Most useful subject that I ever studied at school and still the one that I draw on the most from a day to day basis. Also had an excellent teacher who managed to balance out the Milton Friedman with healthy doses of Keynes and slightly more wacky French theorists like Foucault and Baudrillard.
Economics Dying Out in Schools
- Thread starter Gmart
- Start date
Gmart
Well-Known Member
Likewise, I was very lucky to have a teacher who understood Keynes as well as Friedman.
Strange how many people here seem reluctant to acknowledge economics as a useful subject.
Not perfect of course but still really useful.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Part of the developing western disenchantment with organised theology. Simultaneous with the writing of disguised economic imperatives into every corner of the life-world.
Gmart
Well-Known Member
I'm currently reading a book on this subject called "The Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain" (see here), it's about how political correctness and an almost luddite anti-logic/rationality attitude is dumbing down our society.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Sounds great!
Gmart
Well-Known Member
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Dunno where you got that quote from, but it is actually really interesting.
From Index on Censorship, Vol. 35, No. 4, 2006, a review by Julian Petley. In full here. He really does not like the pamphlet one bit.
Economics as economics, rather than personal finance, is still a worthwhile field of study.
You don't have to get particular far in studying economics for it to reveal where markets are inefficiency, where they may be consistently inefficient etc.
I doubt they'd get that far at school - they just lightly and ever so slightly bring up the possibility at A level.
You don't have to get particular far in studying economics for it to reveal where markets are inefficiency, where they may be consistently inefficient etc.
I doubt they'd get that far at school - they just lightly and ever so slightly bring up the possibility at A level.
Gmart
Well-Known Member
Am I to assume you feel that students would not gain from a short lesson in personal finance as part of the economics subject core?
And I agree that market inefficiencies is one of the best areas for study. recognising that markets tend towards monopoly rather than competition is an important conclusion to recognise...
Tying the two together is irresponsible. They aren't related.
Personal finance is matters of budgets, debt, saving, bills, tax etc.
Economics is matters of allocating goods in a scarce environment. You don't need to involve money - which is how people end up, I guess, associating economics with personal finance.
I think your own seemingly hard-wired connection between economics and personal finance is exactly the sort of thing that teaching economics will avoid...
Markets don't tend towards monopoly. They tend towards equilibrium or states of equilibrium that may include monopoly.
Gmart
Well-Known Member
In the long term the people involved in every market will endeavour to increase their market share, as this solidifies their job. That was what I was alluding to.
And of course personal finance and economics are separate, as are micro and macro economics. Yet they are close enough to deal with together. If I explained inflation to a child, it would be reasonable to mention that if one has a job and fails to get a pay rise in line with inflation, then the person with that job would have had a pay cut in real terms.
It is exactly these sorts of issues which need to be discussed in such lessons.
And everyone being competitive will tend not to lead to a monopoly.
Micro and macro are a whole whole lot closer than personal finance and economics. Allocating scarce resources in a micro environment or a macro environment is very different from the management of individual money.
The closest economics gets to individual money management is an optimisation problem for the marginal utility of an action with respect to money.
Hardly useful for personal finance.
This isn't personal finance. That different things in economy may change in price differently is hardly something that needs teaching either... your labour, that good, this good, some other good...
Personal finance at its most advanced is more like accounting.
kabbes
First intersubjective, then internalised
I didn't study economics in school at all. I have done a LOT of post-graduate studying in it though, because unsurprisingly it is pretty core for an actuary.
My conclusion is that a little bit of understanding of it is a very, very dangerous thing. A-level economics does little more than brush the surface, which means that it leaves students thinking that free markets have the answer, because the complications to these ideas require rather more understanding than the A-level curriculum really allows for. And GCSE is even worse.
Since I don't think the issues can ever really be covered in sufficient detail in a basic course and since I am convinced about this "a little knowledge is dangerous" issue, I'm not convinced it is a good thing in schools, actually. The basic macroeconomic issues (of things like how inflation and interest rates are linked) could be covered in a general studies course. But all the microeconomic misunderstandings that basic supply-demand curves teach would be well to be left alone.
My conclusion is that a little bit of understanding of it is a very, very dangerous thing. A-level economics does little more than brush the surface, which means that it leaves students thinking that free markets have the answer, because the complications to these ideas require rather more understanding than the A-level curriculum really allows for. And GCSE is even worse.
Since I don't think the issues can ever really be covered in sufficient detail in a basic course and since I am convinced about this "a little knowledge is dangerous" issue, I'm not convinced it is a good thing in schools, actually. The basic macroeconomic issues (of things like how inflation and interest rates are linked) could be covered in a general studies course. But all the microeconomic misunderstandings that basic supply-demand curves teach would be well to be left alone.
I disagree. The course teaches the underlying assumptions behind the models used. And given those assumptions - markets are indeed, the absolute best for allocative and productive efficiency.
You'd have to be very naive to really think that assumptions like perfect and free information are even vaguely close to true in real life.
You'd have to be very naive to really think that assumptions like perfect and free information are even vaguely close to true in real life.
So don't teach it to them because they'll be too thick to understand it properly (i.e. my way)...lovely attitude.
rioted
redundant
From what I can remember from my school economics, both are caused by greedy workers wanting too much money!
That's another of the bollocks that's spoken. The people who spout these things tend to see economics as a science, which it might be if it didn't involve people with agendas differing from the theoreticians.
kabbes
First intersubjective, then internalised
Diamond, that's an... interesting... way of interpreting what I said. Maybe you are projecting your own inability to understand things properly onto other people's arguments?
In fact, I'm arguing that there simply isn't time on the syllabus and neither have the pupils sufficient mathematical understanding at that point to really present things properly. Economics is really a subbranch of statistics, frankly. You don't teach other advanced subbranches of statistics, such as quantum theory, before you have taught the basics.
In fact, I'm arguing that there simply isn't time on the syllabus and neither have the pupils sufficient mathematical understanding at that point to really present things properly. Economics is really a subbranch of statistics, frankly. You don't teach other advanced subbranches of statistics, such as quantum theory, before you have taught the basics.
rioted
redundant
But under an economic system, people getting what they need is not necessary or "efficient", is it?
That's another of the bollocks that's spoken. The people who spout these things tend to see economics as a science, which it might be if it didn't involve people with agendas differing from the theoreticians.
Another wannabe who cliams to know all economics then is it?
It really isn't. Applied economics, much like any applied social science, depends on statistics to test the hypotheses made.
I can see your point, up to point, so to speak, but I studied A-level economics and it was taught with a critical perspective. It's since proved useful to me and gave me a very valuable, albeit basic, perspective on the economic system.
Quite frankly pretending the entire thing is simply some extremely complex branch of maths or statistics is intellectual snobbery. Moreover your tone was snobbish, arrogant and patronising. "A little knowledge is dangerous" - self-aggrandising rubbish.
But under an economic system, people getting what they need is not necessary or "efficient", is it?
You can get what you want, given what you have available to you.
If the society you live in offers comfy benefits - you get them. If the society you live in forces slave labour on you - you get that.
Economics comes down to a lot of constrained optimisation problems. Whatever system you have around it, sets the parameters of the problem. You can live in a hedonistic society, a full blown capitalist one or a pure anarcho-communist one - but things like supply and demand will still function in exactly the same way.
If people want something, they'll forgo more for it. If something is plentiful, they won't forgo so much for it.
And so forth.
