Abstract

Horse Sense on Economics

The article presents information on the book "Lament for Economics," by Barbara Wootton. The intelligent layman, confronted by a work on economic theory, is apt to feel first bewilderment, then revulsion. The subject matter concerns him deeply; it is fundamentally the question of one's daily bread, its production and distribution. Nothing in essence could be less abstract; yet, when translated into theory by the trained economist, there results a monstrous web of hypotheses with little apparent relation to everyday experience. The useful application of market theory to the analysis of actual situations is, she shows, further hindered by such difficulties as the complexity of most economic problems, necessitating the employment of an almost infinite chain of hypotheses; the impossibility of isolating any economic problem without gross sacrifice of realism.