Economics

 There is much that I don’t understand. 

I do my best. I read and try but occasionally there are things I will never get my head round. Usually, even if I don’t understand, I can see the other side. Not so with economics. 

In senior school, some of us were picked out as an advanced group, who would take our O Levels early. We were an experiment. Supposedly, we would bring glory upon the school and we would go on to change the world. I doubt this happened, even to those that understood economics. One of the difficulties of this experiment was that with only one class we all had to take the same subjects. Economics (and no music) made me quit the project.

I remember having to draw graphs about supply and demand that made no sense. 

“But why would it be like that?” I asked.“Why don’t people charge less for their product when more people want it? They don’t need to charge as much to make what they need?”

My friend, with the fake tan and a desire to be very rich said, “You don’t understand. They can charge more. Why wouldn’t they? Who doesn’t want to be rich?”

“But not everyone can be rich. Doesn’t that mean you make more people poorer?”

She shrugged and accused me of inverse snobbery.

Later on, I took banking exams, in an act of supreme stupidity, where I was again confused by why full employment wouldn’t be a good thing. I also, apparently, wilfully, refused to understand ‘trickle down economics’

“But if you have enough, you’ll just put it in the bank. If you haven’t then you’ll buy shoes for the kids.”

“Are you a communist?” A colleague, who had just bought a new RS something car in bright orange, asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said, “But I do think economics might be made up to keep the poor in their place.”

I’m reminded of this today, when the news is full of the Energy Price Cap.

I do not understand this.

A price cap, surely has been put in place, for an essential item to stop the rich killing the poor. However, this price cap is being reported as being responsible for the energy price rises. If there wasn’t a price cap then surely the companies and market forces would apply the laws of supply and demand and as prices rise, people would use less and the price would come down. You see, I don’t understand.