Why my brother reads Mankiw in his spare time

I belong to the sub-set of people who do not function very well in the morning. I need significant amount of time and caffeine to 'collect my soul' (ngumpulin nyawa would be the slank term in Indonesian) before I can march onwards and brave the day.

My brother, on the other hand, seems to be fully-charged come daylight. He reads the paper religiously and not just the news, also features, commentaries, business, op/eds- and he seems to digest everything in one gulp. A lot of what’s on the news are economic issues. Let’s do a quick inventory of some of them : the politics of import rice bans, the slow pace (or stagnant?) of the real sector recovery, micro-financing, why banks are ‘banking’ on the generous SBI interests instead of giving out lending to businesses, free-trade agreements, etc.

On more than a few occasions, always in the morning, he would greet me with something like this, ” Hey, Puspa, you’re the economist here- can you explain to me what’s meant by this person’s argument? He says that free-trade benefits the country’s citizens more through imports than by exports, what does this mean? What channel and how’s that possible?”
Another one would be something like “Puspa, the papers keep saying that the economy is stagnant, the real sector isn’t moving, but on the other hand, new shopping malls keep sprouting everywhere, is this not a sign of real sector activity???”

His sister must sadly disappoint him as (a) she just cannot deal with these things in the morning (not without that cup of espresso at least), (b) she’s just not good at orally articulating ideas and theoretical explanations without a proper trigger. Each time I try explain something, he poses more and more questions, questioning the assumption behind every explanation or providing counter-examples to the arguments and ideas that I tried to explain.

“Come on , Puspa, you gotta explain these things to me, I am not literate in macroeconomics, help me out here,” he said. Then I had a brilliant idea. One morning I came down to our living room with Greg Mankiw’s Macroeconomics in tow.

“Here you go, Bang—have fun!”

He seemed to appreciate my gesture. So he’s now reading Mankiw in his spare time, claiming to be more and more absorbed and enjoying the well-written book and learning the theories that are explained in a very digestible format. Aaaah, wonderful, I thought. I can enjoy my slow morning soul-collecting activity of leisurely reading the paper while I sip my beautiful home-made espresso…..

But, wait a minute! Now he actually goes on to questioning the theories!!
“Puspa- I just don’t get it, this National Income and Circular Flow thingy. Basically, if what it is earned from the production process of a good is equivalent to what we spend to make it, where’s the room for profit then?”

Yikes! Ok, ok, I get the message. My brother’s got the right approach- don’t be a lazy thinker who takes everything at face value: keep questioning, arguing, reasoning….I’m actually happy that knowledge-enthusiasts like him exist to keep on challenging thoughts.

But can we maybe do this in the afternoons or evenings, brother of mine? ;-)