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Tim's Reviews > The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life
The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life
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I wasn't going to bother commenting on this book but in regard to some of the other comments I feel I must. Those that rated this book a 1 or 2 and then jumped into politically-motivated negative comments - shame on you. You are intellectually dishonest to yourselves and those that read these reviews. There is nothing in this book that pushes a political agenda unlike MOST of the more recent psuedo-economics books being published. What IS presented by Landsburg are sound, economic analysis and discussion. Nothing more and nothing less. And they stand the test of time.
I don't always agree with him in my heart, BUT my brain has a hard time arguing the ideas he puts forward. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Read the book and then think about what is in it. Put some of the techniques he teaches into looking at the problems we see in today's economy.
It is a sad thing that when logic does not match someone's view of the world that they then have to start hurling insults and result to name calling rather than take a hard look at the facts in front of them.
I don't always agree with him in my heart, BUT my brain has a hard time arguing the ideas he puts forward. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Read the book and then think about what is in it. Put some of the techniques he teaches into looking at the problems we see in today's economy.
It is a sad thing that when logic does not match someone's view of the world that they then have to start hurling insults and result to name calling rather than take a hard look at the facts in front of them.
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October 10, 2010
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Jay
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rated it 4 stars
Mar 05, 2013 08:12PM
The ironic part is that after reading the final chapter in the book, you can predict that the politically motivated environmentalists would be on the offensive.
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I know you posted this a while ago, but what political agendas are you talking about?
kkerswell wrote: "I know you posted this a while ago, but what political agendas are you talking about?"Well, it has been over a decade since I wrote the above, but it is still very true. In some ways even more from what I see in the news (when I bother to check). It took me a bit to re-trace what happened and how I would respond to your question, and my activity on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ is very limited nowadays.
My comment was in response to a group of comments posted around that time. A number of people took to attacking the author directly because they didn't like the implications of his results. You might be best served to look for negative reviews from that time for direct examples.
My review is pretty straight forward, I think. I'm not willing to get into any political debate here of any kind and I delete comments directed at me that try to because they aren't discussions - they quickly turn to ad homenim attacks. I don't have the stomach or time to waste on that. Rational and polite discussion would be fine, but it would have to be off-line from here because people's belief systems tend to over-ride logic and anyone could interject randomly.
Having said that I will give one example at the risk of drawing fir that dates back to that time period. Check wiki (don't just take my word for it) and look at Solyndra. The US government wasted over half a billion dollars because the decision to 'give' them said money was based on a political ideology not sound reasoning. Admittedly, this is a selected sub-section of a bigger decision but let's frame that into Landsburg's views on donating to charities (the logic of his argument as the driver, not that it has to be a charity). With limited funds to spend, what is the best use of, say, half a billion dollars? I don't think there is much argument that there HAD to be 'something' better to spend it on than Solyndra.
