Applied Economics

From time to time I recommend books - Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, Bernard Goldberg's Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right.
Today I would like to add a new one: Thomas Sowell's Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. Dr. Sowell takes our President's and Congress' decisions to their logical conclusions one step at a time. This is something that Presidents and Congress of either party fail to do. They think ahead only of how it effects their short-term political status.* Obviously if you break the problem down into small enough steps, you can break any problem down into a series of either/or answers. This is even true for the actions of others. So, the caveat: The problem is that cumulative options come rapidly. Exponentially actually. But Dr. Sowell's scenarios do point out the difference between Economics from the point-of-view of political laws, and from the Economics from the point-of-view of economic laws.

*This could be selfishness, but it could also be because it is easier to predict. Either way, we are out-of-luck.