Top Highlights

• "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." Thomas Sowell US economist (1930–)
• So, what is economics all about? The word is derived from the Greek word Oikonomia, meaning “household management”, and it has come to mean the study of the way we manage our resources, and more specifically, the production and exchange of goods and services.
• Economies, however, are man-made and are dependent on the rational or irrational behaviour of the humans that act within them, so economics as a science has more in common with the “soft sciences” of psychology, sociology, and politics.
• The Wealth of Nations, written by the great Scottish thinker Adam Smith.
• Smith suggested that the market is guided by an “invisible hand”, where the rational actions of self-interested individuals ultimately give the wider society exactly what it needs.