I want to get into economic theory. Where is a good starting place?

>>1108466
that book is a good start, i read about 300 pages of it and found it to be very clear

>>1108466
I'm interested in this as well. Right now I'm reading a book on Keynesianism, and after this I'm reading "The Black Swan".

>>1108466
Youtube. Search Economics for kids. You will learn the basics of economics in clear layman's language with cartoon illustrations.

>>1108466
That book is shit. Stop reading shills.

>>1108466
"economics in one lesson"

>>1108700
stop posting this garbage

>>1108466
Just read Karl Marx and then Thomas Piketty. There, just saved you a lot of time.

Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman

The Economics of Inequality by Thomas Piketty

Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty (long read and somewhat technical. Above book is more or less a primer to this book). Piketty is on the other end of the economic spectrum (similar to Bernie's economic philosophy). You don't have to agree with his views but they are still very good books.

Any books by Paul Krugman because they're easy to read, well written, interesting and not very technical. I have read 'The Return of Depression Economics' and enjoyed it. Krugman is a strong supporter of Keynesian economics.

Would also recommend Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke's autobiographies. I have a long list of books I saved on Goodreads relating to economic theory and thought but I can't be assed going through it.

>>1108727
Dont fall for the marxist bait, if you do a complete read of the Autrian school, and read all books they comment on (Including Marx and Keynes) you'll get a good grasp on things.

Do you say Kee-nesian or Kay-nesian?

>>1108745
>austrian
>good grasp of things
this isnt 19th century lad

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>>1108727
>>1108744
Piketty is a NEOCLASSICAL economist. He equates capital and wealth i.e. there's no difference between machines in factories, housing and shares in companies. From this his research shows that in recent years:

return on wealth > rate of economic growth

He claims because of this you see rising inequality. But if he actually distinguished between different types of "capital" and striped out financial assets Piketty would see that the capital-output ratio has actually stayed roughly constant. The value of financial assets has rapidly increased which is causing the increasing concentration of wealth at the top of the scale.

The lack of real investment in fixed-capital has resulted in low growth, shrinking wages and growing inequality. What is need is more investment not a "wealth tax".

This is a pretty good explanation:
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/investment-investment-investment/

Don't confuse Marx and Keynes:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1969/marx-keynes/index.htm

Keynesianism and Friedmanite economics are obsessed with TFP growth over actual total capital (constant and variable) growth.

>>1108767

I say Keen-sian. Its probably wrong though.

The Communist Manifesto

Marx, therefore, not because he is infallible, but because he is inescapable.

Most of his writing focuses on a critique of capitalism rather than a proposal of what to replace it with – which left it open to misinterpretation by madmen like Stalin in the 20th century. But his work still shapes our world in a positive way as well. When he argued for a progressive income tax in the Communist Manifesto, no country had one.

1. The Great Recession (Capitalism's Chaotic Nature)

2. More stuff to buy (Imaginary Appetites)

3. The IMF (The Globalization of Capitalism)

4. Walmart (Monopoly)

5. Low Wages, Big Profits (The Reserve Army of Industrial Labor)

>>1108817
But the manifesto is shit and was written in the 1840s before Marx studied economics in depth in the 1850s. It was just intended as a propaganda document. The 3 volumes of Capital and 'Theories of Surplus Value' are where his developed thought is laid out even though it wasn't fully complete.

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>>1108823

Economic systems rise and fall just like empires. Since we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic.

Understanding that human history is our greatest guide to the future. That's the kind of perspective we need to take, if we hope to prosper for centuries rather than for the next quarter.

Especially if our goal is to thrive over millennia, rather than simply to profit in our lifetimes.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/communist-manifesto-among-top-three-books-assigned-in-college-2016-01-27

>>1108840
>Economic systems rise and fall just like empires. Since we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic.

Here's some historical principles

1) Everyone who has tried to apply marxism has run their country into the ground and killed a shitload of people

2) Every country with a high standard of living relies heavily on markets and "private ownership of the means of production", even those we would call a mixed economy or even socialist

Holy fuck do not listen tk these idiots with their meme tier books.

If you want to learn theory, pick uo a fucking textbook.

At the UG level:
Varian for micro, Williamson for Macro.

At the grad level:
Mas-Colell for micro, Romer for macro.

Do not listen to these stupid fucking cunts.

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>>1108466
Take anything you read with a large helping of salt. Economics is 75% baseless opinions and 25% science.

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>>1109015

1) Marx made his famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, “ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist)

p.11. Marx's famous remark, quoted by Engels in a letter to Eduard Bernstein, can be found in Marx and Engels, Werke, Vol. 35. p.388.

