Abstract
You may be reading this because you have enrolled in an economic principles class, or you may be simply curious about basic economics. In buying it, you probably thought you were signing up for a discussion of inflation, unemployment, interest rates, whether the standard of living is going up or down, outsourcing, the gyrations of the stock market, and other topics that seem somehow to be related to “economics” and often find their way into the news.
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4All questions asked in the text are answered, to the best of my ability, at the end of each chapter.
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5Please see the preface for an explanation as to why I use the pronoun he throughout the book.
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9Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 2, paragraph 2.
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10Hillel was supposedly asked to summarize ( http://forward.com/articles/14250/the-rest-of-the-rest-is-commentary-/ ) the Torah, the Old Testament portion of the Bible, in the time he could stand on one leg. The answer? “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary—[and now] go study.”
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11The argument being made here—that letting everybody pursue his self-interest is also in the best interest of the entire society—is sometimes called the invisible hand, which is supposed to lead everybody do the right thing for society in the course of doing what is right for them individually. Adam Smith created the phrase in The Wealth of Nations, although as noted earlier the book is more nuanced on the broader question of the proper scope of government, and of trade, in promoting the broader social good. However, given the prevailing environment of late-1700s Britain, which was rife with special government privileges for big business and extensive restrictions on foreign trade, all imposed in the belief that the government could control resource use for this broader good, this was a radical statement.
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© 2013 Evan Osborne
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Osborne, E. (2013). Introduction. In: Reasonably Simple Economics. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-5942-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-5942-8_1
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