It’s the economy, stupid!

None of my job-search tips ever came from school. More to the point, though, school never really prepared me for what the job world was. I had a rather nebulous understanding that people had to work to put food on the table. What I hadn’t fully understood was that there is something called the economy, which is, at its most basic level, the production, selling and buying of goods and services. Whether we like it or not, the basics of life and society are dependent of and subsumed by this.
It’s either that or we go back to the days of hunting and gathering.

Businesses are what keep the economy going. No one ever told me that. Maybe it was just too obvious to them. All I knew was that business people never seemed to pay their employees enough, and they only paid lip service to the idea that the customer was always right. It was never made clear that business people were the ones who created jobs in the first place, and that while some business owners do become millionaires, the vast majority aren’t so lucky.

It also took me most of my adult life to finally understand that money is NOT the root of all evil. Money is simply a tool which makes it easier to trade for goods and services. Otherwise, we’d be bartering all the time. Can you imagine your hairdresser trying to convince you that you need a second haircut in as many weeks just so he can trade that for some gas from your gas station?

When I went to school, the existence of money was acknowledged but never really explained. These days, various Internet entities with agendas of their own will give their own spin on how money came to be. Official publications from national banks seem geared towards specialists, so the common people are left with the special interest groups which may oversimplify things, deliberately misinform us, or just be misinformed themselves.

I cautiously recommend a video entitled “Money As Debt,” easily available on most Internet video sites. I say cautiously because the first half or so of the video explains, or at least gives a plausible explanation of, how the modern banking system came into being, and is probably as accurate as one can expect. I’m less sure about the rest. Take it with a grain of salt.

I often wondered why a national government with a large debt couldn’t just print more money and pay those debts off once and for all. To understand why requires a certain explanation of economics and of how national banks, or entities like the U.S. Federal Reserve, work. Why none of this is required learning in school is beyond me. If we want the people to make wise decisions, especially when election time comes around, they need to know how the economy works.