This is the Netherlands, a picturesque nation filled with windmills, tulip fields, and uhh coffee shops.  The nation is looked to by many as an extremely forward-thinking place that practices some pretty progressive policies. The nation has an incredibly strong social security system, with universal healthcare, robust retirement pensions, as well as allowances for maternity leave. And These kinds of policies are mirrored in other areas as well, the nation is home to relatively high tax rates, and the protections for employees are very strong almost to the point that people joke it is impossible to be fired in the Netherlands.  So this kind of looks like a liberal paradise right? Well, it would if it were not hiding a dirty little secret.  This postcard-perfect little nation is according to the world bank the most unequal place on earth, and the extent of the inequality is simply staggering.  We have explored south Africa on the channel before, which normally gets this less than desirable title. And if you were to pose this question to google, it’s what you would walk away thinking. But this isn’t the whole story. In terms of wealth inequality in recent years, South Africa has been pretty tame. The Netherlands by contrast is the only country on earth that is more unequal than the world itself. So what is going on here? Similar policies to the ones that have been commonplace in the Netherlands for decades are being proposed by politicians in places like the United States as a way to curb the issue of wealth inequality. But if we look at the results it doesn’t look like they will do that at all.  So to really understand this we are going to as always look at a few key issues. How did the Netherlands of all places become the land of inequality? What does this teach us about the nature of wealth in the modern world? And how can this help us create more robust economic policies that work to benefit everyone? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China has been home to the most extreme economic growth in human history. In four short decades, the nation has gone from a struggling backwater filled with poverty to this, a nation of glistening skyscrapers and more Gucci stores than you can poke a stick at. The driver of this growth has obviously been its embrace of the free market and opening itself up to international trade.  The nation has always had huge potential, given that historically for 1,900 out of the last 2,000 years it has been the largest economy on earth, but now it is finally realizing that potential once again.  Seeing this sustained growth people are obviously keen to jump on board, millions of dollars are been made by millions of people and any logical investor would be foolish to not have exposure to the largest growth market in the world right? I spend a fair amount of time chatting to channel viewers on discord, Patreon, and even in the comments section of the video’s and it’s probably one of the questions I see the most, Mr economics man how can I invest in Chinese companies stock?  Now I don’t want to sound rude, and I promise I absolutely mean this in the nicest possible way, but if you have to ask someone on youtube how you can invest in Chinese equities, you absolutely should not at all be investing in Chinese equities.  And in fact even for more seasoned investors, the market for Chinese companies is not exactly the promised land of double-digit annual returns you may think it is.  This is because there are a few major problems that have yet to be overcome, the stock market in China is both too regulated and not regulated enough. Which sounds silly but let’s explore it by looking at this problem piece by piece.  How is the Chinese stock market over-regulated?  How is the Chinese stock market under-regulated? And why does this mean that most investors probably shouldn’t be investing in these markets?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Texas, the second-largest state in the USA by landmass, population, and GDP.  But perhaps being runner up is not so bad in all of these categories. Texas has for many decades been a huge driving force of prosperity, not only for the people within the state but also for all of the USA. The state provides over 40% of the oil production in the country which is, in turn, the largest oil-producing nation in the world.  To give you an idea of just how massive this operation is, Texas produces more oil than, brazil and china combined.  Now for regular channel viewers, you might be thinking that well that’s great and all however, oil wealth doesn’t always guarantee prosperity, but fortunately for Texas, it has diversified itself into a host of other industries some of which are very far removed from what you might picture taking place in the land of cowboy boots and Ford F350’s. Texas today has the fastest growing population in all of the United States which is been driven by the state attracting a range of new businesses that will work with this young new professional demographic to continue to grow a strong economy.  Or at least that is the theory, the rumblings of the world in 2020 have not been easy on the Texan miracle, and for the first time in almost three decades, the state might be starting to show signs of troubled waters.  To see if this could be a hurdle the yeehaw state could not overcome we need to look at a few key areas. What have been the industries driving the growth of Texas? What is it about the state that makes it so attractive to these industries? And what could future growth look like after 2020? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the fallout of one of the most volatile American elections ever financial markets did something very strange, they rose, and rose to new record levels, again. This would be unusual during even a normal election, where most investors tend to sit back and wait for the dust to settle but it is especially strange in 2020. Joe Biden, who everybody is at least 90% confident will be the next president has spoken very openly about plans to raise corporate tax rates and this is coming in conjunction with the tension around how a transition of power may or may not take place, not to mention that global pandemic.  If investors are supposed to fear uncertainty surely they would be terrified of the current world that we live in.  