Economics - Learning Path

Thirteen articles, three levels, one path from confusion to clarity.

If you’re new here, start at the top and work your way down. Each article builds on the ones before it. By the time you reach the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of how prices, wages, jobs, and trade actually work.

Already know the basics? Jump ahead to the intermediate or advanced section.

BEGINNER Start Here - 10 Articles

New to these ideas? Begin here. No prior knowledge needed.

1

The One Lesson

The single idea that separates clear economic thinking from confusion.
2

The Cracked Screen

A simple story that changes how you see every economic argument you hear.
3

Competition and Co-operation

Why the most misunderstood idea about free markets is that they are only about competition.
4

Supply & Demand - The Most Powerful Idea You Already Know

You already understand supply and demand. You just do not know you understand it. Here is the pattern behind nearly every price you see.
5

How Prices Work - The Information Machine Nobody Built

Prices are not random numbers. They are messages sent by millions of people to each other, coordinating what gets made and who gets it.
6

The Information Problem - Why Central Planning Fails

The single most important economic insight of the 20th century is that a central planner cannot know what everyone wants. Here is why.
7

Trade - Why Both Sides Win

Most people think trade is one person winning and the other losing. The reality is stranger and more wonderful.
8

Money & Inflation - What They Actually Are

Money is not wealth. Inflation is not just prices going up. Here is what is happening to your money and why.
9

Property Rights - The Foundation You Never Notice

Before you can trade, you need to own. Clear property rights are the invisible foundation everything else rests on.
10

Interest Rates - The Price of Time

Interest is not a punishment. It is the signal that coordinates when things get built and who gets to use them.

INTERMEDIATE Going Deeper - 14 Articles

You've got the foundation. Now let's tackle the harder questions.

11

The Usefulness of Billionaires

The US leads in risky investment and the US has billionaires. That is not a coincidence.
12

The Fastest Way to Destroy a City - Except for Bombing

Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck said it best fifty years ago. The evidence has only gotten stronger since.
13

Hyperinflation

The one thing every monetary theory fears - and what actually causes it.
14

Don't Call Them Technocrats

The people writing tech policy don't understand tech. They are not experts. They are bureaucrats with a printing press.
15

Taxes - Who Actually Pays

The person who writes the check to the government is not always the person who bears the cost. This changes how you should think about every tax debate.
16

Externalities - When the Price Is Wrong

When you pay the cost but someone else enjoys the benefit - or vice versa - markets need help to work properly.
17

Creative Destruction - Why Lost Jobs Make Us Richer

The uncomfortable truth: progress destroys old jobs faster than it creates new ones. But the new ones are better.
18

The Mayor's Share: What the Power Grab Actually Changes

Mayors get a share of income tax revenue, but not the power to set the rate.
19

The Problems of Capitalism (and How to Fix Them)

Capitalism has real problems. The usual fixes make them worse.
20

The Pension Tax Raid: Your Pension Is Next

The Budget is 75 days away. The demand says tax the rich. Your pension is next.
21

The Profit That Can't Stand Still - Why 'Just Take a Sustainable Profit' Is Not an Option

Why a firm can't settle for a 'fair' profit - and who pays when it stops.
22

The 90% Tax Rate Myth: We Used to Tax the Rich 90% - and It Was Fine

The 90% rate was marginal, not effective. The rich paid far less.
23

Economics Is Not the Problem. The Certainty-Sellers Are.

Forecasts fail, but the principles still work. Blaming economics for its fortune-tellers misses the point.
24

The Collapse That Was Revised Away: How to Read a Jobs Report

The collapse was revised away; the layoff wave is real. How to read both.

ADVANCED Further Reading - 42 Articles

These articles engage with outside arguments and tackle tougher questions. Best read after the foundation is solid.

25

Greedflation: What the Theory Misses

If corporations can set any price they want, why does Aldi exist?
26

The Credential Con: When Everyone Has a Degree, Nobody Does

Pushing everyone into university created a credential arms race - not opportunity.
27

The Regulation Tax: The Cost You Never See

Every regulation is a tax. The poor pay the most. Nobody adds up the total.
28

The Relative Poverty Trap

The poverty statistic you keep hearing is not measuring what you think.
29

The Wealth Tax Video That Got Everything Right (Until It Didn't)

A good critique of wealth taxes undercuts itself at the end.
30

Eighty Percent of Something

Respectful pushback on a viral video about foreign investment and poverty.
31

The Cantillon Effect - Who Gets the New Money First

Inflation does not hit everyone at once. The first receiver gets the benefit. The last receiver pays the price.
32

Where Does Money Come From?

