Rating: 
Summary: Excerpt from Eat the Rich
Review: GOOD CAPITALISM: Wall Street
"Debt means that you're renting your money to someone. Equity means you're buying something from him. If you buy a share of a corporation's common stock rather than buying its corporate bond, you own part of the corporation. You don't get a mere loan payment, you get the profits. Specifically, you get the profits that are left after the corporation settles its tax bill, pays off its bond debts and other prior obligations, gives enormous bonuses to its top executives, uses part of its earnings to buy other corporations and Indonesian real estate, and retains another part of its earnings in case it needs to buy more Indonesian real estate. You get those profits, or, rather -- since there are, say, a couple million shares of common stock outstanding --you get 1/2,000,000 of those profits." "This is your 'stock dividend.' Oh, and because you're one of the owners of the corporation, you get to vote. This means that once in a while you receive something in the mail called a 'proxy statement.' The proxy statement allows you to give your vote to the people who are paying themselves enormous bonuses. Either that or you can travel to the corporation's annual meeting (held in Indonesia this year) and stand up in the back and holler shrill questions like some Ralph Nader fruitcake." "You rarely buy common stock for the dividend and almost never (unless you're buying 1,000,001 shares) for the voting rights. You buy stock because you have one of those opinions mentioned earlier. You think other people will think this stock is worth more later than you think it's worth now. Economists call this -- in a rare example of comprehensible economist terminology -- the 'Greater Fool Theory.'" "Speaking of folly, you can also invest in the commodities market. This is where you buy thousands of pork bellies and still don't know what you're going to have for dinner because, in the first place, you're broke from fooling around in the commodities market and, in the second place, you're not completely insane. You didn't actually have those pork bellies delivered to your house. What you did was buy a 'futures contract' from a person who promises to provide you with pork bellies in a couple of months if you pay him for pork bellies today. You did this because you think pork belly prices will rise and you'll be able to resell the delivery contract and make out like a ...perhaps 'make out like a pig' is not the appropriate simile in this case. Of course, if prices fall you've still got the pork bellies, and won't your spouse be surprised?" "This is how booms and busts develop in the marketplace. And these booms and busts can have larger consequences such as in 1929 when stocks were crashing, banks were collapsing, and President Hoover was hoovering around. Pretty soon, you could buy the New York Central Railroad for a wooden nickel, except nobody could afford wood. People had to make their own nickels at home out of old socks which had also been boiled, along with the one remaining family shoe, to make last night's dinner. So the kids had to walk to school with pots and pans on their feet through miles of deep snow because no one had the money for good weather. My generation has heard about this in great detail from our parents, which is why we put them in nursing homes." BAD SOCIALISM: Cuba
"The big restaurants were nationalized and in a nation that's suffering severe food shortages, this meant that only rice and beans were available to foreigners who had dollars. Ha-ha-ha. Hard-currency joke. I could get anything I wanted-lobster, steak, Cohiba cigars actually made by Cohiba and rum older than the prostitutes sitting at all the other tables with German businessmen." "Of course the embargo is stupid. It gives Castro an excuse for everything that's wrong with his rat-bag society. And free enterprise is supposed to be the antidote for socialism. We shouldn't forbid American companies from doing business in Cuba, we should force them to do so. Bring them ashore with Marines if necessary. Although I guess we've tried that." "And the Cubans are stupid for rising to the bait. There's another little island next to a gigantic, powerful country that threatens to invade and enforces an embargo. And Taiwan has done okay."
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic
Review: As an International Studies major from Johns Hopkins, I had to endure many seemingly endless lectures on the economics. What I would give to have had PJ as a professor ! His lucid (and incredibly funny) insight to the world economy is an absolute pleasure to read.
Rating:
Summary: ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Review: P.J. O'Rourke is the best-selling author of eight previous books, including Holidays in Hell, Parliament of Whores, and Give War a Chance. He has written for such publications as Automobile, The Weekly Standard, Esquire, Forbes FYI, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Parade, The Wall Street Journal, and Rolling Stone, where he is currently foreign affairs desk chief.
