Tim Harford, writer for the left-of-Hillary & Bill, Great Britain-based Financial Times  does a bang up job explaining why store-branded products have ugly labels, how Starbucks has remained so competitive in a very crowded market and (until Carfax which did not come into common usage until after publication) why you can never buy a decent used car. But then, he transitions from economic principles to governmental social engineering via economics in the areas of air pollution and health care. Rather than insisting, as our Washington D.C. politicians did, i.e., that automakers produce (now) virtually pollution-free vehicles, he recommends charging drivers for every mile they travel, which would severely restrict their freedom of movement and would also install Big Brother firmly in the passenger seat. In the realm of health care, author Harford approaches it from the socialist angle that birth alone entitles one to absolutely free medical, doctor and hospital services. These services are to be paid with taxes confiscated from both those citizens who watch their diet, refrain from passing on known genetic defects (by choosing to adopt) and regularly exercise and  those people, who in their 1st World uncontrollable gluttony, knowingly contract diabetes, lung cancer and a myriad of other diseases. He compares how things work in Singapore, where four million racially homoginized citizens exist under laws that would chaff Cotton Mather, against how things should  work in the three hundred million citizened U.S. of A. He claims that the England nationalized health care system is as good as the free market American one, yet I don't recall anyone flying to London for any kind  of medical care. He negates his good work in the beginning chapters with his attempts in the ending one to cure all the world's ills by ignoring his own definition of what an economist desires and that is that: "a good result that harms no one", as he honestly believes that the taxes deducted from the salaries earned by citizens never did belong to those citizens, but instead were always the property of the state. As expected, reader Robert Ian Mackenzie, does a wonderful job of bringing The Undercover Economist to the dashboard of any commuter.