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The Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative Action to Immigration, How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Life
From economics Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and historian Guity Nashat Becker comes this collection of the economist's popular BusinessWeek columns. These 138 essays have fueled numerous debates, touching on hot-button issues from crime to organization of sports. The Beckers' surprising--and uncompromising--positions on drugs ("legalize them"), immigration ("auction off immigration slots"), welfare ("curtail it sharply"), and other topics provide a provocative commentary on our times.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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732 people want to read
About the author
Gary S. Becker
47 books107 followersAmerican economist. He is a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He has important contributions to the family economics branch within the economics. Neoclassical analysis of family within the family economics is also called new home economics . He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.He is currently a Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 11, 2016
I was first exposed to Gary Becker (as well has his lifelong co-author Richard Posner and Mitchell Polinsky to boot) my Sophomore year in college when I took a seminar in Law and Economics. Back then in 1988 he was one of the few brave academic advocates of drug legalisation (the subject of my eventual paper) and he wrote soooo well, I was hooked. I have followed him since. In recent years I have been an avid reader of the Posner / Becker blog. It has indeed been my first daily click on the Internet, in the hope that they have overnight delivered their trenchant verdict on yet another current issue. That said, I’d never found time for “The Economics of Life,” a book I bought a long time ago together with Robert Barro’s “Getting it Right.” Now, of course, Gary Becker has been taken from us, there will be no more fresh entries in the blog, so I reached into my shelves for a shot of methadone, so to speak.
Sadly, it’s not very representative of the rest of his work.
For starters, it’s not really a book, it’s a compilation of 800-word essays he wrote for Newsweek in the late eighties and early nineties. The timing here is critical. These essays were written at a juncture when “free market” ideology, of which Becker was a prominent preacher, was at its apogee, possibly even its moment of hubris. Keen to give a “coup de grace” to the mortally wounded ideology of central planning and hyper-regulation that suffered its biggest blow with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Becker is having his own “end of history” moment here. There’s nothing that cannot be left to the market according to these essays:
Becker takes aim at every possible form of government participation in the economy, from the public school system, subsidised tuition at state-run colleges and the government monopoly on postal services, all the way to the minimum wage, affirmative action and drug prohibition. He speaks in favor of workfare over welfare, advocates the post-Vietnam status quo when it comes to voluntary (professional to you and me) military service over the draft, and puts in a big plug for NAFTA. There’s also some stuff that already identifies him as an old man, like when he wants to turn back the clock on no-fault divorce or when he cannot drop the point on what he perceives to be pay restrictions against college athletes.
With twenty to thirty years’ hindsight, one would have to say he scores no better than 50:50 on his judgements.
Becker very accurately predicts the student loan debacle we are about to find ourselves in today: the trillion dollar market for unserviceable debt cannot be regulated away neither by having the government stand behind it nor by making it impossible to write off; his recommendation (coming from the right, funnily enough) that people ought to be forced to buy health insurance (p.41 in the book) has found its embodiment in Obamacare; affirmative action is now deemed to have run its course as minorities have made it to the highest echelons of academia and society; even leftists today are prepared to agree that there are undeniable benefits from free trade, while the wealthy are now pretty much ready to accept that government handouts will have to be means-tested, just like Becker says they should be.
But history has been less kind to his fixation on education vouchers, society is groaning under the weight of higher state-school college tuition (that has come to pass due to busted state budgets rather than ideology), workfare, instituted under Clinton, has been a disaster for the children of the single mothers who were forced to take on jobs and even the “voluntary” nature of the military, while impossible to reverse, is blamed by many as one of the main causes for the way the US sleepwalked into two wars it could only lose.
All that said, these Newsweek columns are not without merit. At the time when they were written they provided to many readers their first exposure to a way of thinking about the economy that was not yet taught in college. If you were a college student in 1985, your main Economics text, Samuelson, had a prediction for the date the Soviet economy would surpass the American. In that context, these columns would have been a breath of fresh air.
And if Becker had hung on a bit longer, I suspect he'd finally see his (rather premature) prediction that the "time is ripe" for drug legalisation come true.
From where we stand today, however, you are well advised to look up in the table of contents the date on which every essay was written, or else you will be disappointed. So while the book scores well as a historical document, or a place to establish what the “free market” book-end could be defined on this wide variety of topics, it fails (and if fails rather dismally) to rise to the standard of analysis, let alone humility, that you would be used to if you were a regular reader of the author’s blog.
Sadly, it’s not very representative of the rest of his work.
For starters, it’s not really a book, it’s a compilation of 800-word essays he wrote for Newsweek in the late eighties and early nineties. The timing here is critical. These essays were written at a juncture when “free market” ideology, of which Becker was a prominent preacher, was at its apogee, possibly even its moment of hubris. Keen to give a “coup de grace” to the mortally wounded ideology of central planning and hyper-regulation that suffered its biggest blow with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Becker is having his own “end of history” moment here. There’s nothing that cannot be left to the market according to these essays:
Becker takes aim at every possible form of government participation in the economy, from the public school system, subsidised tuition at state-run colleges and the government monopoly on postal services, all the way to the minimum wage, affirmative action and drug prohibition. He speaks in favor of workfare over welfare, advocates the post-Vietnam status quo when it comes to voluntary (professional to you and me) military service over the draft, and puts in a big plug for NAFTA. There’s also some stuff that already identifies him as an old man, like when he wants to turn back the clock on no-fault divorce or when he cannot drop the point on what he perceives to be pay restrictions against college athletes.
With twenty to thirty years’ hindsight, one would have to say he scores no better than 50:50 on his judgements.
