Economics for Everyone: A short guide to the economics of capitalism

Jim Stanford

Reviewed by Lane Vanderslice

This is a wonderful book. 

The world in which we live is very complicated. As human beings, and, as citizens and people of faith to name just two important roles, we have to understand this if we are going to make human decisions that will advance the well-being and security of the people of the world. Economic relations--country, world, firm, and us ordinary people--consumers, workers- (and are we more?)--play a big role in the world. Economics for Everyone is an excellent--the best I have read--introduction to the large, complicated and avoided (in terms of how much attention people pay to it) world of economic and social relations.  

Buy this book.  Don't read it through.  There is too much going on it the world which is hard to understand and which we--including especially our leaders and us--do not well understand.  Read a few pages, or a chapter.  And just think about it--what you have read, what you already understand, and what the nature of the reality might be.  A very useful exercise. We, the 7 billion people of the world, have loosed a very complicated reality--we have loosed not just the Sorcerer's Apprentice, but something much larger--  and we have to try to understand it. 

You, reflecting on the current headlines, what you know, and what Stanford has to say, will perform a useful intellectual, democratic and spiritual exercise.

Lane Vanderslice is the editor of Hunger Notes

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