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Summary: ABOUT THE BOOK
Review: In P. J. O'Rourke's classic best-seller Parliament of Whores, he attempted to explain the entire United States government. Now, in his most ambitious book since, he takes on an even broader subject, but one that is dear to us all-wealth. What is it? How do you get it? Or, as P.J. says, "Why do some places prosper and thrive, while others just suck?" The obvious starting point is Wall Street. P.J. takes the reader on a scary, hilarious, and enlightening visit to the New York Stock Exchange, explaining along the way stocks, bonds, debentures, commodities, derivatives-and why the floor of the exchange is America's last refuge for nonpsychotic litterers. P.J. then sets off on a world tour to investigate funny economics. Having seen "good capitalism" on Wall Street, he looks at "bad capitalism" in Albania, views "good socialism" in Sweden, and endures "bad socialism" in Cuba. Head reeling, he decides to tackle that Econ 101 course he avoided in college. The result is the world's only astute, comprehensive, and concise presentation of the basic principles of economics that can make you laugh, on purpose. Armed with theory, P.J. ventures to Russia in a chapter entitled "How (or How Not) to Reform (Maybe) an Economy (If There Is One)," and discovers that Russia is a wonderful case study-unless, of course, you're Russian. P.J. then goes to Tanzania, a country rich in resources that is utterly destitute, before arriving in Hong Kong, which even as the British prepare to hand it over to the communists is a shining example of how unfettered economic activity can "make everything from nothing." P.J. ends up in Shanghai, observing a top-down transition to capitalism, a process he describes "as if the ancient Egyptians had constructed the pyramid of Khufu by saying, 'Thutnefer, you hold up this two-ton pointy piece while the rest of the slaves go get 2,300,000 blocks of stone.' " P.J.'s conclusion in a nutshell: the free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there's nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you.
Rating: 
Summary: more moderate than I expected . . .
Review: though it could have been funnier; I laughed out loud now and then, but far less often than when reading "Holidays In Hell" (his best book in my view).
I thought he would adopt the old-fashioned 100% libertarian line that anything more regulated than Hong Kong is a socialistic Hell on Earth. Instead, he wrote a surprisingly balanced chapter on Sweden, and admits that when the Swedish government was about the size of ours (31% of GNP in the 1960s) "Growth continued, unemployment was minimal, and inflation was low." (p. 70). Tacit implication: when taken in moderation, social programs can help build a decent society - a point of view closer to Jerry Ford than to today's right wing fire-eaters.
And like Jerry Ford (and unlike some modern "conservatives" who shall remain nameless) O'Rourke actually thinks that if we do have a government, we ought to pay for it with taxes (p. 244), pointing out that although deficits "are less immediately painful than high inflation or huge taxes . . . eventually they lead to one or the other, or both." (p. 112).
Rating:
Summary: Economics in several hilarious lessons
Review: This ain't your fathers economics textbook.
O'Rourke doesn't innudate the reader with 12 factor formulas or arcane M1, M2 theories or Keynesian fantasies. Here P.J travels the world and examines the best and worst of the worlds economies with an attempt to make some sense out of the whole thing.
He travels around the world from the new Russian Republic, to Sweden, Cuba, Hong Kong and more. Chapters are titled: "Good Socialism - Sweden", "Bad Socialism - Cuba", "How to Make Everything from Nothing - Hong Kong" in PJ's own unique and hilarious style. The section on Russia should have you rolling off the chair and still understanding how the mighty USSR self-destructed.
The funny thing is when you're done you will understand economics which is the process by which we allocate scarce resources and try ot improve our lives.
O'Rourke looks at it all and pulls no punches.
This is fun and interesting reading for anyone with curiosity about how economies work - and often don't work and why. If government could command an economy to work then the Soviet Union should have been the premier economic power on Earth. Why weren't they? Well, because a command economy cannot possibly work. The book helps the reader understand why.
An example: (Pg 142) "The trouble wasn't that factory managers disobeyed orders. The trouble was that they obeyed them precisely. If a shoe factory was told to produce 1000 shoes, it produced 100 baby shoes because they were the cheapest and easiest to make. If it was told to produce 1000 mens shoes, it made them all one size. If it was told to produce 1000 shoes in a variety for men, women and children, it produced 998 baby shoes, one pump and a wing tip. If it was told to produce 3000 pounds of shoes it produced one enormous pair of concrete sneakers."
This problem is not limited to shoe factories. USA take note; this will be the problem when the government takes over health care.
The authors observations are made from a more libertarian free-market perspective and most readers when finished with this book if most will have a new respect for the workings of a free and unregulated market and understand completely why the Cubans with plenty of natural resources are starving and how there can be so damn many Roll's Royces in Hong Kong, an island with no resources other than a population willing to work and government willing to let them.
Micheal Mooore - stay away from this book it will throw you into anaphylactic shock. On second thought, Hey Mikey, read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read!
Review: This book should be required reading instead of the majority of snore-inducing comparative econ books. The huge laugh-generating factor of this intelligent take on comparative econ easily compensates for its initial too basic explanation of econ 101 & occasional unnecessary crassness. The chapter on Cuba is illuminating -- & especially interesting in light of Fidel's current crackdown.
