most economics books are unreadable. This is tragic because understanding economics is vitally important. Thinking citizenship is impossible without an understanding of basic economics. Economics courses have reading lists so long and problem sets so numerous that the unfortunate student is drowned in excess information and exercises in mathematical dexterity that as soon as that final exam is completed all understanding vanishes like the fog in the morning sun. What to do? Well you might want to start with Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson.” Today, a lengthy quote from Hazlitt. Plus some words of wisdom from two other economists — Joan Robinson and John Maynard Keynes.
Have you ever tried to distill what you have learned in your life about economics into three sentences? How about seven? Two past attempts of mine are in the last two links below.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
A GOOD VERSUS A BAD ECONOMIST — ALL THE COSTS, ALL THE PLAYERS. ALL THE TIME HORIZONS
1. “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”
2. “It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reasons for this ought not to be mysterious.”
3. “The reason is that demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. As far as they go they may often be right. In these cases the answer consists in showing that the proposed policy would also have longer and less desirable effects, or that it could benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups.”
NB: “The answer consists in supplementing and correcting the half-truth with the other half. But to consider all the chief effects of a proposed course on everybody requires a long, complicated, and dull chain of reasoning. Most of the audience finds this chain of reasoning difficult to follow and soon becomes bored and inattentive. The bad economists rationalise this intellectual disability and laziness by assuring tyhe audience that it need not even attempt to follow the reasoning or judge it on its merits because it is only “classicism” or “laissez-faire” or “capitalist apologetics” or whatever other term of abuse may happen to strike them as effective.”
THE ECONOMIST MUST BE MORE THAN ECONOMIST — John Maynard Keynes
1. “The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts…He must be a mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher — in come degree.”
2. “He must understand symbols and speak in words.”
3. “He must contemplate the particular in terns of the general, and touch abstract and concree in the same flight of thought.”
NB: “He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.”
JOAN ROBINSON — how do you learn how not to be fooled by the next economist you come across?
1. “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economics questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”
2. “The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.”
3. “I never learned maths. So I had to think.”
Economics in One Lesson — Wikipedia
Joan Robinson Quotes (Author of Economic Philosophy)
A quote by John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes — Wikipedia
Thinking Citizen Blog — The Three Most Basic Principles of Economics
Thinking Citizen Blog — The Orion of Political Economy — Seven Sentences Most Worth Remembering
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY INTO FOURTEEN BOOK-LENGTH PDFs:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN — Please share:
a.) the coolest thing you learned this week related to business, economics, finance.
b.) the coolest thing you learned in your life related to business, economics, finance.
c.) anything at all related to business, economics, finance.
d.) anything at all
