Hi! I am an economist and this is a talk about economics. Okay don’t turn off.

Don’t press the next

button. Hear me up. Look I get it. I know when the topic of economics comes up most people shut off.
And I am pretty sure I am not what you picture. When you think about up…She is an economist in a
major financial institution. But that’s not your fault…we are taught that economics is a dry...complicated
and sometimes heartless felt. I am here to tell you that actually economics is accessible to each and every
one of us and if you are up-to the field you might discover something even more powerful within
yourself. Let start about the biggest misconception about economics, that it is strictly about money. Even
if you work up the definition of economics, it will tell you it’s about production, consumption and transfer
of wealth. Boring! And kind of wrong. A better definition of economics, the one I have always subscribed
to you is that “It’s the study of allocation of scarce resources in a given constraint.” Okay. Also a little
boring. But so much more universal. Basically economics is the study of what we do with things that we
have in limited supply and when we are giving rules around how to use them. Sure, Money is one thing
that most of us don’t have an unlimited amount of. But…What about the planning or the Scarce resource
of all. Time. Economy studies all these things in more. But economics is complicated. No, let me show
you. Let’s break down the most fundamental concept in economics. Supply and Demand. The idea that
when supply is low and demand is high, prices rise and vice versa. Okay. You make complex economic
decisions every day. Sometimes they are pretty sudden. Like have you ever gone to a store and pulled the
product off the shelf and thought you know what I will just check on Amazon to see if it’s cheaper. And
sometimes large disruptive forces make those economic traces more obvious to us. Here is another idea
that central to economics that seems complicated but actually pretty straight forward. We call an
economy’s ability to grow, it’s potential growth rate. An economist measure at as the change in labor
force participation rate + the change in productivity. Okay, I am already bored too. So let’s just throw out
the formulas and from now on when you think of an economy I want you to picture your favorite Burger
joint. The growth rate of that burger joint is really simply how many burger it can make. That’s obvious
goanna be function of two things.1st How many people work behind the counter (Your Labor force) and
2nd How fast each one make a ham burger (Your Productivity). If followed this far…Boom!! You have
understood the concept of economy and its potential growth rate. And here comes the fun part. Once we
know what our potential is the next step is to live up to it. Both as individuals but also in our economies at
large. How do we make sure that our economy is not just living up-to their potential and growing their
potential over time. Well in my mind we need to have pretty big conversations about affordable and
accessible child care, public transportation, competition and even re-skilling and re-tooling our economy
towards the more sustainable and inclusive future. That’s our real economic potential. There are entire
sub fields of economics devoted to improving the way world works. There environmental economics
which seeks to preserve our planet, stratification economics which studies income and racial inequalities,
feminist economics which look into issues like male and female wage gap. See not only is economics
something that we can all understand there is a place for all of us in it.