Becker very accurately predicts the student loan debacle we are about to find ourselves in today: the trillion dollar market for unserviceable debt cannot be regulated away neither by having the government stand behind it nor by making it impossible to write off; his recommendation (coming from the right, funnily enough) that people ought to be forced to buy health insurance (p.41 in the book) has found its embodiment in Obamacare; affirmative action is now deemed to have run its course as minorities have made it to the highest echelons of academia and society; even leftists today are prepared to agree that there are undeniable benefits from free trade, while the wealthy are now pretty much ready to accept that government handouts will have to be means-tested, just like Becker says they should be.
But history has been less kind to his fixation on education vouchers, society is groaning under the weight of higher state-school college tuition (that has come to pass due to busted state budgets rather than ideology), workfare, instituted under Clinton, has been a disaster for the children of the single mothers who were forced to take on jobs and even the “voluntary” nature of the military, while impossible to reverse, is blamed by many as one of the main causes for the way the US sleepwalked into two wars it could only lose.
All that said, these Newsweek columns are not without merit. At the time when they were written they provided to many readers their first exposure to a way of thinking about the economy that was not yet taught in college. If you were a college student in 1985, your main Economics text, Samuelson, had a prediction for the date the Soviet economy would surpass the American. In that context, these columns would have been a breath of fresh air.
And if Becker had hung on a bit longer, I suspect he'd finally see his (rather premature) prediction that the "time is ripe" for drug legalisation come true.
From where we stand today, however, you are well advised to look up in the table of contents the date on which every essay was written, or else you will be disappointed. So while the book scores well as a historical document, or a place to establish what the “free market” book-end could be defined on this wide variety of topics, it fails (and if fails rather dismally) to rise to the standard of analysis, let alone humility, that you would be used to if you were a regular reader of the author’s blog.
September 19, 2021
This collection of Gary Becker's Business Week columns provide extremely valuable analysis on the costs of regulations, the superiority of free-market capitalism over socialism, and maybe the best essay advocating the legalization of drugs I've ever read.
Becker provides keen insight in this collection of articles about rent-seeking and "bureaucrats who worry about loss of power," but he fails to apply that insight to defense spending and the criminal justice system. This has always been a blindspot for conservatism. Many actors, both public and private, profit from bad public policies, resulting in unnecessary wars, jailed non-violent offenders, pillaged civil liberties, and massive collateral damage (to name just a few things).
The articles advocating a crackdown on illegal immigration also don't seem to add up. Much to the dismay of today's nativists, Becker wrote in a 1993 article included in this collection "I am not advocating the erection of a wall against immigration." He also regards the idea of illegal immigrants taking away employment opportunities from native-born Americans as "erroneous claims." It seems like the main reason for Becker's opposition to illegal immigration is the supposed burden on public coffers they impose. I don't know what those numbers looked like in the '80s or early '90s, but instead of being a drain on tax dollars, since the welfare reform law of 1996 illegal immigrants are actually net-contributors to our tax system.
While my review is emphasizing my disagreements, I give this a 4-star rating. It's a thoughtful collection of essays, some of which are still timely in today's discourse despite the age of the book. This is also a stark reminder of how thoughtful conservatism used to be.
Becker provides keen insight in this collection of articles about rent-seeking and "bureaucrats who worry about loss of power," but he fails to apply that insight to defense spending and the criminal justice system. This has always been a blindspot for conservatism. Many actors, both public and private, profit from bad public policies, resulting in unnecessary wars, jailed non-violent offenders, pillaged civil liberties, and massive collateral damage (to name just a few things).
The articles advocating a crackdown on illegal immigration also don't seem to add up. Much to the dismay of today's nativists, Becker wrote in a 1993 article included in this collection "I am not advocating the erection of a wall against immigration." He also regards the idea of illegal immigrants taking away employment opportunities from native-born Americans as "erroneous claims." It seems like the main reason for Becker's opposition to illegal immigration is the supposed burden on public coffers they impose. I don't know what those numbers looked like in the '80s or early '90s, but instead of being a drain on tax dollars, since the welfare reform law of 1996 illegal immigrants are actually net-contributors to our tax system.
While my review is emphasizing my disagreements, I give this a 4-star rating. It's a thoughtful collection of essays, some of which are still timely in today's discourse despite the age of the book. This is also a stark reminder of how thoughtful conservatism used to be.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 9, 2008
The book is a collection of essays from Beckers column in Newsweek. Some of them are outdated but the general principles remain the same.
If you would like to see a more modern list of articles (for free!) you can go his current blog:
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
If you would like to see a more modern list of articles (for free!) you can go his current blog:
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
January 10, 2026
It took me six years but I finally finished this book! It’s a collection of essays by a Nobel prize winning economist that were previously published.
However the material is very old and outdated, and I admit at times written more complex than my non-economically trained brain can fully understand.
My economics teacher gave me this book to read after I took his AP Microeconomics class. Despite my feelings on the book material itself, I appreciate my former teacher very much. Sorry that I borrowed this book for 6 years!
However the material is very old and outdated, and I admit at times written more complex than my non-economically trained brain can fully understand.
My economics teacher gave me this book to read after I took his AP Microeconomics class. Despite my feelings on the book material itself, I appreciate my former teacher very much. Sorry that I borrowed this book for 6 years!
August 31, 2017
Economist Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and his journalism professor wife Guity Nashat published "The Economics of Life" in 1997. The book includes Gary's 138 Business Week essays from 1985 to 1996. Guity wrote the 14 chapter summaries used to organize the essays into topics and sub themes. The essays apply economic analysis to social problems that continue to plague the United States today (2017). Gary's essays are very helpful to understanding the complexities of our national and global policy alternatives and persistent issues. (P)
Want to read
January 2, 2008August 4, 2009
a number of very informative chapters
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews