Economics Explained

Latest Episodes:

Why is Working Harder Making Us Poorer? Oct 21, 2020

Show notes

Workers today are amongst the hardest worked individuals in history, while simultaneously being the most efficient.

Sure, they have traded in grueling factory floors and coal mines for air conditioned offices so they probably don’t get quite as much sympathy as their industrial revolution contemporaries but the world today is marred by different challenges.

Hustle culture and the glorification of roles like surgeons, investment bankers, and corporate lawyers have set a precedent of on-call all the time, under the guise of professionalism or being a team player.

Expectations and key performance indicators are increasingly monitored, scrutinized, and increased year on year.

Now the discussion around overworking is not a new one, but it tends to focus on the mental health implications of this reality rather than the economic impacts.

Now we are going to be leaving that aspect of this discussion to the side for this video and instead focus just on the economics of the overworked world.

Partially this is because there are many people far more qualified to talk about mental health and partially because well, sometimes for things to get changed it needs to make economic sense for them to be changed.

So the health implications of 100 hour weeks aside, we really only need to answer one question.

Does people working longer and harder make for a more prosperous economy?

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Why You Should Be Very Afraid Of A K-shaped Recovery Oct 20, 2020

Show notes

The economic impacts of 2020 have been felt far and wide and we have covered these problems in-depth in a handful of videos on this channel. But the logical question that most people are asking is what comes next?

Disasters happen and they are never pleasant but part of being a nation, a business, or even an individual is being able to deal with adversity and come out the other side. Because of this people are expecting a recovery of sorts, and it seems like the only point of contention will be what letter of the alphabet this recovery will represent.

Other speculations include a W-shaped recovery where we will see 1 recovery then another decline as the effects of government stimulus and relief packages wear off only to be followed by another genuine recovery later on.

But amongst all of this, there is one type of recovery that we should all be very afraid of, one that is not getting nearly as much airtime and one that is actually being hurt by a lot of current policies and that is a K shaped recovery.

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Why Economists Never Agree on Anything? Oct 20, 2020

Show notes

Economics is considered a social science, and although some other scientists from more “rigorous” fields don’t always welcome it into their little club, it still follows the same processes to explore the world around us.

And, as with science, or anything that is extremely complex for that matter, there are disagreements between practitioners at all levels of academia and throughout the entire history of the subject.

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The Multi-Billion Dollar Industry You've Never Heard Of Oct 19, 2020

Show notes

The market for alternative investments has been a really exciting field in recent years, with everything from Bitcoins, to beanie babies being touted as the next must-have to outperform the boring old stock market.

Now some of these investments have been good some of these investments have been bad, and many haven’t been around long enough to really tell yet, but the aftermarket for high fashion is a really interesting entrant into this world.

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Vietnam: The Economy of the Next Decade? Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world today. In 2019 its growth was only beaten out by a selection of far smaller and far more unstable national economies.

With a huge and very hardworking population not to mention a powerful ally to it’s north this could be the country to watch out for in the next 10 years. But this success is by no means guaranteed. As with many other nations in the Southeast Asian region, it has many hurdles it needs to deal with to become a fair dinkum developed economy.

So, what has been behind Vietnam’s Economic Growth? What will the impacts of 2020 do to this growth? And perhaps most importantly How will this nation break into the Developed Nations club?

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Why Does China Manipulate its own Currency? Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

China is not playing fair in the game of global trade, they are cheating other countries, companies, and consumers out of business by Manipulating their own currency.

So how does a nation like china control their currency? Can this actually be used to give an unfair advantage in global trade? If it can, why doesn’t every country do it? Can businesses profit from this man-made market failure? And does a currency price even matter?

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The Student Debt Crisis Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

Student loans are financial tools that have been put in place to give promising individuals the ability to get an education and increase their potential for future earnings with a strong professional career.

On a nationwide level having a well educated and skilled workforce is one of the strongest determinants of economic success. We have seen this time and time again with nations like South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and Germany, who are not necessarily blessed with a wealth of natural resources or great geography but nonetheless hold their own as some of the world's wealthiest nations.

For all of these reasons, young men and women from around the world have grown up with the idea that their education is the best investment they can make…

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Why Becoming A Cashless Society Is A Terrible Idea Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

Physical cash is one of the easiest ways to instantly and reliably conduct commerce.

It has been well-documented that the ease of transactions within a nation is as big of a determinant of a country’s success as is access to natural resources like oil and natural gas, or even a well-educated population.

So, what would happen if we got rid of cash?

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Do We Need to Work 40 Hours a Week? Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

There are a lot of things that we take for granted in our day to day lives, and one of the big ones is how we spend a good portion of our waking hours.

Based on sophisticated youtube analytics we can determine that a majority of people watching this video are full-time employees working 40 hour weeks at their jobs

So is 40 hours really the optimal work week, and are their alternatives that are based more on economics rather than tradition?

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The Biggest Wealth Transfer in History is Upon Us - Here is What it Means Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

The wealthiest generation in history is starting to retire, and die. In doing so they will be responsible for the greatest wealth transfer in history, as they pass along a collective 30 trillion dollars to their beneficiaries over the next few decades, just in the United States alone.

That kind of capital movement is going to have some extremely significant impacts on the economy some of which we are already starting to feel.

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