Today, we peer into a world where shadowy government stooges manipulate the levers of
fiscal policy from deep in their evil lairs.
They pick economic winners and losers and control the business cycle, creating recessions
and controlling inflation to serve their nefarious purposes.
Adriene: Waahah hah hah!
Nah, fiscal policy's a completely legitimate tool used by non-shadowy government officials
to correct the economy.
(Overlapping) Adriene: I'm Adriene Hill and I'm the host
of Crash Course Economics.
Jacob: I'm Jacob Clifford and I'm the host of Crash Course Economics.
Jacob: Stan!
Stan: You're co-hosts.
Adriene: Oh, co-hosts, awesome!
Jacob: Alright, yeah, whoo!
[Intro]
Jacob: I'm Mr. Clifford; and I'm a high school economics teacher and YouTuber, and I'm gonna
focus on teaching you the theories and graphs of economics, you know, the textbook stuff.
Adriene: And I'm Adriene Hill; I'm a senior reporter for the public radio show Marketplace,
and I'm gonna focus on showing you the real world applications of economics, you know,
the good stuff, the really fun stuff.
Jacob: Hey!
We're both fun.
Adriene: 911, what's your emergency?
Jacob: My house is on fire, how much do you charge to put it out?
Adriene: It'll be $10,000, what's your credit card number?
Jacob: Economics is not the study of money or getting rich, although, understanding economics
can help with that, and economics is not primarily about men in bow-ties forecasting what will
happen in a given market or the overall economy.
Economics is the study of people and choices.
Adriene: We can't promise you that learning economics will make you wealthy, but we can
promise that learning economics will enlighten your mind and make you a more informed decision
maker, and that makes us all better off.