Economics for Smart Citizenship

Originating as a book for a one-semester course, it is designed for the general reader who is interested in knowing how his or her daily life is affected by economics. The book starts with the basics of good decision making and how a society can be organized to best serve its citizens. It emphasizes that, in order to make yourself better off, it is necessary to make others better off also. Its treatise on markets shows how free trade, unfettered by intrusive government edicts, leads to maximizing society's standard of living. The economics of consumers, businesses, government, international trade, and resource markets make up the micro part of the book. The macro part of the book is organized around the two main problems: inflation and unemployment. This is followed by the examination of policies that could be adopted by government to address these problems. The book concludes with a discussion of economic growth and productivity. The book discusses ideas and has minimized the math.