Economics Actually
Accessible to a wide audience, Economics Actually introduces a structure for economic science that has not yet been picked up by professional economists. It begins with facts and data to reveal key functions and relations by which to understand any economy and any economic event. The structure is operative in firms of all sizes, from the smallest roadside business to global corporations and world stock markets. It is the much-needed basis from which to address today’s unprecedented social, economic and ecological crises.
Expert Insights
With a Foreword by Bruce Anderson and Michael Shute: “Quinn and Benton’s tapestry of clear explanations, concrete examples, insightful analyses, sound arguments, pithy criticisms, and sensible suggestions certainly provide the needed basis to get us on our way to conceiving and realizing sane and sustainable economies and lives.” Professor Bruce Anderson, Sobey School of Business, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada. Professor Michael Shute, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NFLD. Author of Lonergan’s Discovery of the Science of Economics, and Lonergan’s Early Economic Research. November 17, 2019.
About The Authors
Terrance Quinn
Terrance Quinn is Professor Emeritus (2018) in Mathematical Sciences, Middle Tennessee State University. He has published in, among other areas, mathematics and philosophy of science. In recent years, Quinn has been studying and writing on the economic theory discovered by Bernard Lonergan. He gives conference presentations internationally.
John Benton
John Benton is an active scholar and educator. He has published academic articles and books in the philosophy of language and method. He is co-founder of bentonfuturology.com, a website devoted to the communication of Bernard Lonergan’s three leading ideas in philosophy, method and economics. Benton is currently involved in student outreach, regularly giving presentations in the United Kingdom and Europe.
Reviews
[...] Economics Actually is a provocative and insightful introduction to the economics piece of the puzzle, a puzzle that existed before the pandemic and will continue after a vaccine has been created and successfully tested. The puzzle is twofold. There is the task of seriously understanding how exchange economies actually operate. On the other hand, there is the massive collaborative task of defining and implementing glocal standards of living. The focus of this introductory book is primarily on understanding the ebbs and flows of the economy, though the authors do point to the larger challenge in the last section of the book.
Instead of adopting the models that pervade current schools of thought and accepting the dubious metric GDP, the authors offer a fresh start by asking a basic question: How does any particular business operate? The basic flaw with models is that they remain at several removes from actual exchanges. The basic events that need to be understood precisely and functionally are obvious to a grade school child: We eat berries, not the baskets used to collect the berries. There are two distinct needs that elicit two distinct types of work. [...]
Quinn and Benton provide an accessible read to Bernard Lonergan’s circulation analysis, an analysis that has been ignored by economists for decades. For economists, students of economics or anyone interested in the origins of global disparity, corporate behaviour or government policy on economics, this book gets to the heart of the matter, there is a need for a science of economics. Quinn and Benton, drawing on the work of Bernard Lonergan and Philip McShane point us in the direction of an explanatory science of economics, something present economist cannot do leaving politicians, students and the social commune at their mindless mercy.