I like the idea of teaching economics by jokes like this! That also shows how broad economics are - it wasn't till after college that I realized economics includes all sorts of human behavior aside from just making money.
Regarding social security, there's one other downside of having half of it nominally paid by the employer: paying the "self-employment tax." When you're self-employed, you need to pay both halves of the social security tax on your self-employment profit. As a VITA tax preparer volunteer, I've needed to explain to too many people how, yes, they need to pay twice the percentage that shows up on W-2's. Most of their eyes just glaze over, but for the ones who are paying attention, it's another nasty surprise.
I once wrote up an argument for why polygamy would benefit women, children, and the future of the species. And some ideas on how it could be done better without the usual issues. But I even wrote that I don’t want to share my husband, and I want my daughters to have high value monogamous husbands, but if I had a son I would want him to be polygamous. So we have an issue where what’s good for the group is in conflict with what those enough fortunate enough to have husbands want.
I recently had a friend go through a divorce and having to deal with the lemon market. She keeps saying that she thinks I’m right about this, we would be better off sharing the best men and leaving the bottom half of men alone. But no one is willing to share.
[Economics... uses words... whose meaning they think they know. That makes it tempting to listen with half an ear in the belief that the professor is just droning on in unnecessary detail about things you already understand and only discover that you were wrong when you get back your first exam.]
The same occurs in engineering school. "Work", "Energy", "Power" and other words have specific meanings in engineering, meanings which only loosely match common usage.
I will be honest and admit that I can't say I followed and memorized everything you said, but it was interesting and kept my attention and the Athens fact was new to me. I have the book Eat The Rich by PJ O'Rourke, which I am hoping will improve my understanding of economics without making me fall asleep. The problem is his book uses foul language and I can't risk my child who reads everything finding it. So it will take me some time to get to it while it is in hiding. Anyway, the thing I began writing to say, was that I found your writing just as entertaining as his.
Once upon a time I wanted to make sure there were no missing concepts in my knowledge of basic economics, which I'd picked up higgledy piggledy from all kinds of random explanations of specific arguments. I found a free AP economics class online, from Khan academy. (Well, maybe I shouldn't have called it a class - no active instructor.)
It appeared to be designed to teach its students to regurgitate answers they didn't need to understand, with special emphasis on terminology like "the curve moves to the left". Little or nothing was said about where the models being taught did or did not apply, thus suggesting they were true in all circumstances. (Clearly the students weren't expected to regurgitate caveats like "in the absence of monopoly" or "in a perfectly competitive market".)
I suspect there was little or nothing wrong with the course that wasn't standard for all AP economics classes, except maybe that it was totally dry and boring, unlike your suggestions above.
I hope college intro classes are less bad, but I doubt it.
(For the record - I didn't find any gaps in my knowledge from that set of lectures, except that I hadn't internalized the "moves to the left" argot. I could draw the diagrams, but they still don't look like a moving curve to me.)
I like the idea of teaching economics by jokes like this! That also shows how broad economics are - it wasn't till after college that I realized economics includes all sorts of human behavior aside from just making money.
Regarding social security, there's one other downside of having half of it nominally paid by the employer: paying the "self-employment tax." When you're self-employed, you need to pay both halves of the social security tax on your self-employment profit. As a VITA tax preparer volunteer, I've needed to explain to too many people how, yes, they need to pay twice the percentage that shows up on W-2's. Most of their eyes just glaze over, but for the ones who are paying attention, it's another nasty surprise.
Here are the rest of my economics jokes: https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2018/12/all-my-economics-jokes.html
I have an old Russian joke you might want to add to the list:
An angry father comes home.
Father: the government doubled the price on vodka!
Son: does that mean you'll be drinking less.
Father: no, it means you'll be eating less.
(Relevant economic concepts: indifference curves, elasticity of demand, unintended consequences of policy, anything else?)
I once wrote up an argument for why polygamy would benefit women, children, and the future of the species. And some ideas on how it could be done better without the usual issues. But I even wrote that I don’t want to share my husband, and I want my daughters to have high value monogamous husbands, but if I had a son I would want him to be polygamous. So we have an issue where what’s good for the group is in conflict with what those enough fortunate enough to have husbands want.
I recently had a friend go through a divorce and having to deal with the lemon market. She keeps saying that she thinks I’m right about this, we would be better off sharing the best men and leaving the bottom half of men alone. But no one is willing to share.
[Economics... uses words... whose meaning they think they know. That makes it tempting to listen with half an ear in the belief that the professor is just droning on in unnecessary detail about things you already understand and only discover that you were wrong when you get back your first exam.]
The same occurs in engineering school. "Work", "Energy", "Power" and other words have specific meanings in engineering, meanings which only loosely match common usage.
I will be honest and admit that I can't say I followed and memorized everything you said, but it was interesting and kept my attention and the Athens fact was new to me. I have the book Eat The Rich by PJ O'Rourke, which I am hoping will improve my understanding of economics without making me fall asleep. The problem is his book uses foul language and I can't risk my child who reads everything finding it. So it will take me some time to get to it while it is in hiding. Anyway, the thing I began writing to say, was that I found your writing just as entertaining as his.
My book _Hidden Order_, mentioned in the post, is designed for people who would like to learn economics and not be put asleep in the process.
I ordered it. Fyi there are only two reviews on Amazon, both negative, but I've read enough of your writing to ignore them.
Once upon a time I wanted to make sure there were no missing concepts in my knowledge of basic economics, which I'd picked up higgledy piggledy from all kinds of random explanations of specific arguments. I found a free AP economics class online, from Khan academy. (Well, maybe I shouldn't have called it a class - no active instructor.)
It appeared to be designed to teach its students to regurgitate answers they didn't need to understand, with special emphasis on terminology like "the curve moves to the left". Little or nothing was said about where the models being taught did or did not apply, thus suggesting they were true in all circumstances. (Clearly the students weren't expected to regurgitate caveats like "in the absence of monopoly" or "in a perfectly competitive market".)
I suspect there was little or nothing wrong with the course that wasn't standard for all AP economics classes, except maybe that it was totally dry and boring, unlike your suggestions above.
I hope college intro classes are less bad, but I doubt it.
(For the record - I didn't find any gaps in my knowledge from that set of lectures, except that I hadn't internalized the "moves to the left" argot. I could draw the diagrams, but they still don't look like a moving curve to me.)
Would you prefer "shifts to the left"?
It seems the natural way of describing the change from one function plotted as y=f(x) to another where every value of y occurs at a lower value of x.
1. This is great; our kid is finishing up their PhD in Econ, having taught a number of classes. (Not going into teaching after graduation, though.)
2. I like that definition of "richer."
3. I spend four years pining to go to Georgia Tech, as I describe in https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Take care and stay safe, everyone.