Economic Family Tree

https://mises.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/economists-family-tree_0.jpg?itok=fIK72qCp

Best chart I've ever run across...

https://mises.org/library/why-economics-matters-0

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Americans simply aren’t much interested in the details, or even the accuracy, of the economic pronouncements of the political class. We want bread and circuses.

Consider what people talk about on Facebook: lots of posts about family. Lots of posts about celebrities, and sports. Lots of posts about food, health, and exercise. Some posts about politics, culture, race, and sex, but usually only to support one side or bash the other.

Not much, ladies and gentlemen, in the way of economics. And I submit that might be a very healthy thing. After all — we’re rich! Only a wealthy society does not have to focus on the subsistence-level concerns of adequate food and shelter, hot running water, clothing, electricity, and the like.

So let’s not be too hard on people for not spending their free time reading economics. Leisure itself is a very important activity, and represents a form of economic trade-off.

But economics matters very much, and we ignore it at our own peril. Economics is like gravity, or math, or politics — we may not understand it, or even think about it much, but it profoundly affects us whether we like it or not.

Economics as a subject has been captured by academia, and academics like Krugman are not so subtle when they imply that lay persons should leave things to the experts. It’s like team sports — we may be introduced to it when we’re young, but only the professionals do it for a living as adults.

Yet once we understand that all human action is economic action, we understand that we can’t escape or evade our responsibility to understand at least basic economics. To think otherwise is to avoid responsibility for our own lives.

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Click to expand...

Jeff Deist
https://mises.org/library/why-economics-matters-0

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

Murray N. Rothbard

"While we shake our heads when twenty year olds can’t read at the college level or do simple algebra, we don’t worry much whether they never take economics. We would be alarmed if our children couldn’t perform basic math to know how much change they should get at a cash register, but we send them out into the world far more susceptible to being cheated by politicians. Why do we want our kids to learn at least basic geography, chemistry, and physics? And grammar, spelling, literature, history, and civics? We want them to know these things so they can navigate their lives properly as adults"

Jeff Deist

Economics, I have found is a waste of time on this board. I can't think of more than a half dozen posters who are even modestly conversant with the basics.

That said this thread raises a good point. My perception of economic illiteracy around here is probably no different than any other Subset of the population. Nevermind in not conomic illiteracy, there is a huge level of in numeracy in this country. If you can't understand the basics of numbers and statistics, then economics is worse than gibberish to them.

It doesn't just start in schools it starts with the teachers. When teachers are tested they display shocking levels of innumeracy even one that you would think would have to have some acumen with numbers such as science and math teachers.

The truly sad thing that shows up in self-inflicted misery are those with the least amount of economic understanding are the ones that could use it the most. The poor often have no understanding of even how a basic budget works or the real cost of borrowing; a rich person can of course hire an accountant, an investment advisor, and a business manager.

I have had very little success trying to explain basic concepts such as the difference between Exemptions listed on your w-4 form and the number of kids you have. But the rate at which your pay is withheld during overtime, does not necessarily reflect what your actual taxable bracket is going to be at the end of the year. I'm constantly amazed at the number of people that will leave 5% of their gross income on the table because they won't put money into their 401k.

People that cannot comprehend their own economic realities cannot possibly look at the economic realities that a nation faces.

The basic economic theories that I have discovered on this board are the same Sophistry that Bastiat blew out of the water (see where he is on the chart) coupled with a belief in the Historical Model*, which is a top-down "supply-side" and represented by those current schools who believe that x-increase in monetary supplies always yields mx results where m is always positive and assumed to be close to one. It is a macroeconomic illiteracy that puts government foremost and people last when all that macroeconomics really is is basically a snapshot of the results of the microeconomic activity (Human Action) that occurs on a daily basis to which effect the government and the fed have but one outcome from their positive interferences (von Humboldt) is the retardation of economic growth and Capital formation.





* which leads to the cherry-picking of graphs in specifically defined time-spans which "prove" that the Sophist/Historian is correct in their false narrative of not just the desirability of government interventionism, but the absolute need of it to correct the flaws of a free market. They then blast the mixed economy of their own creation for its failures as the failure of free markets and then demand the right to impose even more correcting control, again, always top down. Yet, when it comes to Reagan and his policies, they always claim that that sort of "supply-side" will not yield any intended benefit.