Economics is too important to be left to the economists. This book provides the information you need to understand how capitalism works (and how it doesn’t).
Through clear bite-sized chapters interspersed with illuminating illustrations, this is an antidote to the abstract and ideological way that economics is normally taught and reported on in in media. Key concepts such as finance, competition and wages are explored, and their importance to everyday life is revealed. It answers questions such as ‘Do workers need capitalists?’, ‘Why does capitalism harm the environment?’, and ‘What really happens on the stock market?’.
The book is supported with a comprehensive set of web-based course materials including videos for popular economics courses.
Table of Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why Study Economics?
Part I: Preliminaries
1. The Economy and Economics
2. Capitalism
3. Economic History
4. The Politics of Economics
Part II: The Basics of Capitalism: Work, Tools and Profit
5. Work, Production and Value
6. Working with Tools
7. Companies, Owners and Profit
8. Working for a Living
9. Reproduction (for Economists!)
10. Closing the Little Circle
Part III: Capitalism as a System
11. Competition
12. Business Investment
13. Employment and Unemployment
14. Inequality and Its Consequences
15. Divide and Conquer
16. Capitalism and the Environment
Part IV: The Complexity of Capitalism
17. Money and Banking
18. Inflation, Central Banks and Monetary Policy
19. Paper Chase: Stock Markets, Financialization
and Pensions
20. The Conflicting Personalities of Government
21. Spending and Taxing
22. Globalization
23. Development (and Otherwise)
24. Closing the Big Circle
25. The Ups and Downs of Capitalism
26. Meltdown and Aftermath
Part V: Challenging Capitalism
27. Evaluating Capitalism
28. Improving Capitalism
29. Replacing Capitalism?
Conclusion: A Baker’s Dozen: Key Things to Remember
Index
About the author
Jim Stanford is Director of the Centre for Future Work, based at the Australia Institute and Honorary Professor of Political Economy at University of Sydney. He writes an economics column for the Globe and Mail, appears regularly on CBC TV’s ‘Bottom Line’ economics panel and is the author of Economics for Everyone (Pluto, 2015).
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