Accessible, and critical, guide to key economic concepts, relating them to everyday experience. Text is complimented by educational cartoons.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Why Study Economics?
• Part One: Preliminaries
• 1 The Economy and Economics
• 2 Capitalism
• 3 Economic History
• 4 The Politics of Economics
• Part Two: The Basics of Capitalism: Work, Tools, and Profit
• 5 Work, Production, and Value
• 6 Working with Tools
• 7 Companies, Owners, and Profit
• 8 Working for a Living
• 9 Reproduction (for Economists!)
• 10 Closing the Little Circle
• Part Three: Capitalism as a System
• 11 Competition
• 12 Business Investment
• 13 Employment and Unemployment
• 14 Inequality and its Consequences
• 15 Divide and Conquer
• 16 Capitalism and the Environment
• Part Four: The Complexity of Capitalism
• 17 Money and Banking
• 18 Inflation, Central Banks, and Monetary Policy
• 19 Paper Chase: Stock Markets, Financialization, and Pensions
• 20 The Conflicting Personalities of Government
• 21 Spending and Taxing
• 22 Globalization
• 23 Development (and Otherwise)
• 24 Closing the Big Circle
• 25 The Ups and Downs of Capitalism
• 26 Meltdown and Aftermath
• Part Five: Challenging Capitalism
• 27 Evaluating Capitalism
• 28 Improving Capitalism
• 29 Replacing Capitalism?
• Conclusion: A Baker's Dozen: Key Things to Remember