Transcript

78. Economics · Just For Today

Jessica Figueroa: Hello, hello, hello. Good morning. Welcome to the Just For Today podcast. My name is Cindy, and we're here together doing things, just doing little things. Today we're gonna learn something about economics. You may or may not have taken this class in high school or college, or you may or may not know anything about economics, but economics is something we need to learn a little bit about. It's just the study of how people, businesses, and governments make choices. To allocate our resources to satisfy wants. So it's just how people and businesses and governments make choices in order to spread out things that people need and things that people want. But we should have a basic understanding as adults. If you're over 25, you should have a basic understanding of economy. Now, you don't need to take an economics course for this, guys. You don't need to have a college education. You don't even need to have a high school education. All you need to do is be interested. So, you know, there's starter books that you can read, like Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, or Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. There's also short video series you can watch like a crash course economic series on YouTube, or there's podcasts about it, Freakonomics Radio, which is going to tell you stories that you're going to be learning economic principles without even realizing it. There's also strategy games like Catan that are going to teach this basic economic principle of supply and demand. But you should have in your head a basic understanding of economics because you're living economics. I think the average person in our lifetime will make like $1.52 million. And that's if you make just, you know, a hair above type minimum wage type. So you're running your own economics right in your own home. You have your own economy, much, much less the economy where your kids work and go to school and play and your own career, what the economy is there. The state economy, the national economy. So today I want you to invest a little bit of time into making a plan. That's what you're going to do just for today. Make a plan to learn some basics about economics. Find a YouTube channel like you like, find order a basic book or an Audible book or buy one of these strategy games or listen to a podcast and just start to engage yourself in economic thoughts about economy so that you can be a citizen of a huge world. That understands just the basics, guys. Because when you understand the basics, it's going to make your personal choices better. Because when you understand something called opportunity cost, you start to understand that that travel sports team of your kid is not just the cost associated with going to the sporting events and the uniform and shoes they need, but it's also the opportunity cost is what you could have been doing with that time if you weren't engaged in that. And that's not to say it's not the right choice, but if you don't understand opportunity cost, You don't understand what you're giving up in order to have that. It's going to help you make smarter financial decisions. It's going to help you to spot like crazy politics, right? When you understand basic economics and you hear something, you're like, that's not right. That's a little out there. That's a little extremist. And it's also going to help you to start to understand some world events and why they take place, why certain countries want to take over certain countries because of their resources, ⁓ things like that. So today, just for today, you're going to invest a plan. into understanding a little bit higher level of economics than you currently understand. I know that I have one book on economics that I have been slowly reading for like three years. It's called The Armchair Econom, The Armchair Economist, because it's so hard that I have to read it so slowly. But I'm investing some time and just getting a little bit better about it. I'm not trying to be an economist. I'm not trying to be a professional. I'm just trying to be have a better understanding than I do every single day. So that I can be a better global citizen and improve my personal life through understanding this topic. So just for today, we are going to be mini little economists and get better. You guys can do this. I'll see you tomorrow.