<DIV>How would lbo-talk posters recommend someone get started in terms of educating oneself on economics? I took your basic micro/macro courses a couple of years ago. The main thing I remember about the macro book was constant examples of how attempts to interfere with the almighty invisible hand mess up the market. The examples made sense to me, like having a high minimum wage would lead to unemployment, rent control leads to scarcity. Basically, the general theme of the books that do-good attempts to help people often simply fuck things up. Example: raising the tax rate in order to raise more money for social programs could drive business to lower tax areas, same thing regarding unions</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> I was also taking a class on Marx at the time, and I sort of fused the two and came up with the general thought that attempts to interfere with the market's "natural" functioning may eventually only make things worse in any system where private investment is the driving force for economic growth. So my belief was that the only solution had to be along Marxist lines and "liberal" solutions could be justly criticized however I always just thought this just was a hunch and never had the time or inclination to read deeper on the subject of economics.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>What I'd like to do is read a sort of economics 101 type textbook recommended by lbo readers or whatever comes closest to it. Hopefully, someones written something better than Das Kapital in the last 100 plus years I don't want to have to try suffering through that again.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As a side note, its unfortunate the way the realities of economics make it difficult to have a democratic debate. What I mean is that the complexities of economics, if at all understandable to the average person, seem to require a great deal of study. This means that the majority of people debating issues which involve economics (and most political issues do) will basically have no idea what they are talking about. Meaning only experts  can have an informed debate. Which seems to me to be a pretty difficult thing to get around unless  1) you are satisfied with a society run by technocrats or 2) its actually possible to educate people in school about economics to a degree where they can talk about it knowledgeably. Those of you non-Marxists please recommend a book refuting his ideas.</DIV><p><hr SIZE=1> Do you Yahoo!?<br> <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=10469/*http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com">Yahoo! SiteBuilder</a> - Free, easy-to-use web site design software