If there’s a mission statement to what I want to do here, it might be this:

What is economics? What does it mean to study economics? What is the popular perception of economics, and is it realistic?

I’m not going for “all you need to know about economics” (like Economics in One Lesson) or “applying economic analysis to everyday situations” (like Freakonomics or The Undercover Economist). I want to figure out what the discipline of economics is, and why it’s not well understood.