Introduction to Economics (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: nomic policy was the regulation of foreign trade, with a view to bringing into a country large supplies of treasure. These regulations formed a system which in the end became burdensome in the extreme; their futility and in- juriousness were exposed in the latter half of the eighteenth century by the Economistes in France and by Adam Smith in Great Britain, whose writings first placed economics on a scientific basis. Through the nineteenth century economic discussion has progressed from one practical problem to another ? money and banking, trade unionism, socialism, monopoly, etc. The chief function of the science is still, as in its earliest period, to ascertain what economic policy of government will be most conducive to the general welfare. Although it is known as the "science of wealth," it is not the function of economics to instruct individuals how they may best acquire wealth. Its principal aim has been attained when it has thrown all possible light upon the economic problems which a state, and its members as citizens of a state, may need to solve. 13. Most of the political problems of the present time are economic in their nature. The importance of economics to the citizen of a modern state is clearly seen when we enumerate the issues that have held a prominent place in national politics. Since the founding of the republic there has been no presidential campaign in which the tariff has not been an issue. It is an active issue to-day. The relation of the federal government to the banking system was an important issue in the early nineteenth century, in the period of the Civil War and again in the first decade and a half of the present century. The money question was potent in national politics from the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The trust ...