Akron, not doing so badly (relatively speaking)

Sometimes one needs to put things in perspective. Akron's high unemployment isn't so terribly out of line with Ohio and not all that much more than the national level. What this means is the unemployment is likely mosly cyclical and not structural. Another great graph from FRED.

A Brilliant Read

In a previous post I highlighted the cool scribd.com technology for reading online. That started a summer of reading economic basics. In this day of troubled economic times and the political decisions that necessarily follows, I have been trying to retreat from the discourse from time to time to reaffirm the basics. I think one of the best explanations of what is going on today was written in 1946 and last updated in 1979, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlitt.

At the risk of you not buying and devouring this book, here is the lesson in one sentence courtesy of the author. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups (p. 17). He goes on to say on the same page that (n)ine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today... stem from one of two central fallacies, or both: that of looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and that of looking at the consequences only for a particular group of the neglect of other groups (p. 17).

I have always had this maxim of Fredrich Bastiat in my mind, but in reading Hazlitt I see how easy it is for me to be swayed by conventional wisdom. While I would never fall into the broken window fallacy (when I recognize it), it is the art of recognizing it that is the art of economics. While I can easily apply the broken window fallacy to war, why did I so easily accept that bombed out factories in Germany and Japan allowed them to grow faster since they could rebuild with the latest and greatest technology and leap frog the west in their growth. The truth is it was their economic policies, not the bombed out factories that led to the growth, but see how easy it is to attribute actual growth to the wrong cause when we see what is seen and not what is unseen.

Read this book and you will be pondering current events with renewed enthusiasm.

Apple to avoid netbook, try tablet in 2010, says analyst

I have pointed out Axiotron's Apple-like modbook which modifies a Apple macbook to accept a digital pen before in this blog. Then i promptly forgot about the 'Apple
side of the Tablet / digital ink world, although one of my students used for almost a year a macbook with wacom tablet on the side. Yesterday Computerworld reports:

Apple will wait until next year to enter the netbook market, and then will unveil not a knock-off, but a tablet-like device priced between $500 and $700, a Wall Street analyst said today. Gene Munster, a senior analyst for Piper Jaffray, ticked off significant amounts of admittedly circumstantial evidence to back up his thinking on Apple's move into the lower-priced market.

This would be welcomed indeed by all. It might be the first time I try an Apple.

What I am Reading: Inclined to Liberty through Scribd.com

While searching for something else I found this book through Scribd.com. Scribd looks like a great site and the account is free. Apparently, I can read what others have written and uploaded to Scribd.com and anyone can upload their work there as well.

The book is Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit by Louis A. Carabini. Having only read a few chapters I recommend it. My last post in March was titled Capitalism is Dying partly because of the threats to liberty that seem to be so accepted now and partly because all around me I hear the anti-capitalist rhetoric. This book is designed to help all of us to counter the anti-capitalist rhetoric. Again I recomment you read it.

You have options. You might order one from Amazon.com or you might try out Scribd.com. I am embeding the book from them below. I hope it works in the format of this blog, but if not you can click through and go directly to Scribd.com to find it. I have not tried to save the book in a way I can use my pen for markup, but the full screen format is great for reading on my Tablet PC.

I love finding more ways to find books on economics and technology. Try Scribd.com.

Important: Scribd.com clearly states on it's website that it is for works that the uploaders own. A quick search on google shows that there are publishers fighting them as well as publishers that favor them. This book is loaded by the publisher (as best I can tell) and it then is honest to use it in this way. It appears a terrific social website and a great use of Web2.0 technology. Their big contribution is their iPaper technology.

"What really sets Scribd apart is its iPaper
software, which makes online publishing dead simple." -- CNN Money

Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Non-fiction Books liberty liberalism