Hello dear reader! Thank you for joining me today to talk about one of my favorite things!

In a time when the global economy appears to be in a free fall, due to a terrifying pandemic, I thought it was important to talk about Economics. Why is it important? Why is it interesting? How does it affect us as individuals? I hope to show that it’s not just boring numbers, but a topic that makes my brain do jumping jacks in the best way possible. I am no expert, just a student who loves numbers and learning about what they teach us about the world.

For starters, let’s get a definition out of the way. Economics, as defined by Brittanica Encyclopedia, is a "social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth."

Why is economics important? If you’re anything like me, in that you like math but it doesn’t seem to like you back, you may wonder what the racket about numbers and the economy is about. To me, it’s important for a number of reasons. First, it shows you how your money can make money— in other words, how to produce wealth. As Cardi B might say, how to make "money moves." One of the oldest concepts in economics is the idea that money makes more money. The institution of the bank, as we know it, dates all the way back to the 14th century. In those days, the Italian Peninsula was a hub for trade, and soon, families decided to take advantage of the lucrative economic opportunities available. One of those families, the Medicis, got into the business of insuring voyages and lending money. They became familiar with 3 important economic concepts very quickly: buy in bulk, diversify investments, and use existing capital as leverage. When you buy in bulk, items tend to be cheaper per unit. When you diversify investments, they tend to net gains in the long run and don’t leave you susceptible to putting all your eggs in one basket. When you leverage existing capital, it allows you to buy money now and pay for it later. What might this look like? In the British Virgin Islands families pass down capital from generation to generation in the form of land. Let’s say you’d like to start a business, but you need $50,000. You can go to the bank, put that land up for collateral and BAM, your capital got you money. Side bar—the idea that you can buy money now (a loan), to be repaid at a later date, to me, is amazing. Our institutions have created a system where you can pay for the convenience of liquidity now, in return for smaller payments later. Using these 3 concepts, your money can make you more money.

Second, Economics is important because we are interdependent. Here in the Virgin Islands we have a saying, when the US sneezes, we catch a cold. It’s not just us, however; countries around the world are interdependent for economic survival. To bring things a little closer to home, I’ll tell you about a recipe I made recently. I baked a pound cake for Easter this year. As I am gluten intolerant, I used rice flour (in place of wheat flower), eggs, sugar, coconut milk (we ran out of butter), and baking powder. A quick glance at the back of the packaging will tell you that my flour came from the United States, as did my eggs and my baking powder, my coconut milk came from Thailand and my sugar came from the Dominican Republic. What’s even crazier is that the rice that came from my American flour is originally from Asia. Crazier yet, I wouldn’t even have been able to make the cake without the recipe which was accessed on the internet, the oven that was made on an assembly line, and the baking tin to give my cake it’s pretty shape. The tools that I consider common place are the result of an interconnected global economy whose mechanisms I can really only see the surface of.

Why is economics interesting? First, because it analyses something, wealth, that is safeguarded by a figment of our collective imagination, it’s metric, money. One of my favourite authors, historian Yuval Noah Harari, makes a point to say that institutions exist in our collective imaginations. The fact that millions of people believe in them and are willing to depend on them, makes them real. Banks and the money they hold are no different. We make them real by believing in them. We value goods, services, and capital in money. A cupcake is worth $3, a concert worth $50, and a house worth $500,000. What’s interesting to me, is that money has value because we believe it does.

Another reason I find Economics interesting is that it shows us how people spend their money, hypothesizes why they spend their money that way, and examines the result of the way people have chosen to distribute their wealth. As I understand it, a dollar spent is a vote for a product that a given individual thinks should exist in the market place. By giving a store keeper 3 dollars for a popsicle I say two things: one, I think this popsicle is worth at least 3 dollars, and two, it says I am willing to support the making of this popsicle so I can consume it. Any person with even a single dollar has the ability to affect change, simply based on how they chose to spend that dollar. On a grand scale, our choices create markets and guide the goods that do and do not come our way.

On the other hand, when someone has no money, they have little ability to vote for what they believe should exist in the marketplace. In my understanding, capitalism is built on the idea that people working in their own best interest, financially, will benefit everyone. This is because "the number of dollars spent" on goods and services is a metric of the goods and services people want in a given space. However, if money is distributed in a way that gives some people the ability to cast this vote and restricts others from the same opportunity, the market only reflects the votes and desires of a few. This is the dilemma posed to me by historically based iniquities. Ideally, people work hard and with the money they earn they can invest in themselves and support the goods and services they enjoy. Over time, they build wealth and hopefully have a little something to pass on to their descendants— generational wealth. Unfortunately, historically, this pretty picture gets pretty badly smudged. A notable example of this smudging is in the institution of slavery as practiced in the Americas. Slaves worked but were not payed. What would have been their wages and the foundations for generational wealth, instead lined the pockets of the owners of plantations and went towards industrializing the western world. As a result, Afro-descendants in many parts of the world are late to the game of developing generational wealth. Economics helps quantify, at least in some respects, the impact of slavery, colonialism, and sex-based discrimination on populations. With this quantification, I can show hard numbers to sceptics and together we can brainstorm more favourable and equitable policies to benefit the moneyless and voteless victims of history. That way the goods and services that those populations need and want will make an appearance on the market.



That goes towards my last point, Economics helps to quantify disasters, both historical and contemporary. I fell in love with Economics during my Irma year, the year I was evacuated to the US to continue schooling. Many people wanted me to tell them what I experienced, how I felt, what it meant for the future of my home. What they were asking about was the impact of a disaster. Sometimes I felt ok telling them about it. I would say "a coconut flew through our window which created a vacuum that sucked the roof off of our house". Or "I went outside and it looked like someone torched my home, there wasn’t a single leaf on the trees". Other times, I didn’t want to. It hurt too bad. I would instead say, it did billions of dollars of damage. For me, it quantified an unquantifiable experience. For those reasons I love Economics.



I hope you find Economics a little bit more interesting now! If your curiosity has been piqued and you want to learn more about it, I would recommend the book "The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained". If you’re interested in learning more about the institutions that exist in our collective imaginations I would recommend Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. If you want to learn about the impact of slavery on the development of the Western World, the seminal book Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams was recommended to me by a historian friend.



Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed! I hope your social distancing hasn’t been too dreary! I would like to say a special thanks to my editor, Ms Amelie Clark. If you’d like to check out more of my projects please visit the links below and check out Amelie’s work on bullet journals if you’re in need of some inspo for an organisational glow-up during your lockdown.





Amelie’s Bullet Journal (Buju) Page: https://instagram.com/acbulletjournal?igshid=1mcj29v3kokoz