The Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative Action to Immigration, how Real-world Issues Affect Our Everyday Life

Front Cover
McGraw-Hill, 1997 - Business & Economics - 329 pages
In The Economics of Life, Gary Becker and historian Guity Nashat Becker have collected the best of the economist's popular work from Business Week (where he is a monthly columnist). These thought-provoking essays show us where we have been and where, for better or worse, we are headed. Many of them aroused heated debate upon their original publication, and they will no doubt do so again. Extending well beyond the traditional range of economics, these 138 essays crisply address the changing role of women in modern economies, crime, immigration, drugs, marriage contracts, the effects of the stock market collapse in 1987, whether the Japanese stock market has been rigged, the organization of major league baseball and other sports, communism, competition between religions, the "Swedish way", discrimination against minorities. Supreme Court decisions, government spending, addictions, and many other topics. Although the Beckers emphasize analysis, they do not shy away from advocating controversial changes in public policy and personal behavior. Among their provocative recommendations: legalizing drugs, selling the rights to immigrate, privatizing social security, enforcing marriage contracts more fully, curtailing welfare sharply, limiting the terms of Supreme Court justices and other federal judges, taxing drunk driving and other heavy drinking, and reforming health care to preserve free choice and competition.

From inside the book

Contents

REGULATION AND PRIVATIZATION
13
Neither Rain Nor Sleet Nor Good Idea Shall Shake up the Postal
30
PART 3
35
Copyright

24 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1997)

Gary Stanley Becker is an American economist known for his efforts to extend economic analysis to social problems, especially those involving race and gender discrimination, crime and punishment, and the formation and dissolution of families. The essence of his contribution is that human behaviors rationally based on self-interest and the economic incentives of the marketplace. Cost-benefit analysis is central to Becker's analysis of social phenomena. He argues that couples tend to have fewer children when the wife works and has a better-paying job, when subsidies and tax deductions for dependents are smaller, and when the cost of educating children rises. Becker also argues that couples divorce when they no longer believe they are better off by staying married. Becker received a Nobel Prize in 1992.

Bibliographic information