...but not just any economics.

I should have been a little more specific in my last post. I said that it is important to have an understanding of economics and that's true, but there are a number of different schools of economic thought out there. I'm specifically referring to the Austrian school of economics.

What is the Austrian school of economics?
My cop-out response is to link you to Tom Woods' resource page on the topic. The overview articles (Here and Here) that he references at the top of the page are indeed good for some background. There is absolutely a TON of information on Tom's page and he has it organized quite well. In subsequent posts to this blog I intend to highlight some specific books, articles and other media that I have personally read and which I would recommend. Since Tom did such a great job with his page, I'll take advantage of the division of labor and let others do what they can do better than I can and I will instead focus on what I think I can uniquely contribute.

I just think the Austrian school makes a lot of sense. I'm not an economist, but the overall theory as articulated by the Austrians makes a lot of sense to me. The really cool thing about the Austrian view is that it is understandable to the average lay person and you don't have to suspend your entire sense of logic in order to believe the theories and conclusions. (For instance you don't have to forget everything you know about personal finance in order to believe that if you have a debt problem the way to fix it is to go even deeper into debt - which is what the non-Austrians will tell you)

Although I am biased toward the Austrian view, I do think it is important to be exposed to alternate points of view. Unfortunately you don't really have to go too far out of your way to be exposed to these non-Austrian economic points of view. The dominant non-Austrian school (and probably the most "anti-Austrian") is the Keynesian school. This is named after John Maynard Keynes, who was a British economist whose theories became popular in the 1930's and are still quite popular today. The current economic policies in the USA are highly influenced by Keynesian theory. Most of the mainstream media is also heavily influenced by Keynesianism (Paul Krugman of the NY Times is an avowed Keynesian). It's OK to read Krugman or any other popular economics articles or books. Once you have learned a little bit about the Austrian school, you'll never be able to look at non-Austrian economics the same way again. And in my book, that would be a good thing...