Most non-economists will only engage in research as a tool to reinforce a bias, and there are plenty of “economists” willing to cater to that bias, whichever leaning it takes. This makes it difficult to determine if a source is driven by economic reality or a contrivance that perpetuates a political agenda. I believe even the most non-engaged could name a couple of examples of the latter simply because of the face time given them in campaigns and our agenda driven media.
Since money itself is not a real “thing”, it can be manipulated into a variety of boxes that are only defined by the thinking of those who establish their boundaries. Using currency to represent real resources has been both man’s greatest tool of social evolution and the source of almost all of what we consider to be wrong with the world. This dichotomy has shaped the politics and social policies of nations, and the world, through most of man’s history and has been the source of more conspiracy theories than has the concept of aliens.
That said, there are some simple mechanisms that exist, even if not adhered to, in the process of creating currencies that can’t be simply ignored or denied for political expediency and result in economic success. It is those mechanisms that the amateur economists would be wise to gain an understand of, or our economy will be managed by forcing rules that don’t apply and aren’t compatible with reality. No where is this more evident than in the United States, which has a sovereign fiat currency that isn’t dependent upon any source of revenue or relation to a commodity or exchange rate. In spite of having a currency, and subsequent economy, not dependent upon taxation or revenue, America has been the leader in the world for advocating for fiscal restraint and balanced budgets, even to considerable detriment to large portions of its population.
There is no validity to any conversation involving “affordability” in the American economy, and yet such conversations dominate the political rhetoric of both major political parties, with only differences of opinion about how rapidly we should go about removing all currency from the economy, defaulting on all of our private debts, and selling a considerable portion of our resources in a denomination other than the dollar, which are all realities inherent with “paying off” the national debt. The fact that every time we have even made headway toward that misguided goal has resulted in deep depressions or long recessions, only reversed by massive deficit spending, is lost on both politicians and constituents. This has resulted in over-leveraging of private debt and a continual cycle of bubbles and busts, contributing to the current political unrest that is boiling just below the surface shown to us by a corporate controlled media.
This absurd folly has its roots in the economic thinking of people who wrote theories concerning economics under completely different realities, or simply allowed their ideologies to lead them into areas they wished to be valid, but aren’t. I would greatly prefer that economists begin with the realities and mechanisms that actually exist and then expand their theories from that reality to present us with plans that we can accept or reject instead of denying the realities to achieve an end goal that is much different than what is likely to result from following their advice.
