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A review by ederwin
How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't by Irwin Schiff, Vic Lockman
3.0
Bizarre, but oddly interesting. I can't say exactly why I picked this up. I'm glad I did because it was easy to read and yet thought-provoking.
[Update Sept 2019: my original review may not have been clear that I disagree with almost everything this man says. The 3-star rating is because I enjoyed reading it. Explaining inflation by cutting-up fish and sewing them back together is hilarious! At the time I read this, I still believed the premise of part one, that early economies were based on barter and then later transitioned to money. I now know from [book:Debt: The First 5,000 Years|6617037] that even that is false.]
I didn't recognize the name Irwin A. Schiff. It turns out he is infamous for claiming that income tax is not just wrong, but unconstitutional, and claiming to teach people how to avoid paying income tax. He also tried to run for president on the Libertarian ticket. The many people who actually followed his advice would end up with trouble and fees from the IRS, so his books of tax advice like [b:Irwin Schiff's How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes|2898547|Irwin Schiff's How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes|Irwin A.; Murzin, Howy; Schiff, Irwin Schiff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1267354842l/2898547._SX50_.jpg|2925137] were considered fraudulent and he was banned from selling them. He ended-up dying in prison. (A prison paid-for by tax dollars.)
This book, though, does contain some sound economics, at least up to a point, and is presented in an entertaining way. It starts with a simple society where people catch and eat their own fish. Then they transition to using fish as a means of exchange. It gets a little odd when they create banks to store fish and start making fish-based loans, but if you accept that these fish are smoked and can last a long time, that isn't so far-fetched. (In fact, in some real US prisons, inmates actually use packages of Mackerel as currency!)
Where it gets really weird is when he tries to explain inflation by having the government order the banks to cut-up the fish and sew them back together as smaller fish. I'm pretty sure that isn't how inflation works! By this point in the story he'd already introduced the idea of using pieces of paper to represent fish-backed-money, so I'm not sure why he didn't explain inflation using those. One of his claims in real life is that inflation is partly due to the transfer from gold-backed-money to fiat money, so it is doubly bizarre that he went with this idea of cutting and re-sewing fish rather than the easier explanation based on paper that has no intrinsic value.
Still, there is lots of interesting food for thought, if you can swallow the fish analogy. He makes a pretty convincing case for at least a few of his ideas. Loans for consumption (vacations, for example) are a bad idea and fuel inflation. (Banks usually don't explicitly give such loans, but they do indirectly through credit cards.) Consumption loans are even worse when the government encourages and subsidizes them. (Makes sense, but I'm not sure what real-life examples he had in mind.) The IRS enforcement mechanism sort-of constitutes a court system, and one that operates outside of the normal court system.
Some of the other claims I'm less willing to accept. He approaches everything from the basic libertarian philosophy that government is almost always bad and capitalist greed is good for everyone.
The drawings, which often look based on The Flinstones, are competent and entertaining and fit the story perfectly. They aren't subtle, though. (For one example a sign declaring some tax law gives it the number 666.) The artist has a particular interest in this subject and has separately drawn comics about the relation between the Christian bible and modern economics.
This is the sort of comic that should probably be locked in the adults-only section, because it could warp young minds.
[Update Sept 2019: my original review may not have been clear that I disagree with almost everything this man says. The 3-star rating is because I enjoyed reading it. Explaining inflation by cutting-up fish and sewing them back together is hilarious! At the time I read this, I still believed the premise of part one, that early economies were based on barter and then later transitioned to money. I now know from [book:Debt: The First 5,000 Years|6617037] that even that is false.]
I didn't recognize the name Irwin A. Schiff. It turns out he is infamous for claiming that income tax is not just wrong, but unconstitutional, and claiming to teach people how to avoid paying income tax. He also tried to run for president on the Libertarian ticket. The many people who actually followed his advice would end up with trouble and fees from the IRS, so his books of tax advice like [b:Irwin Schiff's How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes|2898547|Irwin Schiff's How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes|Irwin A.; Murzin, Howy; Schiff, Irwin Schiff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1267354842l/2898547._SX50_.jpg|2925137] were considered fraudulent and he was banned from selling them. He ended-up dying in prison. (A prison paid-for by tax dollars.)
This book, though, does contain some sound economics, at least up to a point, and is presented in an entertaining way. It starts with a simple society where people catch and eat their own fish. Then they transition to using fish as a means of exchange. It gets a little odd when they create banks to store fish and start making fish-based loans, but if you accept that these fish are smoked and can last a long time, that isn't so far-fetched. (In fact, in some real US prisons, inmates actually use packages of Mackerel as currency!)
Where it gets really weird is when he tries to explain inflation by having the government order the banks to cut-up the fish and sew them back together as smaller fish. I'm pretty sure that isn't how inflation works! By this point in the story he'd already introduced the idea of using pieces of paper to represent fish-backed-money, so I'm not sure why he didn't explain inflation using those. One of his claims in real life is that inflation is partly due to the transfer from gold-backed-money to fiat money, so it is doubly bizarre that he went with this idea of cutting and re-sewing fish rather than the easier explanation based on paper that has no intrinsic value.
Still, there is lots of interesting food for thought, if you can swallow the fish analogy. He makes a pretty convincing case for at least a few of his ideas. Loans for consumption (vacations, for example) are a bad idea and fuel inflation. (Banks usually don't explicitly give such loans, but they do indirectly through credit cards.) Consumption loans are even worse when the government encourages and subsidizes them. (Makes sense, but I'm not sure what real-life examples he had in mind.) The IRS enforcement mechanism sort-of constitutes a court system, and one that operates outside of the normal court system.
Some of the other claims I'm less willing to accept. He approaches everything from the basic libertarian philosophy that government is almost always bad and capitalist greed is good for everyone.
The drawings, which often look based on The Flinstones, are competent and entertaining and fit the story perfectly. They aren't subtle, though. (For one example a sign declaring some tax law gives it the number 666.) The artist has a particular interest in this subject and has separately drawn comics about the relation between the Christian bible and modern economics.
This is the sort of comic that should probably be locked in the adults-only section, because it could warp young minds.