cover image The End of Economic Man: Principles of Any Future Economics

The End of Economic Man: Principles of Any Future Economics

George P. Brockway. HarperCollins Publishers, $25 (303pp) ISBN 978-0-06-039114-0

``Property is not a thing but a bundle of enforceable rights.'' Such is the plain talk and good sense with which Brockway ( Economics ) here attempts to dismantle the ``dismal science'' of economics in favor of his own rubric seeking stable interest and inflation rates with ``free and full employment in a just society.'' Analyzing both the substance and ephemera in banking, real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies and so on, the author identifies labor as industry's true value base. Competition does not lower prices, especially in banking, he argues convincingly, faulting Federal Reserve interest-rate manipulation to curb inflation, which, he maintains, has the opposite effect. Brockway also denounces federal deregulation that left financial safeguards ``in a shambles,'' tax policies favoring ``all the rich'' and what he sees as ``neo-imperialist'' capital loans and labor exploitation that, according to him, will boomerang against the industrial West. (Jan.)