How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't

A simple explanation of economics by Irwin A. Schiff
Irwin Schiff
Feb. 14, 2010

This book superbly explains economics in a simple and easy to understand comic book format, it's a work of genius which if read and understood by everyone would restore economic freedom and prosperity practically overnight. - Chris, InfoLib

With wit and humour Schiff explains:
1. The roots of economic growth.
2. The economic benefits of underconsumption.
3. Where savings come from.
4. Why economic growth is dependant on savings.
5. How consumer spending stiffels economic growth.
6. How capital is created.
7. How governments destroy capital.
6. The four uses of capital.
9. How capital benefits even those who don't have any.
10. The destructive nature of consumer credit.
11. How free enterprise forces capitalists, no matter how mean and greedy, to benefit society, if they want to get richer.
12. Why government can not expand credit.
13. How the federal government loots society's limited store of savings.
14. How the Federal Reserve operates as the U.S. Government's partner in crime.
15. Where inflation comes from and why prices go up.
16. How the government creates unemployment.
17. The myth of government "jobs" programs.
18. Why most politicians are deceivers, (this of course will not be news to many, but this book will allow you to cite chapter and verse.)
19. How the U.S. government destroys America's ability to produce.
20. Plus a whole lot more!

Read the book!
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Also download Irwin Schiff's other classic, The Kingdom of Moltz, which explains how inflation is used to quietly steal people's savings!
PDF Format

Watch the video with narration below!

Reviews from Amazon:

How to learn economics in one sitting, October 2, 2002
By A Customer

A talent in too short supply today is the ability to take the complex and make it understandable to all. Listening to university professors and presidential advisors drone on about economics for generations has turned it into the dismal science most Americans tune out today, and we are all the poorer for it.

Schiff has taken a lifetime's experience and observation and distilled it into a comic book that can be read in an hour or so, but the lessons learned are immeasurable. It will teach you about investment, savings, capital and inflation, faster and with greater enjoyment than all the textbooks and position papers stretching from here to Jupiter and back. It will also arm you mentally for all future encounters with politicians or government spokesmen when they try to "explain" why America's economy is in such a bad way, and why we keep paying more and more for less and less.

Schiff has done a great public service in giving us a cheap and painless way to learn the basics of how an economy grows and why it doesn't. The pain will come in trying to reverse generations of misguided and uninformed economic policy.

How Government holds back the Economy, August 31, 1999
By A Customer

Best comic book I've ever read. It tells you how the Federal Reserve monopoly has held back our economy and government causes massive unemployment with it's minimum wage laws and inflation. If you are young and learning about the economy and want to know how politicians scam people with their dirty tricks then this book is a must-read for you.

Schiff:Economics :: Feynaman:Physics, May 14, 1997
By A Customer

A truly brilliant person can explain a normally complex topic in such a clear and consise fashion that the listener would wonder why he did not think of the explanation on their own. This book does just that. The main point of the book is that very simple principals are all that is needed to understand the overall workings of any sized economy. Economic theory is explained in the narrative of a series of approximately 300 comic frames. The setting is a tropical island where hunter/gatherer cavemen struggle daily to collect fish to eat. The concepts of risk, creation of capital assets, return, consumption, saving and borrowing are explained. The economy of the island becomes increasingly dynamic as the story goes on. Institutions develope to protect the islanders' savings and captial assets from theives and disasters. The concepts and purposes of government, public works projects, welfare, inflation are progressively treated in context of this island economy. Some people may not like the comic format but I think it would be difficult to explain the subject better or more concisely. Regardless of Amazon's claim to my work, I retain copyright to this review. Regards, Steven Thomas, Copyright 1997.

This is the perfect follow up video to understand how the Federal Reserve system works and why it is so important it be abolished in order to return to a time of economic prosperity.

The Capitalist Conspiracy: An Inside view of International Banking

Edward Griffin - The Capitalist Conspiracy: An Inside view of International Banking

Carroll Quigley: Tragedy and Hope (1966)
Edward Mandell House: Philip Dru: Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935 (1912)

Written and narrated by G. Edward Griffin
(1960's) An old film, made sometime in the 60's.

This is an adaptation of a documentary filmstrip tracing the history of a small group of people who control the money systems of the world. It shows how this group is protected by governments and how its wealth is derived by creating money out of nothing. We see how this group wields power through government, foundations, education, and the mass media. It has aided such regimes as Russia and China, not because it is pro-Communist, but because a visible enemy and the threat of war have been useful in persuading the masses to embrace the group's ultimate goal: a world government which they expect to control from behind the scenes. They are now working to replace fear of nuclear war with fear of global pollution as the motivation for world government. It is clear that the plan revealed in this program continues to unfold.

Monopoly is not an outgrowth of capitalism. Monopolists lobby for laws that give them advantages in the market place. Monopoloy is not based on free-enterprise competition, but the escape from it. It is not the product of capitalism but the bedfellow of socialism.