Steven Dubner's Super Freakonomics

In chapter three of Freakonomics, Levitt answers the question “Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Parents?” The chapter begins with a quote by economist John Kenneth Galbraith who said “We associate truth with convenience” . This means that the public will not challenge or doubt a reasonable statistic. For example, an advocate for the homeless named Mitch Snyder compared the recent history of homelessness in the United States, and most of the people being crack dealers. To determine the condition of dealers a man named Sudhir Venkatesh was sent into the field. His assignment was to visit Chicago’s poorest black neighborhood with a clipboard and a seventy-question, multiple-choice survey. The first question started with “How do you

In Freakonomics, incentive emphasizes Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s unification of disparate chapters and American society. Economic incentives drive people like teachers and criminals to make certain decisions. “...high-stakes testing has so radically changed the incentives for teachers…” (Levitt, and Dubner 23). School teachers’ incentive is to cheat because they do not want be fired or passed up for promotion because of low test scores. Levitt discovers that the different ranks in gangs have opposite incentives. “A foot soldier’s incentive was to make a name for himself; J. T.’s incentive was, in effect, to keep the foot soldiers from doing so” (Levitt, and Dubner 105-106). Foot soldiers start gang wars in the hopes of becoming noticed

Parenting is an excellent system in how we raise children, but much pressure is added in raising them to live a successful life. Can it be done, and what should a parent do? These are some of the questions that Steven Levitt attempts to give reasons to in his book Freakonomics, and with it are there arguments and theories on how a parent can accomplish this. Levitt makes a good argument in how economic status of the parents affects the success of future children, but I would reevaluate his argument concerning the importance of how you treat your children, and the way his inferences are concrete.

As I read through the introduction of “Freakonomics” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steve Levitt, I’m highly dissatisfied with the way the author opens the book. Personally, I felt like it was well written, but lacked appeal. To illustrate further, the book starts with information regarding the false predictions of criminologists of crime rates. However, my feelings are slightly positively changed as I find the author exposing “the hidden side of everything”, as he claims (which is also the theme of the book). For example, as he bypasses the information of the sky-high crime rate, he starts talking about a woman who changed crime rates by legalizing an abortion (which is illegal at the time). Sequentially, he explains how the crime-drop

‘Freakonomics’ was written by a University of Chicago economist by the name of Steven D. Levitt. The book is a collection of articles written by Levitt, an economist that has a reputation for applying economic theory to subjects not usually covered by economists. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner, a co-writer of ‘Freakonomics’, state that economics is ‘the study of incentives.’ The book contains six chapters ranging from topics about cheating in sumo wrestling to legalized abortion lowering crime rate. While it was published in 2005, it covers many controversial topics from the 1990’s when America was in a pre-nine-eleven world.

467). I connected this back to my economics class because I’ve learned that economics has to do with issues in our economy and using tools and data to make predictions and conclusions. That’s what Steven and Stephen explain, but using these strategies to relate to other human issues we’ve faced and are still facing today. For example, they both explain an issue topic about shark attacks. They both go on to talk about some statistics on shark attacks, and the three different types of shark attacks, “There are three ways they strike: hit-and- run, the bump-and-bite, and the sneak attack.”, “During all of 2001, there were 68 shark attacks worldwide, of which just four were fatal.” (Levitt and Dubner pg. 467). But what grabbed my attention is after they compare shark attacks with elephant attacks, saying there are more elephant attacks than shark attacks and that sharks are portrayed more of a treat than elephants. Steven and Stephen go on to write, “Elephants, meanwhile, kill at least 200 people a year. Why aren’t we petrified of them?”, “It may also have to do with our perceptions gleaned from the movies. Friendly elephants are a staple of children’s films like Babar

The book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner consists of a series of essays in which a journalist and an economist work collectively to find, by applying everyday economic principles, how the world truly works, which reveals some fascinating truths about the world. Some background history of the authors, Steven D. Levitt interviewed Stephen J. Dubner for New York Times Magazine and this is where they initially met and became good friends. With them having similar ideals about the world in an economic lens, they decided to write this book for other enthusiasts that wanted to analyze the world as an economist.