Rating:
Summary: Creatig prosperity not promoting poverty
Review: I have read---and found myself going back to---"Eat the Rich" by P.J. O'Rourke. It is insightful, much tongue-in-cheek, honest and disconcerting in his observations, metaphors and conclusions. Like other reviewers above, I have traveled and found his remarks on the mark. My work involves doing strategic planning, conflict resolution and project design around the world and somehow O'Rourke, captures much of what I saw and observed better than I ever could!! He does present in a clear, witty writing style some very important learning's about economics, politics and more. He may be known as a conservative, but his economic insights are those of the greatest economist ever: Adam Smith, Mises, Hayek and the school of Austrian Economics. Even O'Rourke acknowledges his own greater understanding in an interview held: "'Well, probably the most important of those is the--is
the Friedrich Hay--von Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom." It is -- it was
Written in the '40s, during World War II, as a antidote to what Hayek
Saw as the increasing collectivism of politics in the world. He was
protesting against communism and Nazism, but also against the
in--increasing organization and size of the--of the democratic welfare
states. Hayek is one of the great champions of the individual. I
mean, he basically says that individuals are smarter than groups.
Anybody who's ever had to deal with a mob or with Congress
could -- could probably tell you this. One on one, individuals will
make, on average, reasonable decisions, whereas if we put people in a
group -- it's like the difference between Harvard and the Harvard
football team." And his closing chapter, by the same name as the book, presents the fundamentals of sound economics, and shows the importance of focusing on building prosperity and wealth rather than trying to address poverty. If ever he were asked to present at any international conference, he would have done as a "the friend' did in this quote (though the source I find unusual)
:
"I had a friend once and he was asked to chair a commission, an
international committee, and the title of it was What Causes Poverty. He declined. He said I will do it but on one condition. The condition is that we change the title and I'll chair a committee on What Causes Prosperity. The reason he said that was, the title What Causes Poverty leaves the impression that the natural state of the world is for people to be prosperous and that for whatever reason there are prosperous people running
around making people poor... He looked at the world the other way. He said the natural state of people is to be relatively poor and that there are certain ways and things that can be done that can cause prosperity."
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Nov. No, O'Rourke is a shrew observer of life and economics and offers a fine study of how many countries are operating and it is not a pretty picture. I highly recommend it for an insight and understanding of economics today, how the collectivist and government interventions stand in the way of the prosperity of people today. Quoting him again, "Western Civilization not only provides a bit of life, a pinch of liberty and the occasional pursuance of happiness, it's also the only thing that's ever tried to." Yes, Western civilization is one of the known groups that have tried, and, it is as if "the discovery' of individual Freedom and liberty is something new, deserves consideration. (For further understanding the history of Freedom and liberty, do read "The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority" by Rose Wilder Lane. Lear about the 800 years of prosperity under Islam that culminated in Spain as it stretched from China to Europe; the role of Christianity in recognizing self responsibility and, not covered, the 1,000 year stretch in Irelant, brought to an end by the same underlying forces in Curope that used the Crusades as an outlet for the war mongering energies killing Europe!) Liberals and statist miss this and what O'Rourke saw so clearly. As shown in the following independent review, the writer lacks any insight and, with the typical false academic-type and very smug remark---and, I doubt if she has traveled and studied people, life and economics the way O'Rourke or myself for that matter have!) misses his point completely, but with classic "other view" understanding:
"If you agree that capitalism is the best economic system, and that laissez-faire policies are the best method of running an economy, then this book is in effect a self-indulgent look at a world-wide train wreck, with O'Rourke patting you on the shoulder by way of congratulations. You managed to miss that train. However, if you understand the complexities of cultures and history, then you might find O'Rourke's little excursion appallingly naive.... This book is an introduction into the economics that works, honors freedom and liberty, reflecting the down side of government intervention and regulation as it distorts the true value of working people and prosperity. There are other books that capture economics for those that have not studied it, Economics in One Easy Lesson by Hazlitt, "What Ever Happened to Penny Candy" by Richard J. Marbury or "How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't" by Irwin A Schiff. These books address money and banking and other topics that are key to the world's current situation with ease and understanding. But, for a world tour presentation on economics for the every day Jane or Joe, for all those liberals that went to college and took Economic History or, at most "An Introduction to Economics" that favored Keynesian economics and big government management of economies that has prevailed for most of the 20th Century and may be the linchpin for the situation we find ourselves today as it crumples and falls, may the clear writings of O'Rourke serve as your treatise on economics and Turn the dismal science into one that makes you laugh as you learn!! He does an excellent job here.
Rating: 
Summary: Never read a book like this!
Review: You should never read a book like this unless you care only about yourself. I agree it is nice living in a country that beats the poor intot the ground so that good ole' PJ can sit in first class and have a glass of his favorite chardonay!
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