Product Description

Participating in the economy is a part of everyday life, yet much of what is commonly accepted as economic fact is wrong. Keynesian schoolteachers and the liberal media have filled the world with politically correct errors that myth-busting professor Robert Murphy sets straight. Murphy explains hot topics like outsourcing (why it's good for Americans) and zoning restrictions (why they're not). Just like the other books in the P.I.G. series, The Politically Incorrect GuideT to Capitalism pulls no punches.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116387 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-09
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Inside Flap
Most commonly accepted economic "facts" are wrong Here's the unvarnished, politically incorrect truth. The liberal media and propagandists masquerading as educators have filled the world--and deformed public policy--with politically correct errors about capitalism and economics in general. In The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Capitalism, myth-busting professor Robert P. Murphy, a scholar and frequent speaker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, cuts through all their nonsense, shattering liberal myths and fashionable socialist cliches to set the record straight. Murphy starts with a basic explanation of what capitalism really is, and then dives fearlessly into hot topics like:

* Outsourcing (why it's good for Americans) and zoning restrictions (why they're not)

* Why central planning has never worked and never will

* How prices operate in a free market (and why socialist schemes like rent control always backfire)

* How labor unions actually hurt workers more than they help them

* Why increasing the minimum wage is always a bad idea

* Why the free market is the best guard against racism

* How capitalism will save the environment--and why Communist countries were the most polluted on earth

* Raising taxes: why it is never "responsible"

* Why no genuine advocate for the downtrodden could endorse the dehumanizing Welfare State

* The single biggest myth underlying the public's support for government regulation of business

* Antitrust suits: usually filed by firms that lose in free competition

* How tariffs and other restrictions "protect" privileged workers but make other Americans poorer

* The IMF and World Bank: why they don't help poor countries

* Plus: Are you a capitalist pig? Take the quiz and find out! Breezy, witty, but always clear, precise, and elegantly reasoned, The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Capitalism is a solid and entertaining guide to free market economics. With his twelve-step plan for understanding the free market, Murphy shows why conservatives should resist attempts to socialize America and fight spiritedly for the free market.

About the Author
Robert P. Murphy earned his Ph.D. in economics from New York University . A former professor at Hillsdale College , he is now an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and an analyst at Laffer Associates. He has worked as both an economics scholar and lecturer, as an investment/business analyst, and as a writer of popular journalism on economic topics. He lives with his wife and son in Nashville , Tennessee .

From AudioFile
Economist Robert Murphy is an unrepentant "capitalist pig"--his words--and, true to his book's title, he delights in taking positions that make Marie Antoinette look sympathetic to the plight of the underprivileged. Phrases like "the liberal media" are a dead giveaway where Murphy's politics lie, and, considering the economic times we live in, his whole "let them eat cake" posture is at times grating. With lofty restraint reader Perry Richards's mellifluous voice suits Murphy's smugness. A disciple of economic guru Martin Friedman, Murphy has never met a millionaire he didn't like and is happy to tell you so, using Richards as his silver-tongued messenger. J.S.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

A Quick Overview of the Economic Aspects of Libertarianism
Regnery Publishing bills its "Politically Incorrect Guides" (or PIGs) as the place to find "politically correct myths busted and an abundance of cold, hard facts." Robert P. Murphy certainly charges head-first against a lot of politically correct myths in "The PIG to Capitalism." He also provides many cold, hard facts, along with many arguably correct theories that deserve to be more widely known.

As a myth-buster, Murphy does not try to lead the reader gently toward a better-informed point of view. Instead, he starts throwing punches from page one. Windfall-profit taxes, pro-union laws, affirmative action, workplace-safety and antipollution regulations, Social Security -- these are among the sacred projects of left-liberalism that Murphy attacks, by explaining how free-market capitalism would do a better job of accomplishing what too many Americans think can be done only through government intervention.

If I were writing this book, my emphases would be different -- I'd devote more space to how prices (including wages) are emergent phenomena and to the concepts of economic efficiency and non-zero-sum interaction, and I'd spend less time (if any) on the history of slavery or explaining the difference between the monetarist and Austrian versions of what caused the Great Depression. But I agree with 95% of what Murphy says here.

If you have the time to take a deeper look at some of the issues Murphy touches on here, I highly recommend Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy and John Steele Gordon's Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (P.S.). Murphy also provides suggestions for further reading throughout the book, many of which were new to me.

If your time is limited and you want to get a concentrated dose of what left-liberals deride as "free-market fundamentalism" (but what I consider plain good sense), "The PIG to Capitalism" is a great place to start.

It's a shame this should be so necessary
Is there anywhere in the world a more maligned, distorted, scapegoated, vilified, or simply misunderstood concept than that of the free market? It has done so much (certainly more than any and all governments) to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, promote the arts, sciences, and industry, prevent conflict, and build community. And yet, it is constantly under attack, blamed for the very ills it's best equipped to solve, and even many of its "defenders" think it needs to be hemmed in with a thick fence of regulation and taxation.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the free market is so complex. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn noted in "Leftism Revisited," a clear, simple -- and deadly -- idea like Marxism "can be explained to the merest child in a matter of minutes. (Conversely, to explain the workings of the free market economy to an adult would take weeks of hard work.)"

I'm sure Bob Murphy put in more than "weeks of hard work" to prepare this guide. As an "Austrian" economist, he is perfectly suited to write a book like this for a general audience. Apart from being right on the theory, Austrians are far less likely than members of other schools to get the reader lost in a maze of graphs, charts, and the minutia of comparative statistics. Instead, this is a powerful, lucid, and very readable book that, while concentrating on the fundamentals, will give any reader -- up to and including "dyed in the wool conservative" Republicans -- much to think about. But beware of exploding myths!

So much of the "Politically Incorrect Guide" series is devoted to an energetic goring of sacred cows, and "The P.I.G. to Capitalism" is no exception. A huge amount of what we take as revealed truth about how an economy functions, and the role of the government in "keeping the economy going," is revealed as so much propaganda. Certainly, it will take more than 200 pages to really convince people that "trade deficits" are meaningless, that outsourcing is good for workers, that the Depression wasn't a "market failure," among the many counterintuitive arguments the author presents here. But few books, in my experience, have done as good a job at laying out the essential arguments and pointing the way to further study.

It's a shame this book (and indeed this entire series) should be needed as badly as it is. But for the open-minded and thoughtful reader, or the defender of capitalism looking to shore up her argumentation, Bob Murphy's "Guide" is an entertaining read, a useful evangelical tool, and a reference worth keeping around.

magnificent introduction
This is a magnificent introduction to free market economics, the last best hope for civilization. This is a modernization, and in many ways an improvement over, Henry Hazlitt's justly famous, but now somewhat out dated book, Economics in One Lesson (1946). Ditto for my own far less famous and less worthy book Defending the Undefendable (1976). Speaking as an old coot of the free enterprise movement, I am delighted that this baton is now being passed on to very able young people such as Bob Murphy.

Walter Block