Since I first really got into economics I can attribute my interest and knowledge of it to being able to back up most of what I say. Coming to understand it over the last year or so (maybe less) has been fun and interesting for me and I am very glad I have taken the time to not only take a course on it in college, but to further educate myself in it with books like Bastiat's The Law, Hayek's The Road To Serfdom, and for some fun reading, Levitt's Freakonomics.
Another HUGE contributer to my general knowledge of economics was watching this series of videos. Its 5.3GB download and will teach you everything you need to know, in a (thus far, I am half way thorough them) completely unbiased way. It is rare to find economics professor's text books that are genuinely unbiased. (My college professor's sure wasn't, the man was an anarchist/optimist/hardcore libertarian. It bled over to his book quite a bit.)
This contains 36 ~30 minute lectures which I find quite interesting. You will learn a lot of facts about the history of our government's economics (like how haphazardly the welfare system was setup pre-welfare reform.) and it goes over several interesting topics.
What this has most given to me is the ability to be able to quickly research and understand just about any topic, and to be able to take a sound position that isn't just based on a general feeling or whats popular.( I.E. Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, etc.) You will be able to have a discussion about anything at parties, although usually for me it ends in a bit of awkwardness when I present facts that are not opinions and clearly explain them. Something that no one is used to when discussing the price of gasoline, Wal-Mart, etc.
Anyway here is the link to download the video series, I highly recommend it.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/710814
Another HUGE contributer to my general knowledge of economics was watching this series of videos. Its 5.3GB download and will teach you everything you need to know, in a (thus far, I am half way thorough them) completely unbiased way. It is rare to find economics professor's text books that are genuinely unbiased. (My college professor's sure wasn't, the man was an anarchist/optimist/hardcore libertarian. It bled over to his book quite a bit.)
This contains 36 ~30 minute lectures which I find quite interesting. You will learn a lot of facts about the history of our government's economics (like how haphazardly the welfare system was setup pre-welfare reform.) and it goes over several interesting topics.
What this has most given to me is the ability to be able to quickly research and understand just about any topic, and to be able to take a sound position that isn't just based on a general feeling or whats popular.( I.E. Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, etc.) You will be able to have a discussion about anything at parties, although usually for me it ends in a bit of awkwardness when I present facts that are not opinions and clearly explain them. Something that no one is used to when discussing the price of gasoline, Wal-Mart, etc.
Anyway here is the link to download the video series, I highly recommend it.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/710814
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