Some Curious Facts About How We Make Our Living: Why Didn't Somebody Tell Us!

This is a book about economic problems that attempts to make a few facts about our economic life clear. There are few subjects the average person knows less about than economics. And few subjects about which people have picked up so much misinformation. Yet economics is vital to all of us. It's the study of how we make our living, and we've been arguing about it ever since the dawn of history. How should we organize ourselves to work together? Who should get how much for doing what? Who should be the boss? The economic system most of the free world operates under today is called private enterprise, free enterprise, or the profit system - three different names for the same thing. Some people don't like it. On the other hand, nobody anywhere has yet come up with a system that works anywhere near as well. The thing people object to most is that profits are too big. Strangely enough, that is the very thing they know the least about. Not one person in a hundred has any idea how big profits really are, and how they compare with wages, salaries and other items. To illustrate, ask the following question of just about anyone: In the average company, which is bigger, employee compensation or profits? And how much bigger? The answer? In the average company, employee compensation is six times greater than profits. Six times as big. Very few people will answer this question correctly, or come even close, and in virtually every case, the error will be on the side of grossly overestimating the size of business profits. It is the author's hope that upcoming generations will learn to think more clearly about economic problems than those of the past have. Because what these future citizens think and believe, correct or incorrect, is going to shape the future of this great country.