Abstract

The economy is us, and it is our everyday decisions that move it through the cycle of booms and busts. We, the 7 billion people on the planet, are all economists, that is, citizen economists. As citizen economists we rely on each other to set the price of civilisation. We are interconnected in long and complex webs from producer to consumer, traders to financiers, policy-makers to policy-takers, in a circle of responsibility for our one planet. Economic decisions happen daily in households around the world because economics is really about how we behave as individuals, households, businesses and governments. This 4- week course, "Economics for People", is designed for a middle school class with the focus on economics as happening to everyone, every day, everywhere, every time. It begins with economic phenomena: how we experience the dips and frenzies of activity, where we call for government intervention, why entrepreneurial innovation is intrinsically human, what our First Nation Peoples can teach us about value and how our future exists in the decisions we make today. Using a toolkit of economic ideas and concepts spanning from the Greco-Roman world through to modern-day economists, students of "Economics for People" can evaluate the policies and issues from different perspectives, beyond neo-classical assumptions. This short course plumbs the depths of economic thinking, concepts and the modern-day dilemma of climate change, tapping into sociology, moral philosophy and politics. It utilizes a pluralist perspective that puts economics back into the frame for people.