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Becker and Posner's Uncommon Sense

The popular Becker-Posner blog has been turned into an excellent book entitled Uncommon Sense.
For anyone who wants a quick and easy crash course on Chicago economics-style thinking, this book is as good as it gets. It collects a few years’ worth of their weekly blog posts, adding reflections the two thinkers have had since the original posts, as well as an introduction that nicely describes the basic principles of their worldview.
If you are cheap, you can get the blog posts for free; if you are lazy, the book is an easy way to quickly access the material. (I guess the fact that I only sometimes read their blog posts but I read nearly the whole book in one sitting means that I am lazy!)
One of their beliefs (which I share) is that economics can be applied to any topic. They demonstrate that point, writing about everything from polygamy (Posner seems to be in favor of it; Becker is on the fence) to the fat tax (both against) to whether rising inequality is a bad thing (both say no).
The only drawback to the Becker-Posner collaboration, in my mind, is that more often than not, they agree on the answers to the questions they pose. The most interesting dialogues occur when they find themselves on opposite sides of the fence.
I wonder if in the future they couldn’t occasionally bring in a smart outsider with a different worldview to spice up the debates?


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