What the Hell is an Economy?

Congratulations on making it this far.

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To entice you to read this book, I included at no extra charge some interesting artwork (thank you Cormac), plus a couple of really funny jokes (which did increase the price).

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My next book will be on rockets.

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Thank you, COVID-19 pandemic. Without the lock-down, I would have never found the time to write this book.

I hope by the time you are reading this that a vaccine has been found, the economy has recovered, the expected recession was short, and people are back to work.

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Could we have been better prepared? I am not talking about a stockpile of masks and hand sanitizer. Prepared as in a stockpile of wealth, stashed away for a rainy day (or a rainy year). What would such a stockpile of wealth look like? Dollars in a vault? Gold bars buried underground?

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Not at all. Repeat after me because this is the book’s mantra:

 

Wealth is not money, and money is not wealth.

 

A stockpile of societal wealth would have looked like:

• An abundance of functioning and well-maintained infrastructure for water, energy, sewage, and transportation.

• A modern education system with plenty of funded scientific research.

• The deployment of the latest technology for the Internet, cellular, and satellite communications systems.

• Plenty of modern hospitals staffed with well-trained professionals.

• Strategic reserves of critical commodities such as oil, rare earth elements, etc.

• Financial reserves at all levels of government.

• A minimum federal deficit, and minimum government debt.

• A manageable level of corporate debt.

• A low level of unemployment.

• Lowest possible number of individuals dependent on the government.

• Most households with a manageable level of debt, available financial savings, and their own stockpile of emergency supplies, food, etc.

• Fully funded pensions.

• And most importantly, a strong and stable currency, to act as a fiscal reserve in a time of need.

 

Yes, this sounds utopian. And no, this is not something you can simply vote for. This is what a wealthy society would look like, one that can weather a pandemic induced economic shutdown with minimum disruption.

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We were not ready. The rest of the world even less so. Let us get it right next time. There will be a next time. Our society, and all other societies, need to be wealthier, with the understanding that wealth cannot be simply printed—it can only be created from the application of productive labor to economic resources within the confines of a healthy, vibrant, market-driven economy.

The best way to prevent a humanitarian crisis is to be financially strong.

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This book explains how this can be achieved. It explains to you what an economy is, what money is, how our banking system works, how and why our federal government borrows money, what corporations are, what bonds are, and how we can make this system more productive for the benefit of all.

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Some of you may already have a degree in economics. If that is the case, this book is probably not for you. But for the rest of humanity, it attempts to answer that often-asked question:

What the hell is an economy?

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No experience necessary. Read on.