Give the Gift of P. J. O’Rourke

pa href=https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz hreflang=undDavid Boaz/a
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pI’m a little late with this Christmas gift recommendation that I’ve made before. But if you’re still looking for a last‐​minute idea, I’ve checked: online booksellers can still deliver paperbacks before Christmas, and of course ebooks are ready instantly./p
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img loading=lazy src=/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/PJ3.jpg?itok=ro4MDqQX width=186 height=298 alt=Media Name: PJ3.jpg class=image-style-pubs-2x component-image //div
/ppI decided one year to give a young colleague a post‐​graduate course in political science and economics — a href=http://www.amazon.com/P.-J.-ORourke/e/B000AP7YYU/ref=sr_tc_img_2_0?qid=1291239652amp;sr=1-2-ent?tag=catoinstitute-20 target=_blankP. J. O’Rourke’s books/a ema href=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008UX8K3S/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3 target=_blankParliament of Whores/a/em and ema href=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008UX2W78/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 target=_blankEat the Rich/a/em. So I went to my local Barnes amp; Noble to search for them. Not in Current Affairs. Not in Economics. No separate section called Politics. I decided to try Borders (RIP). But first — to avoid yet more driving around — I went online to see if my local Borders stores had them in stock. Sure enough, they did, in a couple of stores just blocks from the Cato Institute. Checking to see where in the store I would find them, I discovered that they would both be shelved under “Humor–Humorous Writing.” Oh, right, I thought, they’re not books on economics or current affairs, they’re emhumor/em./p
pYes, P.J. was one of the funniest writers around. But what people often miss when they talk about his humor is what a good reporter and what an insightful analyst he was. emParliament of Whores/em is a very funny book, but it’s also a very perceptive analysis of politics in a modern mixed‐​economy democracy. And if you read emEat the Rich/em, you’ll learn more about how countries get rich — and why they don’t — than in a whole year of econ at most colleges. In fact, I’ve decided that the best answer to the question “What’s the best book to start learning economics?” is emEat the Rich/em./p
pOn page 1, P.J. starts with the right question: “Why do some places prosper and thrive while others just suck?” Supply‐​and‐​demand curves are all well and good, but what we really want to know is how not to be mired in poverty. He writes that he tried returning to his college economics texts but quickly remembered why he hated them at the time — though he does attempt, for instance, to explain comparative advantage in terms of John Grisham and Courtney Love. Instead he decided to visit economically successful and unsuccessful societies and try to figure out what makes them work or not work. So he headed off to Sweden, Hong Kong, Albania, Cuba, Tanzania, Russia, China, and Wall Street./p
pIn Tanzania he gapes at the magnificent natural beauty and the appalling human poverty. Why is Tanzania so poor? he asks people, and he gets a variety of answers. One answer, he notes, is that Tanzania is actually not poor by the standards of human history; it has a life expectancy about that of the United States in 1920, which is a lot better than humans in 1720, or 1220, or 20. But, he finally concludes, the real answer is the collective “emujamaa/em” policies pursued by the sainted post‐​colonial leader Julius Nyerere. The answer is “emujaama/em—they planned it. They planned it, and we paid for it. Rich countries underwrote Tanzanian economic idiocy.”/p
pFrom Tanzania P.J. moves on to Hong Kong, where he finds “the best contemporary example of laissez-faire.…The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing.”/p
pYou could do worse than to take a semester‐​long course on political economy where the texts are emEat the Rich/em and emParliament of Whores/em. So, bookstore owners, leave them in the Humorous Writing section for sure, but also put copies in the Economics, Politics, and Current Affairs sections./p
pStill time to buy them for Christmas and educate all your family and friends while they think they’re just being entertained!/p