The Economy: Ignorance and the Alternatives.

you may or may not have heard of a place
called detroit michigan from roughly the years 1992 to 2016 i spent my whole life in the detroit area grew up in metro detroit when i was younger i remember hearing a lot on the news about this thing called the economy and i really wasn't educated about what that meant when i heard that the economy was doing very poorly in michigan and that car manufacturing was moving to other places in the world that was pretty much all i knew about the economy and i i didn't receive any formal education about it i mostly just received education in the home hearing my father complain about the terrible economy of detroit and how much he wanted to leave and move somewhere else in america where the economy was doubtless better i didn't have any options that i knew of in high school to study economics i didn't study economics in college i remember my freshman year there was a girl who came over to our dorm room every weekend she and my roommates would pre-game for frat parties and i would overhear them gussying up and talking about their classes or you know what guys that they're interested in and you know she would complain a lot about the economics class that she was taking i heard some other friends of mine some other students that i had in classes complain about this econ 101 at university of michigan which was a notoriously difficult weeder course if people were planning on going into business they would have to take this class and they would have to take some other really challenging classes that weeded out a lot of people i had the impression that this wasn't for me it kind of calls into question the purpose of education if you feel that you're at a school where like you can't actually take a class because it's going to be so difficult that you'll inevitably fail that you'll inevitably not be able to pass the class and get on academic probation and so on like this really is the fundamental problem with the university system if you want students to actually learn shouldn't there be more emphasis on retaking the class not letting it destroy your entire resume your entire academic transcript if you fail a class one time so i avoided it thinking that this would be terribly difficult for me and i never really learned about economics i was never like motivated by wanting money and i kind of felt ambivalent about it and judgmental of people who were really motivated by earning money not necessarily an immoral thing not an evil thing but my impression of people who were studying economics or really interested in learning about the stock market i would see this one kid in my philosophy class on the stock market stock exchange while he was in class supposedly listening to a philosophical lecture wow like can you really not be bothered to listen to this one hour lecture can you not for one hour be thinking about your money it really took me a long time to not see economics in this negative framework it actually was probably the results of talking about economic situations in history and politically how they influence the world it's not necessarily that i'm reading books about economics to earn money i'm not reading these texts in order to make a lot of money buy a yacht be able to travel the world um so yeah i was lucky enough to be in a relationship with somebody who's got a lot of economic knowledge he's taught me a lot about economics he's encouraged me to read some books about economics i encouraged you why did you want to read them you tell them well i don't want to be ignorant i don't you know i i'm 28 years old and if i don't know the first thing about how the american government makes money shouldn't i know these things at a certain age and actually some of it too is because i might be in a position in the future where i have to teach somebody who's younger than me somebody might ask me a question my boyfriend has a daughter who's now eight years old it's possible in eight years she'll ask me about economics she'll maybe be deciding on what major she'll want to go into in college and ask about economics and if she asks me the fundamentals like i want to be able to answer every day you can turn on the news and at the end of the news report they mention stocks they show numbers they show charts and i think a large part of the population doesn't understand what those charts are showing i think people live in ignorance about the subject of economics where does the stock exchange come from why is it that only wealthy people tend to get involved in the stock market or why is it that when you work for a company at a certain point you have a 401k that money is being invested in a bunch of different stocks and bonds and you're told that it's a secure way to keep your money or to you know when you retire that you will have enough money to take care of yourself to take care of your children and grandchildren you know people eventually they have to go to financial advisors and talk about their money it's such a fundamental factor in life the world really does tend to revolve around money people live with a kind of ambivalence about it like i did where i'm aware that money is so important and a lot of people's lives are totally dictated by money but you just don't want to base your life on money right rather than focusing on the emotional side of it how you feel about money how you feel about earning money or saying you know i i don't want to work my whole life and just be a slave to this capitalist society there is a lot online that is anti-work it seems to be that this is the trend that human beings aren't naturally inclined to labor at all i want to know enough about economics about earning money about how it is that you go to the grocery store and you're able to pick up this product that is from china you know how how is this possible isn't it something that's a