What MMT actually says and why the conventional wisdom is wrong.
33

What Price Controls Make Invisible

Why capping rents and raising wages create shortages and surpluses you never see.
34

The 2% Rule

Entrepreneurs capture ~2% of the value they create. Consumers, especially the poor, get the other 98%.
35

The Walmart Question

Sam Walton took real risks and captured billions. His customers kept hundreds of billions. The poor won.
36

Who Actually Helps the Poor?

Politicians fight for credit. Entrepreneurs create jobs. The poor need the latter, not the former.
37

The Seen and the Unseen

The most important economic question is the one nobody asks: what don't we see?
38

The Free Market Is More Democratic Than Voting

The free market is more democratic than any election could ever be.
39

Public Choice Theory: Why Government Fails

Buchanan won a Nobel Prize for applying economics to politics itself.
40

Why You Shouldn't Care About Billionaires

The inequality panic misses what matters - not whether someone has a billion dollars, but whether ordinary people can get what they need.
41

Argentina's Lesson: What Happens When You Actually Fix an Economy

Inflation from 211% to ~30%. Country risk from 2,000bp to 500bp. What the critics miss.
42

California's Wealth Tax - a Case Study in Wishful Thinking

California wants to tax billionaires. The problem is that wealth taxes don't work the way proponents imagine.
43

The Toothpaste Problem

Why 2,000 brands is not a bug, and what it teaches us about government spending.
44

The Billionaire Tax Test: Why California's Prop 40 Fails

Public Choice Theory predicts wealth taxes fail. The global evidence agrees.
45

The Grievance Machine, Part I: The Greatest Story Never Told

Six grievances, six crises, one solution every time - more power for the people who made you angry in the first place.
46

The Cost of Pretending We Know What We're Doing

Regulators who cannot meet their own deadlines are setting everyone else's.
47

The Tariff Shell Game: A Policy That Keeps Failing

The Supreme Court blocked one tariff authority. The administration found three more. At some point, you have to ask: what are we actually trying to achieve?
48

The Second Inflation Wave: The Good News Is Over

UK inflation hit a 15-month low. The Bank of England says the good news is over.
49

The Deepest and Most Beautiful Insight in Economics

Why countries that are better at everything still gain from trade.
50

The Tariff Shell Game, Part II: 25 States in the Audience

Why a policy that needs a new legal costume every few months is not a policy.
51

The Tariff Shell Game, Part III: The Expiration Date That Never Comes

The China tariffs were supposed to expire. The date passed. Nobody noticed.
52

The Ban That Can't Work - The Last Grievance Without a Deep-Dive

Australia's under-16 ban removed accounts, not users. The teens never left.
53

The 63 Billion Reckoning - The Budget Countdown, 84 Days Out

120 millionaires want a wealth tax. The Treasury already accepts their checks.
54

The 78% Tax on the North Sea: A Tax on Investment

At 78 cents on the dollar, the windfall tax is a tax on investment itself.
55

The Luddites Were Half Right

Why AI will not zero out GDP - the Luddites were half right.
56

The Name Is the First Argument

Capitalism was named by its enemies - the name is the first argument.
57

The Great Escape: How Nine in Ten Humans Left Extreme Poverty

In 1820, about nine in ten humans lived in extreme poverty. Today, under 10% do.
58

The Bank Windfall Tax: Who Pays When We Tax the Banks?

Tax the banks, the slogan says. The mechanism has a different answer.
59

Before Money: Where Exchange Comes From

Trade is older than every government. Nobody taught you to do it.
60

The Invention of Money

The coin carries a king's face. Money was born before the state.
61

Banking and Credit

The vault wears a license. Credit was born before the state.
62

Trade and the Merchants: The Road Nobody Built

The road had no builder. Trade was born before the state.
63

The Second Inflation Wave, Part II: The Wave Is Here

The October cap heads to a three-year high. The relief was the false dawn.
64

What Is Feudalism?

The word came later. The system needed castles, oaths, and serfs.
65

What Is Socialism?

The believers named it. The rulers imposed it. The wall kept it in.
66

The ECB Hiked Into a Supply Shock. The Price of Oil Did Not Notice.

Rates to 2.5 percent to fight a price rise the rate cannot touch.

BEGINNER Start Here - 10 Articles

INTERMEDIATE Going Deeper - 14 Articles

ADVANCED Further Reading - 42 Articles

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