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Socioeconomic Blues



If anyone ever gives me a lecturing job I am well structuring my course reader around these.


1. Supply and Demand - Hives




2. The Day the Dollar Die - Peter Tosh
(Appeal to post-scarcity society, but I'll use it for exchange-rate theory)




3. Milkshake - Kelis
(erotic capital, I'm afraid)




4. How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live? - Albert Reed




5. Capitalism - Oingo Boingo
(Talking Heads meets Milton Friedman. Well, somebody had to write it.)




6. Taxman - Beatles
(Whinge about progressive taxation. Groovy)




7. Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had - Muddy Waters
(Muddy misunderstands the virtual nature of money. Nevertheless, his very attitude drove the 2008 credit crunch: subprime defaults.




8. Career Opportunities - Clash
(Unskilled labour's mass alienation)




9. I Want It All - Queen
(maximising "rational" consumer - "move out of my way" - to me you have no way)




10. Government Cheese - Rainmakers
(neoconservative anthem. Ironically it was Reagan that launched the synecdoche they despise so much.)




11. Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
(the perverse equilibriumless nature of positional consumption.)




12. Soak up the Sun - Sheryl Crow
(Buddhist economics: the restraint of desire as happiness. Spiritual dimension of public goods.)




13. I'd Love to Change the World - Ten Years After
(To illustrate the received view: doomy sneering conservatism. Note weird homophobic verse.)




14. A Study in Economics - Allister
(Bizarre. I think this is what Green Day was always aiming for.)
"say goodbye to everything you think you know" (aye, like compassion and scientific method, when opening your microeconomics textbook)




15. Changes - Tupac
("we can never go nowhere unless we share with each other.")




16. Cut From the Cloth - Evens
(Cultural costs are always externalized)




17. Minimum Wage Is A Gateway Drug - Dillinger Four
(For friends who dropped out "to save up" for uni or for other life-changing soul-cementing things which they never got around to, and won't.)

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