wonder of our modern day isn't it something that is worth analyzing and worth studying i don't think it's possible for everybody to study every topic i don't think it's possible for everybody to care about aristotle or care about reading thucydides but for something that's every day talked about on the news constantly the economy the economic situation you know house prices are going up why inflation is a problem why are you just going to ignore those parts of the news or just learn that these are these abstract ideas and say like oh yeah there's a lot of inflation right now so i can't buy a house me and my husband we can't buy a house because inflation this kind of abstract imaginary thing you can't really put a finger on it like oh because of this situation this past year the economy is in shambles i felt like i at 28 years old i really should get to the fundamentals i really should learn the basics of economics so the last year i read two books a concise guide to macroeconomics and the other one is more specific it's called a bull in china and that is about investing in chinese companies these to me were very good building blocks i think i can continue to study this area and continue to repair the kind of broken ideas that i had about economics and about money and labor without being stifled by ideology or without being hateful of earning money or finding that it's the most important thing in life there's an in-between there's something to learn about the economy rather than just this idea of earning money and making a living for yourself how economics affects other aspects of life on earth politically if the leader of israel makes a statement it can affect the stock market why if there is a downturn in the stock market it can affect the price of oil how much it costs to put gas in my car will go up and you know instead of just saying well this is this is just how it is you know i this is just a factor of life and i'm just going to live my life feeling like i'm at the will of some mysterious force around me that i can understand why it is that the oil prices have gone up why it costs more to drive my car around or why it is that cars have become more expensive okay but what about the hot dog theory of ignorance i put this to you hot dogs only taste good because people don't know what they're made of if you visualize that the ears and the lips of the cow are ground up in this hot dog suddenly it tastes awful what if people love chasing money what if people love the economy love economics because they don't understand it's like the hot dog it's a whole bunch of complicated things bunched up and they're totally ignorant and that ignorance is what makes the world go around wouldn't you rather live in ignorance or what what are the advantages of studying economics because living ignorant living in ignorance is working out great well i'm vegan so that's why i don't eat hot dogs and my life is probably more miserable for that you know i'm i'm not very fun at parties because i don't drink alcohol because i know it causes brain damage you know like it's not gonna win you friends and it does make life kind of more difficult to really examine why it is things are the way they are getting angry at this abstract idea of money saying like why do i have to earn money and to me i think understanding changes the way i feel and when i when i understand things i i feel less angry or like emotionally attached to it it's not just an ideal or it's not an abstract concept like it's it's materials that's why it's rewarding to me because i feel like i can at least form a kind of uh map like you know i can brainstorm a map of why it is that soy milk is so expensive this is a frustrating thing for vegans like vegan products are way more expensive than non-vegan products but that doesn't make sense logically like like if you just think about it in a non-economic non-economic terms you think well isn't it way more effort to raise a cow cut up the cow package it into plastic wrap and then you know deliver it to people at the grocery store rather than you know growing soybeans and mushing them up into soy milk or tofu you know you'd think tofu should be way cheaper than meat and a lot of the times i think i have been really frustrated by this but when i study it when i learn about it i feel less angry about it and i'm at least able to like accept it growing up in detroit i feel like i would have really benefited from understanding some of these economic principles and it would have made some discussions with family members with friends a lot more rewarding if i would have had some knowledge about economic theory and had learned these things in high school and college or on my own because for the most part high schools don't even have an economics class i got my undergraduate degree in english a lot of the texts that we read i think it's fair to say that nobody needs to read those books it's not fundamental to life on earth many people will live their lives never reading shakespeare and that's okay i really don't think that people are missing out on something that fundamentally affects them every day if they don't read romeo and juliet but i do think people are missing out if they don't read anything about economics or make an effort to understand economic principles unless you're a farmer studying meteorology will probably be a waste of your time and you can live in ignorance of how the weather works you can watch the news report on tv to learn about what the weather is going to be like today what the forecast is but for the most part you don't need to really understand why it is it's raining today you can get through your whole life not understanding really how the weather works but when you hear on the news about the economy you really should know how the economy works at least make an effort to learn the fundamentals about how the economy works [Music] you