Can't Get No

by Russ Roberts on December 6, 2007

Here is a very clever web site from Joshua Hall, Robert Lawson, and Dirk Mateer that uses song lyrics to teach economics.

{ 4 comments }

tw December 6, 2007 at 4:02 pm: Fantastic Web site! But where's the ABBA music????
Matt R December 6, 2007 at 4:21 pm: This has always been my favorite economics song/poetry. As a bonus, it also explains why it's impossible to legislate drugs out of existence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-8NuZZPD9E
LowcountryJoe December 6, 2007 at 5:44 pm: The song by Ten Years After titled I'd Love to Change the World

has the following lyrics:

Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more

This band was all over the sterotyped political spectrum map — channeling Paul Ralph Ehrlich, libertarians, the homosexual loathing Right-wingers — with this song, but in the end, they're correct, keep taxing the rich, keep demonizing them, and then keep giving that tax revenue to the poor, and the rich will self-nominate themselves out of existence in whichever society this strategy is tried.
LowcountryJoe December 6, 2007 at 5:50 pm: And then there's the indifference curve with given constraints. The ultimate in figuring out tradeoffs when your personal resources are scarce and you search for maximum utility under the circumstances:

And you can't always get what you want, honey
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime, yeah,
You just might find you get what you need!