The Columbian’s editorial (“Financial literacy crucial for Americans’ future,” In Our View, Dec. 20) is spot on. Back in the last century when I taught high school in a suburb of New York City (1965-97), the state curriculum required that graduates complete a half-year of economics (and a half-year of government).
The economics class that I taught for several years covered microeconomics, which included many vital practical “how-tos:” balancing a checkbook, spending and saving, acquiring a mortgage, etc., and macroeconomics covering the role of the government’s use of fiscal policy (taxing and spending) and the Federal Reserve’s use of monetary policy to “control” the extremes of inflation and unemployment.
So, my students know that the United States’ deficit could be brought into balance not only by spending less, but by a more reasonable tax structure, one that collected more income from the highest earners and reduced the income lost from tax cheats. They would know, too, that the terrible inflation we’ve had the past few years was necessitated by the huge government outlays under both the Trump and Biden administrations to save the country hit by the devastation of the COVID pandemic … and that the Fed has raised interest rates over the past year and a half to reduce inflation.
