The Best Books on Money & Economics

These are the best books I’ve ever read out of hundreds in over a decade.

Most of them were recommended to me by other successful guys I know.

Regarding money, it’s actually even more important that you read The Rational Male: volume 2 – Preventative Medicine by Rollo Tomassi and Men On Strike by Helen Smith PhD and never marry because there’s no point making money if you’re only going to lose most of it to subsidise some ex-wife or ex-girlfriend’s dating life via divorce, alimony, child support etc.

Structuring your life to not lose a fortune to women will usually make a much bigger difference to your finances and quality of life than any book on strictly money.

See also the Economics 101 article which summarizes some key takeaways from these books.

Now that we have that out of the way, here are the strictly money & economics books.

Index

• 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism
• Bachelor Pad Economics
• A World Without Men
• The Creature from Jekyll Island
• The Psychology of Money
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• The Bitcoin Standard
• The Finance Curse
• Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies
• The Deals That Made The World
• Moneyland
• Kleptopia
• The Shock Doctrine
• The Myth of Capitalism
• Life After The State
• The New Corporation
• The Housing Boom and Bust
• Paper Money Collapse
• The Undercover Economist
• Freakonomics
• Superfreakonomics

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang PhD

There is no such thing as the “free market” because the government picks the winners by deciding who can do what with laws & regulations, who gets massive subsidies etc.

Bachelor Pad Economics

Bachelor Pad Economics by Aaron Clarey

A broad mix of personal finance advice from the well-known author Captain Capitalism.

Aaron covers everything from new cars to housing to retirement. As Rich Dad, Poor Dad also teaches, buying a McMansion with a big mortgage will drain the money you could have used to become wealthy through income-generating investments.

Obviously, if you’re actually a bachelor when you read this, don’t get married! That will be the biggest financial fuck up of your life given the modern state of dating, the widespread rise of female infidelity and women initiating 70-80% of divorces to check out with cash & prizes at your expense, taking your house, alimony, child support etc. See The Best Men’s Books on Dating & Relationships.

A World Without Men: An Analysis of an All-Female Economy

A World Without Men: An Analysis of an All-Female Economy by Aaron Clarey

Another great analysis from Aaron Clarey on the economic impacts of feminism and demoralized male withdrawal from the workforce, and a terrifying economic future. Expect more inflation and degradation of the West under feminist law.

Men are much more important than feminists are willing to admit. They produce most of the food, 80% of the items in the economy, do most of the industrial jobs, build the properties to live in, make the electric grid and water systems work, and countless other things critical to our lives. See Also: The Gender Pay Gap Scam for more jobs that are nearly entirely done by men.

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin

This book is the gold standard on money, inflation, the central banking cartels, the history of money and even wars related to it. It’s a longer read than The Bitcoin Standard, but for anybody serious, this is the top book to read. It changed my entire view of banking, money and even 20th century history. Banksters are behind a lot of problems by forcing governments into borrowing arms races and wars to generate interest profits. You have to read it to believe it. I can’t do this book justice. Read it.

The Psychology of Money

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Money, investing and personal finance as well as the psychology of how people think and deal with money.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki

A cult classic of personal finance and investment. This is where most of us learnt the difference between assets and liabilities. An asset is anything that passively puts money in your pocket. A liability is anything that takes money out of your pocket, such as your car, your home etc. Yes, you read that right, your home is a liability since it takes money out of your pocket each month instead of putting money into your pocket each month. Bachelor Pad Economics, the other cult classic in this list above, gives similar sound advice.

The Bitcoin Standard

The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous

Bitcoin aside, the first 7 chapters have an excellent history of money to help you understand problems like inflation and central banksters.

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer by Nicholas Shaxson

A good explanation of how the financial system, globalization and financialization of companies is changing the nature of capitalism and society, and in so doing impoverishing the average person.

Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies by Kristian Niemietz PhD

A critical book showing the catastrophe socialism has caused all around the world every time it’s ever been tried, across countries, generations, geographies and decades it always ends the same way.

Thoroughly debunks what have become running jokes among the economically educated that “this time it’ll be different”, “that wasn’t true socialism”, “if I did it my way”… etc.

It shows no matter how or where socialism was tried, it destroyed incentives, productivity, living standards, and inevitably resulted in authoritarianism and horrific human rights abuses to try to force people to work for free.

