Civics U: Civic And Economic Education
The field of Economics is often treated as an academic field separate from Government and thus separate from Civics. And many high schools and college programs, while requiring classes in government and history, do not include basic economics in their offerings or at least in their core requirements. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to include Economic Education as part of Civic Education.
The principles of free markets, entrepreneurship, individual liberties, limited government, and personal and collective responsibility are core components of our American system of life and government; and economics and our economic system are an integral part of our social system. And government, by way of taxes, regulation of business and trade, and expenditures and investments, nationally and internationally, is greatly involved in and affected by economic activities.
Our federal government is a very large operation! And the private sector is even larger. The U.S. GDP (gross domestic product) in 2020 was $20.93 trillion. Of this, $6.55 trillion consisted of government spending. Thus, $14.38 trillion consisted of expenditures by the private sector.
And here are more specific items to be understood and covered in economic education: inflation, tax rates and policy, interest rates, “the Fed”, market value, import taxes, tariffs, income taxes, gold standard, exchange rate, supply and demand, scarcity of resources, trade imbalance, investments, economic output, unemployment levels, fiscal policy.
Understanding the complexity of these matters and what kinds of political and economic practices and policies will best serve the interests of the people definitely calls for education – economic education.
Another reminder goes with this. American culture, rooted largely in Judeo Christian religious principles and individual freedom and enterprise, has produced much material wealth and prosperity through inventiveness and labor*. In contrast, Marxist communism, as an economic system and social philosophy, has often limited individual freedoms. In other words, economic matters are part of broader and basic matters of how society chooses to provide for the well-being of its members.
*This is not to ignore or deny the fact that much of the prosperity was made possible by the possession of land taken from the indigenous peoples, and augmented in the South by the labor of enslaved persons.