IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID a Rhodes Scholar Education in One Hour
By Andre Jute
()
About this ebook
IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID a Rhodes Scholar Education in One Hour
by André Jute
20000 words/84pp
Contents
1 Why economics are important to us all
2 What is economics?
3 Economics in the Ancient World
4 Feudal Economics and the Rise of Mercantilism
5 The Classical Economists
6 The Neo-Classicists
7 The Marxist Counter-Revolution
8 The Marxist Revolution
9 Economics in Politics
Reviews of André Jute’s books
“Wild but exciting. A grand job with plenty of irony.” —New York Times
“So bizarre, it’s probably all true.” — London Evening News
“This is an important book.” — Sydney Morning Herald
“Keeps up such a pace and such interest that it really satisfies.” — Good Housekeeping
“A masterly story that has pace, humor, tension and excitement with the bonus of truth.” — The Australian
“Jute has clearly conducted a great deal of research into everything he describes, investing the novel with an air of prophecy. His moral and ecological concerns are important.” — Times Literary Supplement
Andre Jute
André Jute is a novelist and, through his non-fiction books, a teacher of creative writing, graphic design and engineering. There are about three hundred editions of his books in English and a dozen other languages.He was educated in Australia, South Africa and the United States. He has been an intelligence officer, racing driver, advertising executive, management consultant, performing arts critic and professional gambler. His hobbies include old Bentleys, classical music (on which for fifteen years he wrote a syndicated weekly column), cycling, hill walking, cooking and wine. He designs and builds his own tube (valve) audio amplifiers.He is married to Rosalind Pain-Hayman and they have a son. They live on a hill over a salmon river in County Cork, Eire.
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Book preview
IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID a Rhodes Scholar Education in One Hour - Andre Jute
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID* explains in under an hour what truly matters in this (or any other) Presidential election.
You’ll be able to identify the culprits responsible for economic theory and policy — and you’ll know why they’ve created this mess.
In other words, you’ll be as smart as Bill Clinton, the Rhodes Scholar for whom the catch phrase It’s the economy, stupid
was coined.
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID*
A Rhodes Scholar
Education in One Hour
20000 words/84pp
*
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID
A Rhodes Scholar
Education in One Hour
*
André Jute
*
CoolMain Press
Copyright © 2012 André Jute
The author has asserted his moral right
First published by
CoolMain Press 2012
at Smashwords
Editors: Lisa Penington, Diane Fisher, Sarah Dixon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID*
*The original sign placed on Bill Clinton’s wall by James Carville was a mnemonic reading The Economy, Stupid
. I’m using the version popularized by the press and on street corners because I’m tired of fighting popular myth when there are more important matters to discuss. Even Carville has succumbed, adding the popular It’s
on talk shows.
Contents
1 Why economics are important to us all
2 What is economics?
3 Economics in the Ancient World
4 Feudal Economics and the Rise of Mercantilism
5 The Classical Economists
6 The Neo-Classicists
7 The Marxist Counter-Revolution
8 The Marxist Revolution
9 Economics in Politics
Extras:
The Author, and More Books
1
WHY ECONOMICS ARE IMPORTANT TO US ALL
Everyone’s life is influenced by economics: whether we have a job, what it pays, how much we pay in taxes, whether we receive sufficient services from the state in return; at the very most basic level economic decisions or conditions influence the life-essentials of food, shelter and clothing. For such an important part of our lives, economic ideas are at heart quite simple: there is no important economic thought anyone of moderate intelligence cannot grasp.
Economic ideas which first circulated well before the Industrial Revolution co-exist cheek by jowl with last week’s stroke of genius, and will, if history repeats itself, be influential for a much longer time.
For all but the specialist, the history of economics may be said to fit hand-in-glove with the subject itself. It is because economics is a political science which can never start with a clean slate, but must forever carry the baggage of its past compromises and errors, that its history is important. You cannot understand the economics of the present without first grasping the economics of the past; but, once you have followed the history of economics to the present, you have arrived at complete knowledge — all the rest is technical refinement. The future will similarly flow from the present.
Beginning • Extras
2
WHAT IS ECONOMICS?
Economics is the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life
(Alfred Marshall). This embracing definition recognizes both the wide impact of economics and that its concerns change with location and time because the ordinary business of life
of people in different places and ages varies enormously. In modern economics, roughly from the middle of the eighteenth century, the great quests of economics have been:
• for a theory of VALUE: how and why and by whom is the price of goods and labor and other services arrived at?
• for a theory of DISTRIBUTION: how and why and by whom are the proceeds of economic activity distributed between those who contribute by way of labor, capital for machinery and trade, land on which to site factories, and the state for the infrastructure (roads and other services for which productive concerns do not pay directly)?
• for a theory of EQUITY: how fair or unfair is the distribution of wages, profits, rent and interest; if unfair, is the inequity justified or is there a more equitable distribution and how can it be achieved?
• for a theory of economic MANAGEMENT: how may the stability or at least the predictability of total national (or, increasingly, international) economic performance be enhanced or assured? Once this question dealt with ensuring that nations had more exports and fewer imports than their competitors; today its great concern is achieving full employment at low inflation.
• for a theory of political and philosophical INTEGRATION: how and why are the various possible systems of economic management (capitalism, socialism and communism, plus the hybrid but much more common welfare state) superior or inferior in performance and desirability to each other either in practical performance or on moral grounds, and how can disadvantages in performance be justified on moral grounds?
Although some economists once liked to claim that the measurement of value and the observation and description of distribution was morally and politically neutral, that may charitably be viewed as a defense of the predominant contemporary power-structure and a failure of imagination rather than deliberate mendacity. The other great quests of economic thinkers from the very beginning involved the great powers who regulate economics progressively more overtly, until now economists are in and out of government in the same cycles as the parties whose policies they create or, they hope, lend an aura of intellectual respectability.
HOW ECONOMIC THEORY ARISES
Economics is not a science, instantly replacing a discredited fact or theory by a newly proven one. It is an agglomeration of ideas, each cannibalizing or compromising with its predecessors, formed over a very long period and under a variety of impulses, pressures and conditions:
• by deduction from observation, either current or historical, sometimes very limited in scope or geography
• by pure reason, stating a normative case of