stanro 's review for:

The Shortest History of Economics by Andrew Leigh

3.5

informative fast-paced

---

Economics as a study of the forces distributing resources need not be limited in scope to capitalist societies. This book is categorised as non-fiction, but in my arrogant way, I’m not so sure. I bring my attitude with me on my latest #areadersjourney. 

Andrew Leigh is an Australian politician with a doctorate in economics, indeed a former professor in that field at one of Australia’s leading universities. I want to know how he sees the subject. 

Have you ever thought to illustrate economics by the labour cost of the equivalent amount of light over the millennia to an hour of light from a simple electric light bulb? I haven’t. That’s his early and impressive start. 

Leigh explains the economic impact of  the plough and in passing, its gender-differentiating affects. As the plough demanded comparatively great upper body strength, favouring men for the agricultural tasks that pre-plough, were blind to the tiller’s sex, so was another layer of sex-differentiated social and economic roles. 

The narration is suitably unemotional for such a subject, though the choice of an American-accented narrator for this Australian author’s book puzzles me. 

But then, a minor irritation. Speaking about labour costs and movements in that, he writes of Sydney as amongst the first places in the world to achieve the 8-hour working day. Surely he knows that the actual first place where this occurred was Melbourne. My intercity rivalry flares!

More interesting is his brief summary of selective various attempts in communist countries (mainly Mao’s China) to socialise their economies. Certainly these were deeply counterproductive acts, but he doesn’t look at things like health outcomes there. He revisits China with some other elements of anecdote to illustrate his view that a capitalist system (even if grafted to central control) is better than a socialist one. 

The book is but a sketch really and fulfills its promise.