Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School

by Gene Callahan

Book Overview

LARGE PRINT EDITION More at LargePrintLiberty.com. The second edition of the fun and fascinating guide to the main ideas of the Austrian School of economics, written in sparkling prose especially for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0945466358
• ISBN13: 9780945466352
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Ludwig Von Mises Institute
• Length: 349 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Simplify without being simplistic

Gene Callahan accomplishes the monumentally difficult task of taking what seems to be "impossible" to outsiders and makes it accessible through his use of excellent examples and word-pictures. (I'm sure the logical positivist, mathematics-based economists will despise the rationalist approach...but let's save that discussion for a few beers and a cigar...). He builds his discussion, bit by bit, working with the average reader. You don't need to be a pre-PhD to follow what Gene is saying...the old "crawl-walk-run" idea. The sense I had was this was more of a trip where we would go from stop to stop, discussing the concept, then using that to build to the next concept. The great thing is that Callahan doesn't patronize his readers...he expects you're going to work a bit. Overall, despite my many years of reading Austrian economics texts & pamphlets, I found this back-to-basics approach to be very helpful in bringing my thinking down the stairs of the ivory tower & back onto the streets, making economics the true "beer-and-pizza" description of reality it is (P=MC doesn't taste as good anyway!).

An Accessible Introduction to Economics

Callahan (and the Austrian school in general) explain economics in terms of human action rather than the abstract and sometimes obtuse models of classical economists. Beginning with the simplest possible scenario, a single human acting in isolation, Callahan builds a hypothetical society and uses it to explain the crucial concepts of economics in a style and language that should be accessible to anyone who has completed high school.He explains the concept of subjective valuation with his individual on the island, then begins adding people and concepts. He quickly takes us through direct exchange, a refutation of the labor theory of value, the introduction of money (including the explanation of the criteria that make something a good choice to use as money), time preference (and how the interest rate serves as the "price" of a time preference), and so on. In the second half of the book he explains concepts that are a bit more abstract - how do central banking and fiat money work? What causes the business cycle? How does a free market system handle externals (benefits or consequences imposed upon those not party to an exchange -e.g. water pollution).Throughout it all, Callahan cogently makes the case for a truly free market as the only means of efficiently satisfying the desires of a society's members.There are things I would have liked Callahan to cover better, for instance, a greater discussion of how the neo-classical economists work, and how their theories influence media reporting of economic issues (think about all the indicators that we are bombarded with in the business section of the paper). However, I don't see how he could have covered that material while keeping the book small and readable. He does give an extensive bibliography for those wishing to further investigate particular points.A handy appendix gives the five page version of the history of the Austrian movement. It seems foolish to say this with it only being April, but I expect this will be the best book I read this year. I would give it more than 5 stars if I could.

Economics for You and Me

The Austrian School is the most consistently free enterprise school of economic thought. Its most outstanding representative was Ludwig von Mises and its leading thinker in recent memory was Murray Rothbard. Both von Mises and Rothbard wrote substantial treatises on economics. However, there haven't been many introductory works. (Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson focuses more on government intervention than prices, the evenly rotating economy and capital theory.)Gene Callahan has remedied that situation with this excellent introductory work. Written in the style of Rothbard, Callahan provides a primer on methodology, economic theory, and a critique of government intervention. The examples are always vivid and at times humorous.After finishing this book, the reader should tackle Rothbard's Man, Economy and State. Then he should try von Mises's Human Action. Human Action isn't easy, but it will present the reader with the acedmic and theoretical rigor of the Austrian school's greatest exponent. For an introductory work that is more basic that Callahan's, David Gordon's An Introduction to Economic Reasoning is excellent.

Great Intro to Real Economics

Just finished the book. It is very impressive. Even if you are already familiar with the Austrian School, the book is useful because it puts in one place the latest refutations of objections to the most important, and timely, Austrian insight, the Business Cycle Theory. The rest of the book is also excellent in its consistent application of the theory of subjective value, the foundation of the Austrian School. I personally love the way the author uses quotes right from Austrian masters to reinforce his points. For the novice, there are few places to gain a firm grasp on real economics so quickly and painlessly, it's a complete first-year course. After reading this, read, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and then, What Has Government Done to Our Money by Murray Rothbard. Also read the daily articles on Mises.org to stay up on current events and to reinforce your newly found expertise in economics.

Buy it! Buy it now!

That's why you're reading this review. You know you want to. Hit that one-click button. Are you tired and confused by what passes for economics these days? Did you sit in class in college and wonder what the heck was going on? Do you believe people can't think in graphs and algebraic equations? Do you believe if you took all the economists in the world and laid them in a line they'd still all point in different directions? If you answered "yes" to these questions then you'd be interested in the Austrian school of economics (the only school, by the way, that predicted the Great Depression). And Gene's book is an excellent introduction to that school. Of course, you can just bypass this book and go straight to Ludwig von Mises, the grandmaster of the Austrian school, and read his magnum opus, the 1000+ pages _Human Action_...nah, don't do that, at least not yet. Read this book first, and once your appetite is whetted then you can move on to the graduate level stuff. You'll like this book. I promise.