Economics is the Renaissance Man's major. Consider:

It includes history.
It includes philosophy and ethics (particularly, praexology).
It includes the study of law (applying authoritarian codes to particular cases).
It includes math.
It includes science.

And for what its worth, it can make you a living.

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

Jacob, I admire and share your enthusiasm for economics. But I wouldn't recommend majoring in it... unless you REALLY REALLY wanted to teach it. The statistics and quantitative methods sections are boring, tedious and trifling. Austrians are marginalized in academic environment, and most institutions would expect a Chicago-style economists big on statistical analysis abilities, which is a bit of a pain in the butt. I like the Austrians because they rely on verbal logic more than statistical analysis like the Chicago school.

I think economics as a discipline should be studied intensely though as part of a liberal arts education. In college ,I did really well in Micro- and Macro- Economics. I got into economics at age seventeen when was acquainted with the JBS' publishing arm American Opinion books and got materials from them, which indirectly introduced me to the Foundation for Economic Education, and I got materials from them. I believe in free trade and free markets. My naive regret is that in my twenties, I started to get curious and sympathetic to protectionism, but I eventually went on full retreat as evident by polemic against Henry Clay.

If you read another book on economics I would recommend you get Cliches of Politics edited by Mark Spangler. It's cheap used on half.com or amazon.com.

I recommend you read up on Public Choice economists like James Buchanan and his book Democracy in Deficit, and continue with the Austrian economists like Mises and Bohm-Bawerk. Wilhelm Roepke is my favorite.

And FEE as you're probably familiar with has some really good books, and the Library of Economics and Liberty.

One can major in political science too, and feasibly teach economics, specifically political economy classes.

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Ryan
1689 London Baptist Confession

Arg!

The United States faces difficulties attendant to its inflationary monetary policies, and people do not realize truly how much our government relies on monetary inflation because we are somewhat insulated from the crashing effects of hyperinflation because we have a valve outlet for our funny money in overseas purchases whether on cash or credit. If critical mass reaches and shockwave sends bad signals, the Dollar will tumble, it could mean the dollars overseas will fly back to the U.S. as if they're being sucked in by the gravatational pull of black hole. That means depression and economic collapse, and probably the loss of economic sovereignty as they propose a new international currency to replace it.

So, this could come back one day and bite us in the butt. Walter Williams, George Mason economists suggests that the real GDP growth has been routinely overestimated, and inflationary growth is passed off as real economic growth. The displacement wrought by this runaway inflation is that more U.S. dollars circulate overseas than at home (probably over 70-75%), and it has allowed foreign enterprises to buy up America while our businesses close doors.

It's not free trade that's the culprit, however, but statism. C-Corporations in the United States pay some of the highest taxes in the Western world (30-40%) which amounts to double taxation of personal income, surpassing socialist Sweden which is only 25%. It translates to money for wages and salaries and higher consumer costs, and depressed market economy with less potential for real economic growth.

If economics is penultimate, what's the ultimate?

Oops, I guess I answered that by asking. It must be the Queen of Sciences. I doubt it is law.

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R.Vic Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Are you sure the penultimate major isn't Nuclear Engineering?

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Rich
Northern VA
PCA

WebsiteMaven - Web Hosting Reviews, Guides, and Advice to build and promote your web site.
SoliDeoGloria.com - A Community for Reformed Thought and Discussion

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Thanks for one of the best opening posts to a thread I have read in ages. I did economics as my undergrad degree, and, though I studied nothing else, I did history, philosophy, international relations, maths, stats, business etc. Makes me angry when I hear other graduates - specifically lawyers - go on about the well rounded education their degrees provided. I am sure I know far more of the economy of, say, modern Brazil or 19thC USA than the average Australian lawyer knows of their legal systems.

A few points: Economics is a vast discipline, often done badly and rarely done well. Most economics courses have many undergrads who have never studied economics and chose it because they thought it would be easy and get them an OK paying job. I didn't really learn much at all until my Honours year, maybe 6 out of 20 undergrad units were worthwhile. Usually one will study several different, apparently unrelated, areas, doing one unit or a couple or a whole major of each. They don't tend to tell you how these relate to eachother - they tend to be taught in very discrete parcels. You have to use your mind to see the links - and the contradictions - for yourself, but this extra effort is the most valuable part of an economics education.

