Here is a bold new account of the lives and ideas of the great economists'Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and many others'all written by a top free-market economist, presented in an entertaining and persuasive style. Professor Mark Skousen tells a powerful story of economics with dozens of anecdotes and illustrations of the great economic thinkers.
'Both fascinating and infuriating'enaging, readable, colorful'credulous, disingenuous, and tendentious.''Foreign Affairs
The power of economic thinking can be explained by seven core principles, which are accountability, investments, economy, incentive, freedom of choice, nondiscrimination, and one price. By understanding and incorporating these principles, better decisions will be made on individual, corporate, and government levels.
To explain this thesis, the author offers analyses of key economists who have changed their views over time, an examination of major domestic and international issues, and an explanation of how economists can predict which politicians will be successful.
This bold new history of economics tells the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built a rigorous social science without peer. Unlike other economics histories, Skousen's book provides a running plot with a singular heroic figure, Adam Smith, at the center of the discipline. Skousen unites the great thinkers by ranking them for or against Adam Smith and his "system of natural liberty." He shows how Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, and even laissez-faire disciples Robert Malthus and David Ricardo detracted from Adam Smith's classical model of democratic capitalism, while Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman, among others, remodeled and improved upon Smithian economics. Highlights include humorous anecdotes and exciting new revelations about the lives of the great economists.
"A reference bible....What an absolutely ideal gift for college students."-National Review
History comes alive in this fascinating story of opposing views that continue to play a fundamental role in today's politics and economics, due to the turbulent lives and battle of ideas of the three most influential economists in world history: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.
After ending his life's story in 1757, Franklin was America's advocate in London, represented Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress, and was America's wartime ambassador to France. Edited from Franklin's papers, this is the closest we will get to Franklin finishing his autobiography.
Compiled and edited by Mark Skousen, Ph.D.
Investment philosophers have long debated the role of money in a life well lived. Among their lessons are: Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. (John Wesley) Industry, Frugality, Prudence. (Benjamin Franklin) A part of all you earn is yours to keep. (George Clason) Preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. (Bennett Goodspeed) Work for yourself. Satisfy your customers. Be thrifty in all things. Leave the world a better place than you found it. (J. Paul Getty) Make it easy to save. Make it difficult to spend. Control your debt. (Mark and Jo Ann Skousen) Know that you are free to act and think for yourself. (Rose Wilder Lane) Financial economists work to explain (and predict) the markets. Depending on how their theories match reality, their results are sometimes spectacular- and sometimes disastrous. Among the economists discussed are: George Soros, Harry Browne, and Gary Schilling (who successfully anticipated macroeconomic shifts, e.g. in currency exchange rates or inflation); Irving Fisher (whose theories led to astoundingly wrong predictions about the Great Depression); John Maynard Keynes (a successful long-term investor who couldn't anticipate short-term events); and Felix Somary, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek (Austrian economists whose theory of the business cycle led them to foresee the 1929 crash and the depression that followed).
