Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (ISBN 0-465-08143-6) is a 2003 nonfiction work by economist Thomas Sowell.

Sowell discuss how basic economics is generally misapplied because politicians think only in Stage One. Stage One is the immediate result of an action, without determining what happens then. He argues that many politicians cannot see beyond Stage One because they do not think beyond the next election. He gives as an example of Stage One Thinking, a State government which raises taxes on a business. The immediate result is more revenue for the State government. However, over the course of time, that business might move bits and pieces of the company to another state or new businesses may choose another state to place a new factory. Over the course of time, the State will lose revenue because businesses will go to other states.

Famous quotes containing the words applied, thinking and/or stage:

    Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.
    David Lodge (b. 1935)

    Cultivate the habit of thinking ahead, and of anticipating the necessary and immediate consequences of all your actions.... Likewise in your pleasures, ask yourself what such and such an amusement leads to, as it is essential to have an objective in everything you do. Any pastime that contributes nothing to bodily strength or to mental alertness is a totally ridiculous, not to say, idiotic, pleasure.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    The stage is life, music, beautiful girls, legs, breasts, not talk or intellectualism or dried-up academics.
    Harold Clurman (1901–1980)