For a sitcom, though, how about 3 generations of Economists. Every week there would be some conflict(work, school, dating, calling a plumber, whatever.) The old man always oversimplifies matters and willfully ignores any information which would require him to change his original position. The middle-aged person always overcomplicates matters, generally by emphasizing small elements all out of proportion to their importance while missing the bigger picture. The youngest (child or young adult. Not sure which works better.) would always resolve the conflict in the best, most commonsense way despite the meddling and advice of the elders.
I think it would work best if the older two were male and the youngest was female. Sitcoms frequently portray older male authority figures as comic buffoons(which was really funny when I was younger, but seems less so now).
I think some neighbors to represent Marxism would be good, too. There wouldn't be any explicit reference to Marx nor the ideology, but they would be very organized around rigid rules and schedules which would change arbitrarily. They'd also misallocate resources like having their clumsy, overweight son pursue a ballet career.
The main character is an economist, who's discussing various concepts in economics in his lecture to a class at the beginning of the show. After the intro, the economist finds himself having to deal with unforeseen consequences related to the exact situation that he was just lecturing about.
For example, a show where our hero starts out talking about rent control would have our hero unexpectedly coming into ownership of a rent-controlled building where the well-to-do, but wacky residents band together to pay off the crooked city mayor to thwart the economist's plans to end rent control in the building and have the residents instead rent their apartments at market prices they can afford, but just don't want to pay. Beaten in this attempt, and now threatened with jail for being a slumlord by the mayor, our hero sells the building to the mayor at an extreme discount, who then uses his political influence to convert the rents in the building to market rates.
The show ends with the economist's view from the lectern of the wacky residents nodding off during the economist's lecture at the beginning of the show.
The show follow Tim Hadams (PhD. Wyoming State), a professor of economics at the Community College of Rhode Island. Hadams gives enthusiastic lectures to uninterested classrooms by day and misguidedly applies the principles of economics to his personal life by night.
Hadams uses his literal and simplistic interpretation of classical economics as a tool for (mis)understanding the world and (mis)guiding his actions. True moments of economic insight are left to the discovery of the viewer, as Hadams is blind to them.
Hilarious scenes include Hadams shopping at the margin (see: the standup economist), attempting to pay his neighbor to silence his noisy drum-playing son (a la coase), and attempting to use price rationing to resolve family disputes.
Characters (anagrams are fun!):
Tim Hadams - Protagonist.
John Kernney Hadams - Son of Tim.
Harold Sellfarm - Hadams' best student.
etc...
The setting is small town America somewhere in the Rust Belt with lots of quaint small town mannerisms like diners, homemade pie, a General Store.
Joanie has been groomed to take over her father's tire manufacturing business since she was a little girl. She's the only child in the family. The family business employs 400 workers and dozens of executives at its single plant. Since it's a family business the firm is privately owned and managed, and the father/CEO has an old-fashioned aversion to carrying debt so the firm's has a strong cash position. The father/CEO treats his workers like members of his extended family--they talk on a first name basis, he knows their families, lots of days off and company picnics. But the older father/CEO is getting older and needs to pass on the business to a new generation.
A corporate raider like Danny DeVito sees the cash rich position of this company and tries to acquire the company through a buyout but the old CEO resists because he won't destroy the family legacy or sell out his adopted family to a bunch of outsiders. So DeVito tries a variety of legal and corporate subterfuges to acquire the company against the will of the aging titan. Meanwhile DeVito falls in love with Joanie, who is a corporate lawyer. Joanie is too corporate to work for the old-fashioned family business but not corporate enough to sympathize with DeVito's hostile takeover of her family's business. Joanie reconciles with her estranged father in order to protect her family's legacy from the corporate raiders.
It's about four female forensic economists who crack unsolved financial murders together.
The first economist works at the city economic development organization and performs sunny economic growth modelling. She wears shapeless skirts and sandals.
The second economist is an econometrician at the District Attorney's Office. She waits to get all the facts before offering a theory. She wears dark pant-suits.
The third economist is a managing partner at the big investment bank who survived the layoffs. She misses most of the meetings but bankrolls the murder club. We rarely see how she dresses.
The fourth club member is a cute business journalist who makes witty one liners and has a knack for publicity. She loves Jimmy Choos.
There is a fifth peripheral character--a forensic economic historian who works in Cold Cases.
None of the characters have significant others although a couple have alimony and child support revenue streams.
The first murder mystery corpse? GM. Who killed GM?
Last edited by lightsaber; 03-05-2009 at 05:04 PM.
William is an economics professor at a small university in Pennsylvania. He specializes in taxation, but has been having trouble getting published. Unfortunately, the theoretical knowledge of the impacts of taxes was of little use in practice. He made a few critical mistakes on his taxes forms and got in some legal trouble.
William's friend, Paul, is another professor at the university. He mostly teaches law, but also teaches a course in Austrian economics. Due to Paul’s background in law, William decided to bring him along for the hearing.
This decision turns out to be costly for William. Paul sees a chance to strike a blow against the government. Instead of simply explaining how William made a mistake and getting him off with nothing but an obligation to pay his back taxes, Paul gives a lecture on the anarcho-capitalist’s view of taxation. He starts off with a rather dry explanation of dead-weight loss and perverse incentives, but his passion escalates as he characterizes taxation as a form of theft whose existence persists only because of the state’s monopoly on force. He finally reaches a fiery crescendo and calls William a warrior for freedom for standing up to the state.
A second friend of William, Steven, is an eccentric econometrician. He has a theory that if stock prices follow a random walk, then they can only be predicted by a random number generator. After running thousands of regressions, he found a set of numbers that had a statistically significant correlation with market returns for the past 6 months. Steven puts all of his money in the stock market, expecting to strike it rich using the random numbers.
The media starts to take an interest in the case. The IRS sees a chance to make an example of a tax evader and ideological enemy, Paul sees a chance to preach his Austrian views to a larger audience. William, the only one with anything really at stake in the trial is caught in the cross fire.
When William brings this problem up with Paul, Paul responds “in for a penny, in for a pound, there is no turning back now.” William initially rejects this as a sunk cost fallacy, but when his new found fame has resulted in academic journals taking interest in him, he changes his mind and decides to embrace Paul’s attempt to protest against taxation. While in prison, William writes “Civil Disobedience in the 21st century.” This publication and his high profile trial turn him into a libertarian folk hero.
Meanwhile, Steven’s investments have not worked out and he lost his house. He has been living in William’s apartment and is taking care of it while William is in Prison.
The IRS realizes that William has been receiving a lot of popular support and don’t like the public continuing to hear Paul’s anti-state speeches. They realize that if they finish the trial, they are more likely to create a martyr than set an example for would be tax evaders. They offer to let William go if he agrees to pay his back taxes. William accepts, much to Paul’s dismay.
As the season closes, Paul is upset that he could not strike a fatal blow to big government, Steven is still living at William’s place, and William is dreading the prospect of paying his debts to the government. Paul proposes a solution that would respond to all three problems; Steven should try to marry William. They could attempt apply Steven’s capital losses to William’s tax bill and hence solve their financial problems, and Paul could continue in his crusade against a government that will not allow two consenting adults to get married.
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