Book cover for "Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism" by Jim Stanford, with a testimonial from Naomi Klein.

Economics for Everyone

A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism

by Jim Stanford

Economics is too important to be left to economists. This brilliantly concise and readable book provides nonspecialist readers with all the information they need to understand how capitalism works (and how it doesn’t).

  • August 2008
  • ISBN: 9781552662724
  • 360 pages

About the book

Economics is too important to be left to economists. This brilliantly concise and readable book provides nonspecialist readers with all the information they need to understand how capitalism works (and how it doesn’t). Jim Stanford’s book is an antidote to the abstract and ideological way that economics is normally taught and reported. Key concepts such as finance, competition and wage labour are explored, and their importance in everyday life is revealed. Stanford answers questions such as “Do workers need capitalists?” “Why does capitalism harm the environment?” and “What really happens on the stock market?” He offers both a realistic assessment of capitalism’s strengths and a robust critique of its many failures. This book will appeal to those working for a fairer world and students of social sciences who need to engage with economics. The book is illustrated with humorous and educational cartoons by Tony Biddle and is supported with a comprehensive set of web-based course materials for popular economics courses.

Author

Jim Stanford

Jim Stanford is an Economist in the Research Department of the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada’s largest private-sector trade union. He received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1995 from the New School for Social Research in New York. He also holds economics degrees from Cambridge University in the U.K. (1986) and the University of Calgary (1984). Jim is the author of Paper Boom (published in 1999 by James Lorimer & Co.) and co-editor (with Leah F. Vosko) of Challenging the Market: The Struggle to Regulate Work and Income.

Contents

  • : Introduction: Why Study Economics?
  • : Part One: Preliminaries—The Economy and Economics
  • : Capitalism
  • : Economic History
  • : The Politics of Economics
  • : Part Two: The Basics of Capitalism: Work, Tools, and Profit—Work, Production, and Value
  • : Working with Tools
  • : Companies, Owners, and Profit
  • : Workers and Bosses
  • : Reproduction (for Economists!)
  • : Closing the Little Circle
  • : Part Three: Capitalism as a System—Competition
  • : Investment and Growth
  • : Employment
  • : Part Four: The Complexity of Capitalism—Money and Banking
  • : Inflation, Central Banks, and Monetary Policy
  • : Paper Chase: Stock Markets, Financialization, and Pensions
  • : The Conflicting Personalities of Government
  • : Spending and Taxing
  • : Globalization
  • : Development (and Otherwise)
  • : Closing the Big Circle
  • : The Ups and Downs of Capitalism
  • : Part Five: Challenging Capitalism—Evaluating Capitalism
  • : Improving Capitalism
  • : Replacing Capitalism?
  • : Conclusion: A Dozen Big Things to Remember about Economics
  • : Index

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