Burr’s illustrations make what Thomas Carlyle called “ the dismal science” after Malthus’ grim economic prognosis not just as visually clear as Goodwin’s prose, but also good fun.
The geographic focus centers on the United States, because Goodwin’s an American and that’s his main concern, but Economix spans the globe and travels to Europe, Russia, Asia, India, and elsewhere, especially after technological advances make the world smaller and more interdependent. Goodwin arranges the book in a roughly chronological way, skipping forward or backwards in time only when necessary to make important connections. It’s our responsibility to understand what we’re voting about.” Fortunately, you’ll may never accept democracy’s responsibility in as fun a way as Economix allows. “Most of the issues we vote on come down to economics. “We’re citizens of a democracy,” Goodwin explains. As a big picture began to take shape in his mind, Goodwin realized that “while the whole picture was complicated, no one part of it was all that hard to understand.” Hoping to make those pieces as understandable as possible, Goodwin chose the “most accessible form I knew: comics.” Some may dismiss the format as kids’ stuff, but the realities inside Economix and the purpose behind it are for the real grownups. Goodwin hits the books and goes back to the original sources of economic thought-Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Marx, and friends. “Everyone has questions about the economy,” Goodwin begins his explanatory preface, with his soon to be very familiar face among the questioning crowd. Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works (and Doesn’t Work), in Words and Pictures eliminates feelings of stupidity in the face of economic-speak while demonstrating how it really is the economy and why nobody should be stupid about it. Burr, Goodwin delivers that knowledge in the accessible format of the graphic novel. Even better, with the help of illustrator Dan E. Fortunately, Goodwin had done the legwork of untangling the web of economic knowledge for us.
What do you do when you know it’s the economy that matters, but you’re feeling stupid about how it all works? Do you plunge headfirst into Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations? Do you blow the dust off your college macroeconomics textbook that you couldn’t stand reading even for a grade? Author Michael Goodwin feels your pain, because he found himself in the same predicament-a voting American citizen faced with the truth that he didn’t know anything about the policies he was voting for. “ It’s the economy, stupid!” James Carville crowed throughout the 1992 presidential election, and has pretty much continued crowing since.