Finished The Undercover Economist over the weekend. If you don't know much about economics and wish you did, it's a great book to read and highly recommended. But if things like externalities, comparative advantage and marginal costs are concepts that you are already familiar with, probably not so much. While much of the book covered material I was already familiar with I still learned a few things -- such as pricing strategies used by retailers. Also interesting -- D.C. readers take note -- the author compares the cost for a basket of goods at the Whole Foods at 14th and P to the Soviet Safeway in Dupont and concludes they are roughly the same.
More on the book here and here.
Also finished The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. In the book the author purchases a t-shirt in Florida and then traces its production from the cotton in Texas to manufacture in China to importation in the U.S. to its likely end point as second-hand clothing in Africa. Can't say it really changed my thinking on anything -- I think it is yet further proof that free trade is the best policy. In fact, early on in the book the author says that her research, while confirming her beliefs, also gave her a new appreciation for the POV of anti-sweatshop activists. I, however, found myself at the end of the book still thinking that they're a bunch of idiots.
That is not to say I didn't learn anything in the book -- I did. Mostly that being a cotton picker -- a job that has thankfully been eliminated through mechanization in the U.S. -- is some of the worst employment you can find. Also planting and harvesting cotton is an incredibly difficult business. If you want a brief -- 215 pages -- book that relates the globalization debate to real life examples you could do a lot worse than checking this book out.
More on the book here and here.
Also finished The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. In the book the author purchases a t-shirt in Florida and then traces its production from the cotton in Texas to manufacture in China to importation in the U.S. to its likely end point as second-hand clothing in Africa. Can't say it really changed my thinking on anything -- I think it is yet further proof that free trade is the best policy. In fact, early on in the book the author says that her research, while confirming her beliefs, also gave her a new appreciation for the POV of anti-sweatshop activists. I, however, found myself at the end of the book still thinking that they're a bunch of idiots.
That is not to say I didn't learn anything in the book -- I did. Mostly that being a cotton picker -- a job that has thankfully been eliminated through mechanization in the U.S. -- is some of the worst employment you can find. Also planting and harvesting cotton is an incredibly difficult business. If you want a brief -- 215 pages -- book that relates the globalization debate to real life examples you could do a lot worse than checking this book out.
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