Economics rant

Forget about math. Few graduates will ever retain their knowledge of calculus and algebra past their final exams. It's information useless to most laypeople, excepting those who are planning to major in math upon getting into college.

In my high school, economics was an optional course, and one that I avoided. Economics--a dusty, irrelevant-sounding course I assumed had nothing to do with me.

Oh how wrong I was.

Economics is the prime mover of world events. Historical events, so often presented as static events based on the decisions of a few important people, are much easier to understand as the product of economic trends. Colonialism, imperialism, WWII, the Darfur genocide, U.S. civil war, Iraq war, it all comes back to money.

Then there's economics and how it affects my life. How to create and stick to a budget, what a credit card is, what loans are, taxes. Why are these topics relegated to an optional upper level course? We should be taught this from 8th grade onwards.

As a voter, it would be so much easier to decide who to vote for when I know the politician's stance on economics. Does s/he support Keynesian economics or Friedman's neoliberal model? The answer will greatly affect me while s/he serves their term.

Economics is an obfusticating topic. One of my econ professors in college joked about a colleague of his that, whenever a non-economist starting asking too many questions, would pull out 5-syllable terms to dampen all curiosity.

People are economically illiterate, both in terms of personal budget-keeping and national policy. With transnational corporations on the rise, economic trends are becoming more important than political trends. If we want a society prepared for what I'm starting to believe is such an eventuality, we need to replace math with economics courses. Teach our 1st graders basic mathematics, then start showing them supply and demand curves. We can no longer stand for economic illiteracy--it should be as necessary as reading and writing.