Alan Beattie's "False Economy"

I was surprised by this book. It isn't a "history" in the sense of walking through a timeline and discussing people, theories, or places. Instead, this was an enjoyable romp through various economic puzzles. He starts with the strange fact that Argentina and the United States were poised at the top of the heap of developed countries at the start of the 20th century, but by the end, the US was still on top, but Argentina has dropped down into the "developing" class of countries. Why? He looks at various facts and theories and helps you appreciate how decisions have consequences.

He ends his book by looking at pandas and compares them with cats:

Giant pandas are incompetent, inefficient, piebald buffoons, and we should end their public subsidies and let them die out. I once said that in the pages of an international newspaper, and the responses of outraged readers comparing me to a genocidal dictator flooded in for days. I stand by my views, however, and am now going to draw them out to create a slightly tenuous metaphor for economic development.

He goes on to point out that cats are adaptable, interact to "carry their weight" and be useful. It is a great metaphor for the economic scene with hopeless countries that, like pandas, need a lot of help to struggle on. While other countries, like cats, take what's available and make something of it.

The book looks at countries and history with a deft hand to prize out an insights. The style is light and enjoyable while the topic is serious. This is the kind of serious book that the general public wants because it exposes you to contemporary thinking without the dead hand of an academic writing style. Each chapter is organized around a topic posed as a question:

• Why did Argentina succeed and the United States fail?


• Why didn't Washington D.C. get the vote?


• Why does Egypt import half its staple food?


• Why are oil and diamonds more trouble than they are worth?


• Why don't Islamic countries get rich?


• Why does our asparagus come from Peru?


• Why doesn't Africa grow cocaine?


• Why did Indonesia proper under a crooked ruler and Tanzania stay poor under an honest one?


• Why are pandas so useless?

Go get the book, read and enjoy!