What to read to understand how economists think | What It Means If You Can Feel Your Heart Beating | French actor Mathieu Kassovitz 'seriously injured' in motorbike accident

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Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium What to read to understand how economists think - The Economist    Economics has a reputation as a dry, heartless subject, full of boring equations. The reality is much more interesting. Thinking like an economist, as I see it, comprises two main features. The first is always to think about trade-offs. There is no such thing as a free lunch, as Milton Friedman said. When someone gets something, they almost always give something up in return. If you go out with your friends, you won’t have time to go to the gym. If an economy’s wages go up, dividends might go down, or inflation might go up. And so on. The second is to try, when possible, to put numbers on things. When we say that China’s lockdowns are “strict”, what do we actually mean? If you think “job quality is getting worse every year”, how are you going to measure that? Sometimes it is not easy to quantify ideas, but it’s always good to try. In The Economist’s coverage we always try to remember these two lessons. Here are five books that should help you think in this way. Ignore the fact that Friedman was ultra-libertarian. It does not matter. Very often his arguments were plain wrong. That does not matter either. This book is perhaps the best way to learn to think about trade-offs, because that was how Friedman always thought about the world. For instance, consider minimum wages. Friedman accepts that the people who receive them take home more money. But then the trade-offs come steaming in. What, he asks, about the people who are now priced out of the labour market? Or take regulation of medicines. Unnecessary, he says. Yes, you may save some lives by insisting that pharmaceutical companies jump through hoops before taking a drug to market, as fewer dangerous drugs are sold. But those reviews will also cost lives, he says, by delaying the delivery of safe drugs to patients. (In 2006 we published this article on Friedman and his legacy.) The Worldly Philosophers. By Robert Heilbroner. Touchstone; 368 pages; $18.99. Simon & Schuster; £8.99 Continued here What It Means If You Can Feel Your Heart Beating -     Take a moment to pay attention to your body, and all of the sensations within it. Zero in on your heartbeat and try to notice each beat. How strongly can you feel each thump-thump? Do you think you're catching each beat, or are some escaping your perception? This ability, to feel your heartbeat, along with any other internal sensations in your body, is called interoception. It's the opposite of exteroception—which are signals we receive and process from the outside world, like sight, sound, or touch. Interoception helps us to regulate our bodies—interoceptive cues tell us when we’re hungry, thirsty, or when we have to pee, so we can do something about it. Yet it’s more than just the body's superintendent. Our internal sensations also interact with our emotions, thoughts, and feelings in meaningful and surprising ways. Continued here French actor Mathieu Kassovitz 'seriously injured' in motorbike accident - The Guardian    Actor famous for Amelie, The Bureau and La Haine, which he also directed and wrote, reportedly in a 'worrying' condition French actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz is in a "worrying" condition after a motorbike accident in greater Paris on Sunday, authorities say. The 56-year-old, who is best known for his 1995 film La Haine and his role in 2001 film Amelie, was on a motorcycle training course at the time, a police source told Agence France-Presse. Continued here

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