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists”

Friedrich Hayek

Each woman is on average a $150,000 net loss to the state over her lifetime, at the expense of higher taxation paid mostly by men:

Research finds that as a group, only men pay tax

What happens when people who aren’t net contributors like women vote for “free” money and services:

The Deals That Made The World: The Billion Dollar Deals and How They’re Changing Our World

The Deals that Made the World: The Billion Dollar Deals and How They’re Changing Our World by Jacques Peretti

The closed-door capitalist deals that change the world – from Wall Street betting against their own on food commodities helping to spark the Arab Spring, to the link between the AIDS epidemic in 1980s San Francisco and the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. This is like a newer version of Freakonomics but focused on the big plays.

Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back

Moneyland: Why Thieves And Crooks Now Rule The World And How To Take It Back

Exposes the Russian Oligarchs buying up real estate in London and New York to bury money overseas, and the complicity in Western countries like the UK and USA to allow it.

Russia and Africa are the most corrupt places on earth as measured by the amount of wealth offshored away from their home countries to hide it from their own authorities in case they get caught stealing the people’s wealth from the state and overthrown.

What the book really shows is that the rich are their own country, dubbed “Moneyland” – with no borders or loyalty to any nation-state but only to their rich globalist elite pseudo-country. This is why patriotism is dead.

As George Carlin famously said, “They own everything… there’s a big club and you ain’t in it … the game is rigged“

The book does a great job of helping you understand the problem, but not how to fix it. That’s supposed to be Thomas Sowell’s job 😉…

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis

More kleptocrats, MoneyLanders, and their Western accomplices – I struggled with the names in this one of the ex-soviet states.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

Wars like Iraq, natural disasters, pandemics like covid – somewhere government fat cat friends are getting rich off your tax money via Crony Capitalism – an insidious form of corruption caused by big government budgets who then hand out contracts to their connections. The rich get richer, you get taxed more.

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition by Jonathan Tepper, Denise Hearn

The shift towards the dominance of mega-corporations controlling the West, politics and using market power and government regulations to kill smaller competition, leading to higher prices and weakening both worker and consumer power. This is the opposite of Capitalism’s promise of lower prices and more choice through competition. This goes back to the government picking he winners, similar to 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Life After The State

Life After the State by Dominic Frisby

A surprising guide to how ever large bloated government interference has caused as many problems as it’s solved. From education to healthcare, to killing thriving industrial cities like Glasgow via regulations, this is surprising to those of us who grew up with big government thinking it was a good thing

By taxing citizens heavily for big government and then failing to deliver the promised services, many peope then can’t pay privately for their services, such as decent education or healthcare. The UK’s NHS is a good example of this, which as I write has 7M people, over 10% of the entire country’s population, needing but not receiving operations. This would be even higher if young people and children weren’t naturally healthy most of the time. People in the UK pray not to get sick because they know they are basically uncovered in healthcare and the high taxes mean they also don’t have the savings or private healthcare.

The New Corporation: How “Good” Corporations Are Bad for Democracy

The New Corporation: How “Good” Corporations Are Bad for Democracy by Joel Bakan

Corporations have been going “woke” and pretending to be socially conscious in their relentless pursuit of profit and shameless marketing, while they drive huge inequality between workers and CEOs while they jump on every social bandwagon from ESG to wokeness. This is a follow up to The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. The title says it all. See the Documentaries blog post for the corresponding documentaries to these books.

The Housing Boom and Bust

The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell

Explains how housing shortages are caused by government land-use restrictions preventing building enough homes (particularly bad in the UK, although this book is focused on the US zonings).

Meanwhile, other government regulations coerced banks into lending quotas for minorities, resulting in loosening lending criteria which resulted in the sub-prime global financial crisis of 2008.

You can’t make this shit up as the late great OG Kevin Samuels would say.

Speaking of African American greats, you will find more Thomas Sowell books in other upcoming book lists on this blog.

Paper Money Collapse: The Folly of Elastic Money

Paper Money Collapse: The Folly of Elastic Money by Detlev S. Schlichter

The inevitable destination of non-gold-backed “fiat” currency is ever more inflation and eventually hyperinflation collapse. This is related to the The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve and The Bitcoin Standard.

The Undercover Economist

The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

Marginal economics explanations around land, and everyday economics examples like how coffee shops price their coffees for cost-sensitive customers and cost-insensitive customers. This is why those add-ons are so expensive – they let you hang yourself by picking the type of coffee so they don’t have to target you to get more money out of you, you do it to yourself.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

A classic book on how economics shapes human behaviour – using stats to prove that everybody from sumo wrestlers to school teachers cheat when there is an economic incentive to.

There is also a documentary version of this in the documentaries blog post.

Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

These last couple freakonomics books are fun economics books, which is why they’re at the bottom, as they won’t help you with money and investments, but they will show you how fun and interesting economics can be from an effects perspective on human nature and how people respond to incentives, which is really what economics is.

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