I Want To Write A Book
Working title: Smart Rich vs. Stupid Rich.
An advice book for The Wealthy.
Yes, many advice books have been written for those who would like to be wealthy some day, but how many advice books have been written for those who are currently wealthy? My book will explain how this privileged group of individuals can act to OPTIMIZE the amount of real wealth they are able to enjoy in their lifetimes.
I think there just might be a market for such a book.
Much of what I will be putting in Smart Rich vs. Stupid Rich can be found on various pages of my website. If you want to get a good general feel for its content, read Make The American People Richer. Also, The Progressive Income Tax: Theoretical Foundations.
Throughout the book, I will be emphasizing the difference between real wealth vs. financial wealth. To understand the difference, just try to imagine what it would be like if everyone were to somehow become extremely rich in dollars one day and then we all decided to retire and live off of our accumulated ‘wealth.’ We’d all be able to enjoy lives of luxury, right? Well, no.
We’d all soon discover that we didn’t actually possess any real wealth at all, because no one would be producing anything of value that we could buy. The only reason why money has any value to us is because it gives us a claim on the productive efforts of others. How wealthy you actually are depends more on what others are doing than it does on your personal accumulations of paper notes.
The Real Economy is the productive behavior of people; it is the actual goods & services that people are producing and trading and consuming. If we want to optimize the welfare of the citizenry, rich and poor alike, then we must optimize the productive output of the populace.
Ultimately, discussions about money flows should only matter to us if it can be shown that they affect the status of the Real Economy in some way.
So if you are already rich and you want to become richer still, then you are going to want to make sure that all able-bodied and able-minded people out there are producing something of value. Why? Because those who are not working do not stop consuming; they just aren’t producing any of the stuff they consume. Somebody else is.
As a society, we all become richer in real terms when all those who are idle become productive. Look at it like this: if a portion of your productive output is no longer needed to help provide for the basic consumption needs of the unemployed (because they are now producing for themselves), then that means more of your output becomes available for your own consumption.
If I am successful in my composition efforts, rich people will come to see that their personal enjoyment of wealth and their financial [& even physical] security are dependent on their ability to get all those idle poor people out there working. That’s when it really becomes fun to be rich. Not only do you get to be rich, but you also get to know what it feels like when all the people who are poorer than you actually feel gratitude toward you for what you have made possible for them.
The best thing about the economic agenda I propose? The wealthy are not asked to make any kind of real, material sacrifice. Contrary to what their friends over at the Republican Party have been suggesting to them, it is not possible to deprive the wealthy of any of their purchasing power when they are asked to pay taxes in a way that preserves their ‘rankings’ within the hierarchy of all disposable incomes earned.
This may be the single most important insight that my book will provide to the rich people who run our country. Market economies guarantee that the wealthy cannot be hurt by progressive income taxation. To understand why, read the book when it comes out or simply read through the articles I’ve provided links to. Your eyes will be opened to a new world of possibilities.
Unfortunately, I don’t really know how to go about getting this book published. The first problem is that I don’t have any time to spend on composition. My financial circumstances are such that I must spend all of my time either working as a wage earner or on trying to figure out how to earn more income in order to meet my obligations to my family. They have great needs right now (medical costs, a Christmas without presents, etc.) and are depending on me. Maybe I could fulfill my obligations to them and still write the book if I could somehow get a decent-sized advance, but I have no contacts with people who are in publishing and I don’t know who might be receptive to my ideas.
Prior to composing this blog entry, it occurred to me that I really should be using all of the resources at my disposal in my search for needed income, and that would include my website. I may not get a lot of traffic coming to my site [since there has been no time/money to promote it] but I do seem to be getting an increasing number of visitors to my site who were referred by search engines like Yahoo, Google, and MSN.
So I’ve decided to make this appeal to those who aren’t afraid to invest in a possible happy future. Maybe some wealthy soul out there who sympathizes with my goals will read this and feel inspired to help me turn this book into a reality. Or maybe some regular visitor who happens to know some people in the publishing business will mention my work to them.
So there you have it, folks. All I can really do at this time is present myself and my idealistic goals to the world through my website and then see if anybody cares. If you have any advice for me on how to get my articles turned into a book, send me an email at:
james@nontrivialpursuits.org
My family and I would be most grateful…
James J. Kroeger<—1864b3ba0911299ae74b6b42e5be45df—>
February 19th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
I’m sorry i don’t have any contacts in the publishing world. If I did I would certainly send them your way: I find your descriptions of how economics works to be the clearest and easiest to understand I have ever found.
Do you teach economics in a university? if not, why not?
February 21st, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Hi, Kim. Thank you for your kind words.
I have taught economics at the community college level, but I’m not likely to be teaching in a university any time soon. Unless there are some exceptions I’m not aware of, I believe it is pretty much etched in stone that one must have a Ph.D. in order to teach in a university. My understanding is that my Master’s Degree gives me the credentials to teach only in community colleges.
Although I was accepted into the Ph.D. program at Southern Methodist University, I didn’t stay in the program very long because I came to realize that the only way I was going to be able to absorb the material they were presenting in a way that I would find satisfying was if I took a few more courses in mathematics beyond calculus. Part of me wants to go ahead and do just that, but another part of me realizes that none of that math is needed in order to explain what every citizen needs to know about the economy.
For good or ill, I have been blessed/cursed with a strong idealistic streak. So instead of knocking myself out for another several years in a Herculean effort to earn a Ph.D., I decided to see what, if anything, I might be able to accomplish with just a Master’s Degree in my pocket. It occurred to me that perhaps we are living in time—-with the arrival of The Internet—-when someone like me just might be able to circumvent the elitist culture that academic economists love to immerse themselves in and present my explanations directly ‘to the people.’
What this means, of course, is that the only way my explanations can ever become recognized as legitimate by academic economists is if they find themselves being repeatedly asked—-by educated people—-to comment on the claims I am making. Of course, many economists will be immediately dismissive of my arguments after only skimming them to get the gist, but at least the process of ‘peer review’ will finally have begun.
If I am given an opportunity to respond to their challenges (and those dissenters are kind enough to give my responses serious consideration), I’m confident that I’ll be able to persuade them of the value of my analysis. If, on the other hand, they are able to reveal some fatal flaws in my explanations that I have missed, then I will be happy to acknowledge my errors and then turn my attention to the series of explanations I’ve put together re: Human Nature.
That’s pretty much where we stand right now, Kim. Perhaps with the passage of time, some of those who see value in my explanations will start emailing the ‘Democrat’ economists out there to ask them what they think about the arguments I’m advancing. Do they have value? Or are there some fundamental flaws we should be aware of? The people want to know. If we can get some kind of debate started, then maybe some big changes will be possible down the road…