The vision of society for women or specifically prostitutes was totally inadmissible back in mid-1800’s. Due to the low economic background and pitiful situations, young girls were compelled to join the darkest part of society, a place where there’s no turning back, a place where she will be treated as a puppet, an evil part of a society called prostitution. Going to school and having a good outdoor job was for men, for women, it was none other than household jobs. The critical condition in the poor family made young girls walk towards hell. Back in time, there was a one-sided

In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, the authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, explore and analyze highly-charged economic subjects. The authors take well-known topics, such as popular culture, and analyze them from an economic standpoint, in ways that may have not been thought of before. However, these diverse and controversial topics are presented in such a way that does not offend the reader. Levitt and Dubner achieve the delicate balance between the offensive and non-offensive by using an unconventional combination of tone, language, phrasing, syntax, and repetition.

And times have not changed much women are still victims to a male dominated society that tell them how they should treat their bodies, dress and behave in sexual intercourse.For that reason I envy the madams and ladies, the whores and sluts they’ve broken out of patriarchal society and live according to their own desires. Giving them the ability to often educate themselves and own land. By using sex as power they were able to achieve the rights that women would have never imagined. Sex workers during this time had an above average income for both men and women as stated by…..”Prostitutes in a 1916 study reported earnings between $30 to $50 per week, at a time when skilled male trade union members averaged roughly $20 per week” During a time where most women had nothing to there name, sex workers were making almost double that of a unioned man.They were also able to pick and choose their sex partners, walk the streets freely and dress as extravagantly as they desired in short they were as free as a

“Respectable” men and women would lure young women, usually from a lower-class background, away from their homes and sell them into prostitution. Rarely did these young women go back to their families; not because they free to go, but because the procurators and procuresses never allowed these women a moment to be truly alone in public. These horrible men and women controlled these young women’s lives as if they were possessions. In the off chance that a young woman escaped her “bondage,” she was not welcome back into her family with open arms. She was an outcast because she was a “prostitute” (by society’s standards). Unfortunately, there was no help for these young girls, or any other prostitute. The people in a position to help them, like The Society for the Protection of Women and Children, turned a blind eye towards these women. The Society for the Protection of Women and Children only helped the privileged, not the needy (Wells 56).

The book unfolds many dark alleys of the murky world of prostitution and the skeletons in her cupboard rather in the truest sense makes aware the vulnerability of women for being docile, fragile and full of

Yes, I would recommend Freakonomics to others because I found it was an interesting insight on a typical topic and it brought a new spin a usually boring thing. Being a book on a wide range of things it would be probably well liked by the general public because it is about such a wide variety of things. Being kind of a new genre that has kicked of old topics written in a new stance with a little more attitude in the writing than just any old history book like Killing Lincoln. Being a best seller and published in multiple languages it’s already proven that a wide range of people like the book. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone under the age of 14 because I don’t think a younger audience would like this book not wanting to read about economics. I believe most people would benefit from reading this book not just because of the information it has in it but because of the way it makes the reader's mind thinking and staying active. The book is a great read and is shared all over the world with many conversations about the book. I believe that everyone should be able to chime into the conversation and be able to speak about what they thought of the book and the insight the authors have about how our modern world works. Maybe reading this book will make the reader develop their own economic theories and share that so other people can maybe wrap their head around similarities between sports car and cricket

Prostitution is the act or practice of engaging in sexual intercourse for money (dictionary.com). There are 40 to 42 million prostitutes in the world; 3 quarters of this group range between the ages 13 to 25. With about a 80% being women, and 20% being male. About 1 million of those live in the United States (businessinsider.com). Most of the women are forced into this job, because it is so unregulated. Some women chose to do this voluntarily but need business help from “pimps” (a man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them, taking part of their earnings in return). Because prostitution is illegal, people can’t report when someone decides to not pay

There are women that do not want to be a prostitute but just because they need money to survive, they choose the easier way to make money instead of the harder. Some of the women are forced into selling their body for money, in the article the author states, “The dividing line between the two camps lies in distinctions between so-called ‘free’ and ‘forced’ prostitution. Abolitionists generally maintain that the vast majority of women are forced into prostitution, while the sex workers insist that this is not necessarily the case” (Otchet). Instead of stopping this kind of act people are more concerned about