I have to disagree a little with the complaints about the level of mathematics and statistics. Most jobs in the economics field - other than academic positions - are mathematical to a greater or lesser extent. A business leader or merchant banker will not want economic advice unless it is backed up with statistical evidence. What you need to be able to do is understand the logical theory first and then be able to apply mathematical tools to it. Too many either cannot do the maths or the opposite, when confronted with a situation they do not quite understand, just try to apply more and more maths and stats to cover, rather than trying to understand the underlying logic of the situation. An analogy would be a tradesman - he needs a hammer to do his job, but this does not mean when he is unsure how to proceed in a job he can just hit it with a bigger hammer. I do understand the Austrian perspective on this, though I also think there are many valuable insights in other schools, Chicago in particular. Where Chicago tends to go wrong is not using too much maths - more a neoclassical or to a lesser extent Neo-Keynesian problem - but in thinking that their elegant theories are directly relevant to real life, particularly government.

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T W Hopper
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church
Currently between churches since PRC closed here - attending Crossroads Christian Church.
Canberra, Australia.

Only if you stuff it up.

The nuclear engineer's penultimate words "Now what did I learn back at college?"
Ultimate words: "I wonder what happens if I press this button..."

It's kind of a serious joke since it was my college major. It's been really useful as a Marine.

Well, Timothy I will submit you're right about the practical application of stats for economists at vindicating their analysis. However, for vast majority of laity inclined to free-market economics, I think the Austrian perspective is preferable to the Chicago perspective. It's easier to comprehend in plain English without the economist's lexicon and baffling statistics.

I'm curious, is "the Renaissance man" an obese, office-bound chap that runs in the tread-mill of life trying to pay off his student loans?

I think that it would be decidedly unfulfilling if anyone spent their life studying what other people do, and not learn to actually produce anything themselves. Therefore, the true Ren-Man should also be a part time farmer.

By farming, we can:

Produce healthy food to feed our family
Get exercise which helps keep our bodies fit
Work beside our children and our parents
Teach our children practical skills and give them an opportunity to use them

The modern alternative to farming is to learn a highly specialised skill and become an employee. This is that alternative that I chose to pursue. By doing this, we can:

Sit in a chair all day, away from our family, and get a money-like electronic commodity in exchange for our time.
We then leave the home to buy food to feed our family, most of which will eventually cause cancer and a host of other diseases.
We then leave the home to purchase a membership at a health club to get the exercise our body needs to stay fit.
We try to spend quality time with our family in the evenings to learn what they’ve been doing all day, and get to know them. (This comes in handy on Sundays, when we teach a class on the biblical view of the family. )
We then leave the home to visit our parents who live many hours away. We mostly talk about our job and what activities the children are doing (We pass along the information about the children that we’ve learned by spending evenings and weekends with them).
Our children learn to be consumers, but not producers, so when they are of age, we send them away from home and purchase training which will enable them to become a wage-slave like ourselves.

Ironically, the industrialised life just seems to be far too inefficient for my achieving my goals and meeting my biblical responsibilities.

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Chad
He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. (Psalms 15:5 KJV)

both and

The third alternative is the one I've followed much of my life. Get a job to support my farming, reading, and science habits.

No-ooooooooooooooh! Chad you've got it all wrong... The true renaissance man is a brewer and a patriot.

It's Samuel Adams.

Buy a distillery... but remember, you can't change the course of history with watery beer.

I know not course what others may take, but as for me, Give Me Beer, or Give Me Death!



P.S. Someone good at Photoshop please put a beer in Patrick Henry's hand. Thanks.

Just spoke to Andrew Sandlin today & he said economics was one of his favorite topics he liked to read about. I felt like a dunce because he asked me who my favorite economists were. I had to tell him my extent of reading about economics was reading Wall Street Journal etc.

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Frank O Fuentes
Church of THE King
McAllen, Texas
Student at Edinburg Theological Seminary

My BA(Hons) was in Politics and Economics

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Richard
CofE
UK