Economics should be a required course for high school education. At a time when misunderstandings and irrationality replace logic and reason, it’s time to educate Americans about the world around them.
According to a poll from the Pew Research Center, economics is at the top of voters’ agendas. The candidates who will come to run our country make decisions based on the public’s opinions, and the public is not well informed.
In a poll conducted for the Guardian newspaper, around 50% of Americans believe unemployment is at 50-year highs, and 70% think the inflation rate is rising. In reality, the unemployment rate is well below the 10-year average, and inflation is down 6.8% since 2021. While this may just seem like a common instance of misinformation, the problem is much deeper rooted.
Based on that poll, I guarantee that if you asked Americans to explain inflation accurately, they would be unable to do so despite universally polling it as the most concerning issue going into the 2024 election. Inflation isn’t prices going up; it is the rate of change in prices. The problem isn’t that people are getting fake news or that the media is manipulating them; people just don’t understand economics.
If you listen to people talk about prices, they will probably say they want them lower. They want groceries to go down, and they want the housing market to return to the prices from a few years ago. However they don’t understand what will happen if they get their wish.
One of the first things you learn in Economics 101 is the price-wage spiral: prices and wages spiral up due to one another. While this can be bad if out of control, the same thing happens if prices go down.
If Americans got their wish and prices went back down to pre-pandemic levels, businesses wouldn’t have enough money to pay their workers. Those workers who would be laid off wouldn’t be able to buy things and pay their rent or mortgage. More people would get laid off. Houses would be boarded up, banks would fail as people rush to get their rapidly depreciating currency, government services would start to dry up without taxes to pay for them and America would find itself back at the point of the last time deflation ran rampant: the Great Depression.
The American people don’t need advanced degrees in economics, but I’m tired of seeing my peers, political candidates and random people across the country influence my life and the direction of our nation with their ignorance.