The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume II: Macroeconomics

by Grady Klein (Illustrator), Yoram Bauman Ph.D.

Overview

Need to understand today's economy? This is the book for you. The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume Two: Macroeconomics is the most accessible, intelligible, and humorous introduction to unemployment, inflation, and debt you'll ever read.

Whereas Volume One: Microeconomics dealt with the optimizing individual, Volume Two: Macroeconomics explains the factors that affect the economy of an entire country, and indeed the planet. It explores the two big concerns of macroeconomics: how economies grow and why economies collapse. It illustrates the basics of the labor market and explains what the GDP is and what it measures, as well as the influence of government, trade, and technology on the economy. Along the way, it covers the economics of global poverty, climate change, and the business cycle. In short, if any of these topics have cropped up in a news story and caused you to wish you grasped the underlying basics, buy this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809033614
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	12/20/2011
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	375,552
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

A freelance cartoonist, illustrator, and animator, Grady Klein is the creator of the Lost Colony series of graphic novels.

An environmental economist at the University of Washington, Yoram Bauman, Ph.D., is the world's first and only stand-up economist.

Editorial Reviews

The major concepts of macroeconomics are broken down with wit, verve, and clarity in this excellent follow-up to The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Vol. 1: Microeconomics. Klein and Bauman lay out the goals of macroeconomists, who address issues that affect an entire country or the entire planet—and who try to solve the problem of how to increase living standards in the long run while understanding short-term economic fluctuations. The two basic theories for explaining economics, the classical view and the Keynesian view, become a lot clearer when explained with illustrations rather than with dry charts and graphs; so do unemployment, inflation, the Gross Domestic Product, fiscal policy, international trade, foreign aid, and global macroeconomics. While the authors do an admirable job keeping politics out of it, they’re clearly fans of the free market and a well-reasoned, balanced role for the government. This clever, lucid, and lighthearted book is a godsend to anyone who needs a simple but complete primer on the ins and outs of economics. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

The major concepts of macroeconomics are broken down with wit, verve, and clarity in this excellent follow-up to The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Vol. 1: Microeconomics . . . This clever, lucid, and lighthearted book is a godsend to anyone who needs a simple but complete primer on the ins and outs of economics.” —Publishers Weekly

“People don't usually chuckle over unemployment, inflation, and recessions. But they'll get plenty of laughs out of this book—and a good introduction to macro too.” —Eric Maskin, Nobel Laureate in Economics

“If you don't want to cry about the state of the economy, why not laugh instead? This book is an ideal introduction to macroeconomics for anybody who thinks they ought to understand what's happening around them but is put off by dense text and economics jargon.” —Diane Coyle, author of The Economics of Enough

“Bauman [has] an insightful philosophical bent and the natural inclinations of an educator, in the best sense of that term.” —MarginalRevolution.com

From the Publisher

A lighthearted effort to make the dismal science less dismal, though too often about as funny as a Yakov Smirnoff set. Economics is all about managing scarce resources, money being one of them. Macroeconomics, the big-picture aspect of economics, "has two big goals," writes Bauman (billed as the world's "only stand-up economist")--namely, to establish means by which living standards increase over time, which is where old Adam Smith's invisible hand comes in, and to "explain how economies grow…and why economies collapse," which, considering the collapsing state of things, makes the field both useful and timely. The "holy grail" of macroeconomics, Bauman writes, is "how to get economies to grow without crashing," which would seem to defy the laws of thermodynamics--and there the fun begins, for on one hand you have Milton Friedman, on the other John Maynard Keynes, and any number of disparate and often contentious approaches to making everyone rich without, in the end, making everyone destitute. There's a lot of ground that Bauman and artist Klein have to cover, so much that sometimes useful concepts--Joseph Schumpeter's suggestive theory of "creative destruction," for instance--get only a panel or two. Even so, Bauman hits his targets with pleasing accuracy. For example, he and Klein get, in just a few pages, what it has taken other writers whole volumes to express on the matter of the Keynesian view of the causes of cyclical unemployment. Bauman is also pleasingly subversive without overtly seeming to be so: He gives a lively, sardonic view of how inflation serves as a de facto means of wage cutting in the age-old war of supply and demand. The cartoons are ample, but the yucks few, particularly when Bauman recycles the old saw, beloved of Reagan and his Reaganomic acolytes: "In a recession, you lose your job…in a depression, I lose mine." Which goes to show, it is called the dismal science for a reason. Laugh-a-minute or not, an accessible introduction to a densely complex subject.

Kirkus Reviews