The Great Economic Debate: Failed Economics and a Future for Canada

Kenneth M. Glazier was Chief Librarian Emeritus at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

As a frequent listener of the popular TV program Wall Street Week in Review, I have learned that when there are four distinguished economists there are four different opinions of how the economy will proceed and how the market will respond. A very large number of viewers is interested in what economists say but very few would admit that they were any wiser about what stocks or bonds they should buy or sell or whether interest rates will rise or fall in the present or future economy.

This book is an attempt to aid understanding of a complicated economy. Cy Gonick is well qualified to state his opinion as a professor of economics at the University of Manitoba, a former MLA in Manitoba, and author of Inflation or Depression and Out of Work. He is frank in showing how economic theories work — and how they don’t work. He shows the reader how each school of thought is blurred by outdated precepts which produce circular arguments. He is concerned with Canada’s economic future, and though this book was written just before the heated debate on free trade, much of his material is relevant to that debate.

Gonick takes us back to the forgotten vision of John Maynard Keynes and the right of New Right economics in the form of monetarism and supply-side economics. He concludes by tracing the routes and charting the course of the current economic crisis.

There are many positive factors about this book. Extensive notes for each chapter give bibliographic information on books and journals which may be consulted for further reading. There are a few statistical tables and above all there is an extensive subject index.

This is a serious attempt to understand the enigma of economics.