‘Basic Economics’ should be required reading

  "Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy" by Thomas Sowell is one of those important works that should be required reading for anyone who is alive. Barring that it should, at minimum, be required reading for politicians. Politicians, who often wear their posteriors as a hat, could benefit from this book in that they could at least be proud in the knowledge of just how much their policies are totally screwing their constituents.
  Sowell, who is highly respected in his field as a professor of Economics as well as in his work as an author, speaker and syndicated columnist, uses examples of good and bad policy taken from history to explain cause and effect in an economy. For example, Sowell addresses several historic examples from multiple countries around the world, in which politicians did not understand how their economy actually worked and when they attempted to created policies to improve the plight of their people they only succeeded in making the situation worse.
  That said, Sowell uses common everyday language to bring economics alive for the unwashed masses and is so eloquent in his language that even those who have more than a passing knowledge in this field of study will find this book useful. The book is eminently readable and in no way does it resemble the dry textbooks that I remember from high school and college.