CriticalThinkingAcademy

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This post serves as a primer for future posts related to topics in economics. While not necessarily core to a critical thinking curriculum, economic concepts are vital for understanding a modern policy environment. I cannot begin to describe the vast disconnect between basic economic literacy and the folk models held by large swaths of the general public. As an economist myself, perhaps I am biased in thinking many of our problems in society are in some way, caused by this illiteracy. However, I think there is a strong case to be made that obsolete, ideologically laden, underdeveloped, and empirically unsound economic mental models held by various groups, are contributing significantly to the deterioration of the nations welfare. Therefore, I think it's important to lay out how professional or academic economists come to their conclusions. The public broadly has no idea what economists do; how they reason, their models of the economy, what a model even is, their sources of informat...