Economics For Progressives

The degree of stability of consumer spending is a reflection of the consumer’s continued feeling of well-being and a high degree of confidence in their own future. If the consumer each year is able to look back upon an increase in their net income, they can look forward to improver personal prosperity. Consumers who purchase big items on credit--who take on major credit commitments--need to feel confident about their prospects for future income. Since the consumer is always the most important single factor in determining whether business is good or bad it follows that consumer demand is a key sector of our economy.

Consumers have to learn to buy and consume in order to survive and function in the American economy. Although many excellent organizations are working to improve consumer welfare, the best protection against consumer fraud is a well informed consumer, one well grounded in personal economic competence.

A consumer education mandate So that all students who leave high school are provided with a basic understanding of our private enterprise system and with instruction in consumer education. In the past many states have passed consumer education mandates few schools have included consumer education in their curriculum.

Our economy is constantly changing, due in large part to it’s continuing development of new products, services and methods for meeting the changing needs. In our economy, we are free to exercise choice among many alternatives in both earning and spending. Our ability in the United States, to produce quantities of goods and services has raised the standard of living of the average consumer far beyond that of most of he rest of the world. This continues to be true even though we have unemployment and poverty in our society.

How Our Economy Works. Increases in the items that appear in the left half of the circle Such as Investment, which creates more Production and Employment, will result in increases in the items that appear in the right half of the circle, such
as Demand and Income. Increases of the items that appear in the right half of the circle such as Employment and Production.

The diagram illustrates the relationship between the Investment Theory and the Consumption Theory. Both Investment and Consumption functioning together make our economy work!

Consumer education aims to help the student to become an informed consumer; to understand the role of the consumer in our society; to develop a sound decision making process based upon one’s goals and values; to utilize resources to facilitate greater satisfaction in making consumer decisions; to understand the rights and responsibilities of the consumer in society.
Instead, our Government, educators, media and even our elected representatives would prefer to keep the public at large uninformed and susceptible to their manipulation and easy prey to the shysters, WHY?