Why don’t people care about economics?
Most of what is discussed within economics revolve around whether or not something is valuable or increases a person’s utility, and little to do with whether or not their economic choices will have positive impacts on humanity. Plus, most of the economists that we hear of (and possibly know by name?) are far removed from the dominant culture.
In a world where we are becoming ever confronted with the fact that temperatures are rising, and that the environment is responding to our human practices with more violent natural disasters each year, people don’t want to be told that they’ll be happier if they pay this amount of money for cereal rather than that amount of money, but instead, for example, be able to gauge what the economic impacts of intensive animal agricultural practices are on the planet. (This was a shameless plug to consider going vegan because animal agriculture has profoundly bad consequences for both our planet and our health).
Not only that, we as humans don’t always like to change our own behavior, and if economics wasn’t fun in high school, fat chance we’ll be checking for it outside of that. If we’re being honest here, people have extremely short attention spans. If there aren’t cats or dogs doing human things, or the NSFW tag on it, odds are that people will quickly glance over whatever information is being conveyed.
Economics isn’t exactly the sexiest field — when’s the last time a Kardashian talked about the Solow-Swan model or Karl Marx (or first time, for that matter)? For reference, the Solow-Swan model “believes that a sustained rise in capital investment increases the growth rate only temporarily: because the ratio of capital to labor goes up.” While Karl Marx was an economist and philosopher, famous for his views on communism. Just a brief introduction, so if you’re confused we’ll delve more deeply into them at a later time.
To understand economics, you must first know that there are two branches of it: macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macroeconomics deals with large-scale or general economic factors; think the central bank, the federal reserve, national productivity (Wall Street, anyone?). Microeconomics deals with small-scale or individual economic factors; think how individuals interact with each other and their environment in efficient and productive ways. Micro helps us to see what to expect when conditions change in a market, while macro helps us see how the economy performs as a whole.
If you haven’t come to this conclusion by now, economics is pretty frickin important.
No shade to any of the other disciplines, but knowing economics is an absolute necessity; I love the social sciences, but it’s imperative that every person knows how the economy works so that they can make the smart decisions that will positively impact their future outcomes. Economics isn’t just about being able to understand the impact that rising interest rates have on your spending power, but on the minute things; like how moving to a city with cheap and efficient public transportation is better overall for your wallet and the planet. Major in whatever you like, just make sure that you understand basic economics so that no matter what amount of money that you’re making, you know how to spend your money, and what economic policies to rally for when you’re electing officials (remember to vote!).
