Armonk resident Howard Yaruss released his book Understandable Economics in September 2022, a time in which poll results indicated that the economy was the top voting issue for Americans heading to the polls for the midterms. As such, Yaruss’s work, which aims to provide a better understanding of our economy without the use of jargon, formulas, graphs, or other technical material, was particularly timely. His book seeks to break down the economic system in a manner that is straightforward and accessible to readers, making use of analogies, real-world observations, and entertaining anecdotes. Find an exclusive excerpt below! – Illeana Baquero
Excerpt from Understandable Economics by Howard Yaruss:
“Although many economists may be reluctant to admit it, economics is not a scientific discipline which requires expert knowledge and specialized tools to gain understanding. It’s not like biology, where you need to know organic chemistry and have access to a microscope and other equipment to know what’s going on in living cells. It’s not like astrophysics, where you need to know the relationships among the forces in the universe and have access to powerful telescopes to figure out the properties of a black hole.
Like psychology, economics is a social science, an attempt to understand human interactions and how they affect the world around us. It focuses on those relationships as they relate to money as well as the goods, services and resources money buys. In order to tease out some precision regarding those relationships, professional economists use data and mathematical tools. But the fundamental relationships themselves can become apparent if you’re willing to observe the world carefully and apply your own common sense. The goal of Understandable Economics is to help you do that.
I’m not going to tell you what or how to think–there is no shortage of authors, pundits, influencers, and Twitter celebrities happy to do that. My aim is to demystify our economy by engaging with it in a direct, practical and (I hope) entertaining manner. I want you to be able to think through these issues for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
The need for this understanding is more important now than ever. The belief that our economic system is failing is at a record high. There has been a wide range of reactions from Occupy Wall Street to the election of Donald Trump. What is the one thing all of these reactions have in common? They have not resulted in any significant positive change in the lives of most Americans.
Understandable Economics seeks to change that. I believe that if more of us were armed with a better understanding of how our economy works, more constructive solutions for the problems we face would get implemented and we would finally see the economy improve for the average person.”
