Best of Spherical Model Part II

Today we celebrate the 400^th Spherical Model blog post. We’re celebrating all week by collecting some of the better examples of the Spherical Model in the three categories: political, economic, and civilization. Monday we covered both the definition of the Spherical Model and the Political Sphere. Today we’ll cover the Economic Sphere. Then the next post will cover some of the Civilization Sphere.

I started having fun with economics as a freshman in college. It was a basic econ class, but specialized for honor students (which anyone willing to take on the challenge could take). That meant the teacher was actually the person who wrote the book. And it turned out he was funny and delightfully entertaining. As a result I have always thought of economics as the fun numbers science. And I continue to find my favorite economists to be fun and entertaining: Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Milton Friedman, and Greg Mankiw, for example. Plus I have had the advantage of a son who graduated with a degree in economics, so when I have technical questions, I can turn to him. My understanding remains basic, but adequate for looking at principles in our real world.

Separating out topics for this Best Of series has been challenging, because there is so much about economics that ties into political freedom and the kindness and honesty of a civilized society. But there are some I want to recommend reading or re-reading. Some are series or are paired together. Starred ones are among the most popular re-reads:

·         Anything Evil about Capitalism, Part I (March 29,2011), Part II (March 30, 2011), Part III (March 31, 2011), Part IV (April 1, 2011)

·         Atlas Shrugged and the Sphere, Part I (April 13, 2011); Part II (April 14, 2011); Part III (April 15, 2011)

·         Global Money Supply and Debt (July 11, 2011)

·         Making Money (August 29, 2011) and The Glooper (August 30, 2011)

·         Numbers Don’t Lie; People Do (September 5, 2011)

·         Econ Lesson (September 20, 2011)

·         The Case for the Free Market (October 17, 2011) and *In the Interest of Brevity (October 20, 2011)

·         * Parabolas (November 21, 2011) and *The Trampoline Effect (March 23, 2012)

·         * Laffer Curve Primer (November 28, 2011)

·         * Bain Basics (January 16, 2012)

·         Fun with Economics (March 21, 2012)

·         Poster Household (April 11, 2012)

·         Low Taxes Don’t Cause Recessions, Part I (July11, 2012) and Part II (July 13, 2012)

·         Dave Built That (August 22, 2012)

·         Marriage: Anti-Poverty Weapon (September 28, 2012)

·         Old Words New Again (January 9, 2013)

·         Simple Math above His Pay Grade (February 20,2013)

·         Glass Breaking Fun (March 13, 2013)

·         Lessons from Economic Sphere (April 26, 2013)