Explaining Economic Terms

Apr 12, 20120

W. Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2007.

The people in this world who have managed to generate a lot of wealth for themselves are defined as “not me.” I do, however, have a plan for getting rich, involving my father having an enormous amount of money that he hasn’t yet told me about. (Whenever I mention this to my dad, he laughs uproariously, which confirms my suspicions — only someone with a lot of assets would find the whole topic so amusing.)

Having a lot of money carries with it a grave responsibility, so to prepare I picked up a copy of BusinessWeek, which I am sure is a very informative publication if you bother to read it. I sort of scanned it to learn Economic Terms, like:

Inflation: This is where everything costs more money. It’s bad. The opposite of inflation is deflation, which is where everything costs less. Deflation is also bad. Then there’s price stability, where everything costs the same. It’s bad, too. Your best bet is to stay in bed.

Money Supply: This is what others have and you don’t.

Balance of Trade: The United States imports manufactured goods and raw materials, and exports Britney Spears. When we wind up importing more than we export, we need to get busy and breed more entertainers.

Interest: When banks loan you money, they take a lot of interest in you paying them back. When you deposit money in the bank, they don’t express much interest.

Capitalism: This is a system where, if you had a lot of money, you could invest it in a company like Enron and lose it all. Or you could start your own business, work for decades without a vacation, finally make a success of it, and then die and leave it to your children, who will sell the place to a company that wants to build a Taco Bell.

One example of a successful capitalist is Donald Trump, who this year helped a poor beauty contestant, because everyone deserves a second chance, especially one who looks like that in a bikini. “Even I make mistakes,” Donald Trump was quoted as saying. “Just look at my hair.”

Socialism: Socialism is the belief that, for the good of the common people, all wealth should be transferred from the greedy rich to the hard-working generals.

Under socialism, medicine, shelter and dental services are all free, available to everyone and substandard. Socialism works very well in countries like China, where they ignore it. Many countries experiment with socialism until they get tired of being poor, and then they try capitalism until they have money, and then they try socialism again.

Monopoly: Monopoly is a game my sister always loses because she’ll trade anything to own the railroads. Utility companies are said to “enjoy a monopoly,” though how anybody can enjoy a situation where my sister winds up crying, I’ll never understand. (My sister also always wants to own the utilities.)

Disposable income: This is the part of your income that vanishes right down the garbage disposal — in other words, all of it.

Retirement income: This is the combination of private and government programs that will enable you, at age 70, to go to work for Wal-Mart.

Depression: The Great Depression was the experience that our grandparents suffered through in which they learned values like hard work and thrift. Fortunately, the Great Depression ended, so our generation doesn’t have to bother with any of that. No one talks about other depressions, so apparently they weren’t all that great — maybe they were just “good” or “mildly depressing.”

Information Economy: We used to build products that were the envy of the world, until Toyota. Now, we are moving to an era where everyone will make money by e-mailing each other. Most office workers have already made this transition.

Thomas Carlyle said economics is a “dismal science,” probably referring to how I feel after I try to balance my checkbook. (No matter how I recalculate it, there’s always less money in the account than I know intuitively should be there.) In my opinion, the economy would be a lot less dismal if it would figure out a way to transfer more wealth my way.

I sure hope my father agrees.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at http://www.creators.com.