Introduction : So what is economics, anyway? --
Why do I feel so squeezed? --
All is not as it appears : measuring economic outcomes --
Whatever happened to the Cleavers? --
The health care squeeze --
The medical industrial complex --
Poverty amid plenty : the whats --
Poverty amid plenty : the whys --
Brother, can you spare a dime? --
The ABCs of worker pay --
What's so bad about inequality? --
All education, all the time --
2. Don't know much about GDP --
Gross domestic product --
Unemployment : Wall Street vs. Main Street --
Making better doughnuts --
The night of the living wage (and other scary stories) --
Your textbook got it wrong --
3. Political economy 202 --
The budget deficit (part 1) --
The budget deficit (part 2, in which a Nobelist agrees with me) --
The economy and the military --
"Please remain on the line" --
4. The world ain't flat as all that --
What's right and wrong about globalization? --
The conscience of a shopper --
Globalization and greed --
How the capitalists killed capitalism --
The not-so-great immigration debate --
What's so bad about a labor shortage? --
Can economists save the planet? --
5. The reconnection agenda --
Conclusion : the lesson of the rink --