2) There is no basis for the Marxist hope that an "economy of abundance" will guarantee social peace; for men may fight as desperately for "power and glory" as for bread.

Non sequitur on his critique of capitalism versus full blown communism

This is an economic book recommendation thread, not /pol/

Hegel thought that philosophy develops; yet his own system was to remain the last and highest stage of this development and could not be superseded. The Marxists adopted the same attitude towards the Marxian system. Hence, Marx's anti-dogmatic attitude exists only in the theory and not in the practice of orthodox Marxism, and dialectic is used by Marxists, following the example of Engels' Anti-Dühring, mainly for the purposes of apologetics - to defend the Marxist system against criticism. As a rule critics are denounced for their failure to understand the dialectic, or proletarian science, or for being traitors. Thanks to dialectic the anti-dogmatic attitude has disappeared, and Marxism has established itself as a dogmatism which is elastic enough, by using its dialectic method, to evade any further attack. It has thus become what I call reinforced dogmatism.

OC

>>1109313
What's wrong with the Wealth of Nations?

>>1109366

Not that guy, but there's just so much cynicism and claims to hold absolute truth.

"My book is better than yours"

Nothing is wrong with the Wealth of Nations imo.

Smith regards social science as an extension of common sense rather than as a discipline to be approached mathematically, that he has moral as well as pragmatic reasons for approving of capitalism, and that he has an unusually strong belief in human equality that leads him to anticipate, if not quite endorse, the modern doctrine of distributive justice.

>>1109388
Thanks for the honest answer.

I recently bought the Wealth of Nations and Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments so I could start building up a foundation of knowledge and really learn about why and how capitalism was developed. Plan was to move on to Marx's Capital from there.

Are there any modern texts worth picking up after those two?

I'm an engineer grad btw, not accounting/business/economics, so this is primarily for interests sake (not school). I want to know why things work the way they do.

>>1109388
As for his moral reasons for approving of capitalism - wasn't he just trying to prove that there were better economic systems than mercantilism?

What do you mean by the modern doctrine of distributive justice?

>>1109015
The reliance of your average /pol/lack on swear words and baseless, common knowledge opinions is always interesting to notice

>>1109313
>not Mankiw for undergrads

Agree on the grad-level ones though

>>1109366
Apart from the fact that it doesn't teach you anything that a modern-day economist needs to know?

Nothing really.

>>1109388
So you're just one of those advocates for using "economic reasoning" without actually doing any of the work that lends economy its credence? Gotcha.

>>1109485
Well, I'm not an economist - I'm just trying to understand why the economy operates the way it does today. I thought starting off with the text that really birthed free-market economics would be a smart idea, and reading more recent works would build upon and modify what I learned in the Wealth of Nations. Is this a dumb idea?

>>1109503
Yes

For instance, does Wealth of Nations answer the question "why and how do Chinese people buy so much real estate in North America?" No.

Does Wealth of Nations answer the question "why does public spending reduce the levels of private investment?" No.

Does Wealth of Nations answer the question "how long is a business cycle/how often do recessions happen on average?" No.

I could go on all day on how a book written while the USA was still a British colony somehow doesn't answer almost any of the salient questions that economic actors face today.

>>1109517
And those are questions that could be answered by reading what >>1109313 posted?

>>1109523
Yup, if you read those books carefully and have a little bit of a mathematical background (basic calculus, and know a little bit about matrices)

Although I personally prefer Mankiw's book on Macroeconomics to start with. And if your goal is to just situate yourself in the massive plain of ideology-motivated bullshit that is the public forum for economics (opinion columns and the like), you'll probably only need to read the starter level books

>>1109528
My degree gave me a reasonable understanding of mathematics. I can handle vectors and matrices, ordinary differential equations and multivariable calculus. Sounds like I should be able to grok it for the most part.

Everybody has a different opinion on what you MUST know or start out with, but what you've said sounds pretty reasonable. Thanks!

>>1109539
You're golden then. I wish you luck and success, because God knows we need more informed people in the public policy forums, not just loud-mouthed ideologues who have no idea what they're talking about

>>1109557
> knows we need more informed people in the public policy forums
So are you a Keynesian?

>>1109563
Keynesianism died after stag-flation, what are you talking about

>>1109564
What school of economic thought do you adhere to?

I keep looking in books to find answers, sometimes I find them, but not often.

What are some books that will give me that eureka moment? I feel like I am majorly missing so things.

>>1109603
A mixture of neo-keynesianism and behavioral economics, and I think amongst the heterodox crackpots that the green economists are the only ones with a substantial contribution to mainstream models