Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

As a character in Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan replies when told of the theory of Pythagoras that the earth is round and revolves around the sun: “What an utter fool! Couldn’t he use his eyes?”

He is merely exchanging a more liquid form of asset or credit for a less liquid form.

That in fact is one reason why it is not good to bring such protected interests into existence in the first place.

Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for.

What has happened is merely that one thing has been created instead of others.

it. We should have lowered the production of wealth and retarded economic and scientific progress.

In order that new industries may grow fast enough it is usually necessary that some old industries should be allowed to shrink or die. In doing this they help to release the necessary capital and labor for the new industires.

Let us, therefore, try to see exactly what happens when technical improvements and labor-saving machinery are introduced.

It is solved precisely through the price system. It is solved through the constantly changing interrelationships of costs of production, prices and profits.