CONTENTS

Cover

Also by P. J. O’Rourke

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword: Why I’m Not Rich and You Aren’t Either

Section I: How I Learned Economics by Watching People Try to Kill Each Other

Introduction

Lesson 1: The Power of the Economic Impulse

Lesson 2: The Real Secret Behind All Investment Scams

Lesson 3: (Topic for Discussion) If You Want Hard Money, How Hard Do You Have to Be to Get It?

Section II: Money and Banking

Introduction

The Strange, Shape-Shifting Symbol of Value

My Own Personal Central Bank

Negative Interest Rates—Not Only Wrong but Evil

Debt Jubilee

Section III: Mutant Capitalism

Introduction: The Mutants

One Good Thing About Mutant Capitalists: They Aren’t Playing Monopoly

What Are Corporations For?

Section IV: The Transition

Introduction: The Digital Age and Which Digit It’s Giving Us

A Brief History of Economic Transitions

A Blockhead Confronts the Blockchain

What’s the Connection?

What Has the Digital Revolution Done to Print Media?

Five Lessons About the Digital Economy from a Member of the Digital Generation

Innovation—It’s All in Your Head

Innovations That Get No Respect

Unnovations

Six Geniuses (Plus Some Cartoon Animators) Try to See into the Future

A Ray of Hope in the Contest Between Man and Machine

Section V: Consumption

Introduction: Some Thoughts on the History of Trade

The Price of Being Middle Class

Armchair Predictions About Consumer Trends

Consumer Trends Among the “Grumpies”

Consumer Trends Among the “Grumpies,” Part 2

Summing Up American Consumer Trends …

All the Money in the World

Section VI: Random Walk

Introduction

Five Things I Know About China

Doubts About Asia

Thoughts While Cleaning the Chicken Coop

Six Lessons from a Man on Horseback

Sympathy for the Devil

Reform or Deform?

Free-for-All!

Acknowledgments

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