Logic would dictate that the best outcome for the major corporations that make up financial markets would have been a nice simple and decisive Republican victory. At the end of the day, they tend to be a slightly more pro-business party. Instead what they got was an extremely contentious Democratic victory with the potential to bring turbulence around key issues like covid relief packages in the coming month.  So what is going on here? Why have markets rallied so hard in spite of this turbulence Will this market boom reverse if the proposed policies of the Biden's campaign are rolled out. And could it just be that investors no longer favored trump as president? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The war on drugs was declared in 1971 by president Richard Nixon in a press conference that went on to outline a plan to fight the trade of controlled substances across the world. Drugs were declared national enemy number 1.  Since then over 1 trillion dollars have been spent on fighting this battle and by all metrics, it has been money poorly spent.  It’s probably no surprise to anybody that drug-related deaths and crimes have done nothing but rise over the 50 years since Nixon made this declaration.  With the benefit of hindsight, it was pretty easy to see why... you can’t fight the forces of supply and demand in unregulated markets with m16’s and government agents.  Trying to do so would be like trying to fight a hurricane by dropping bombs on it. Not particularly effective and if anything it’s just going to cause even more collateral damage.  But perhaps this is all starting to change, just last week during the election, the people of Oregon also voted on something else that will potentially have even more influence than who the next president is.  The people of the state voted to decriminalize drugs, all drugs, even the hard stuff. This might look like waving the white flag in defeat and finally admitting that drugs have won the war on drugs. But it might also be what we should have been doing all along, fighting the war on drugs with economics.  To understand what economists mean by this we will need to look at a few key areas. Why couldn’t the war on drugs disrupt this market? What is driving the growth in this market? And could legalization provide a better solution to dealing with this issue?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tesla is today the most valuable automaker in the world by market capitalization beating out industry giants like General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen group, and even Toyota.  It has achieved this impressive feet despite a short operating history, a limited product lineup, and even relatively modest sales figures compared to these much more established entities.  In spite of all of these indicators, investors are willing to pay more than five times as much for the same stake in Tesla as compared to the more traditional automakers.  So what is going on here? What do investors see in Tesla that a rational person may not? What is the companies vision to truly justify being valued this highly? and could this all be a charismatic CEO taking a pool of naive investors for a ride?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Kazakhstan, and yes I know what you are all thinking, and yes in the interest of full disclosure we are definitely cashing in on the hype surrounding the second Borat, but in fairness so is the nation itself.  Even still this country is so much more than that with one of the most, hmm let's call it exciting economies in the world.  What was once a mistreated soviet state has now gone onto be the largest and wealthiest economy in central Asia, one that is welcoming foreign trade, international investment, and advanced development of technologies to continue this growth into the future.  In this episode of Economics Explained, we'll explore the following questions: What went on under Soviet rule? What has the country been up to since the collapse? what is their plan for the future? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The US presidential election will be held in 2 days from when this video is published. The process of electing who will go on to be the most powerful man in the world always makes for big news but perhaps never more so than in 2020.  The United States is currently in the grips of a major health crisis that has caused untold suffering to people directly affected, and indirectly to people impacted by the economic consequences that came with it.  This is all coming in combination with a mountain of other issues, wealth inequality, trade tensions, nationwide protests, a wildly unstable financial market, record-high levels of debts, and a host of other issues that are certainly getting less airtime in 2020 but are of no less importance.  This election is a chance, at least in theory, for the citizens of America to have their say about how they would like these issues dealt with... and while there are more issues than ever the right solutions are desperately needed.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Economics Explained, we will explore the following questions: What has been behind the boom in the value of Pokemon cards?  Could this be a genuine investment vehicle?  Or is this all heading towards being the next beanie baby bubble?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In and amongst all of the happenings in the world this year these awards have kind of flown under the radar which is unfortunate because they all recognized some very remarkable works. And in the field of economics, it all had to do with auctions.  Auctions and Auction Theory are one of the most important systems to understand in economics because they act as an efficient way to build markets and correctly determine how we value items.  In this episode of Economics Explained, we will explore the following questions: What should the average person or aspiring economist know about Auction Theory? What did the winners of this year's Nobel prize contribute to this theory? And how can this be utilized to build better and more efficient economies? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you were to ask any random person on the street what it is that they knew about economics there is a pretty good chance that the first thing that they would blurt out would be the words “Supply & Demand” The number of people out there willing and able to buy a good or service versus the number of people out there willing to sell a good or service, all individually vying to get the best possible price.  If demand increases prices increase, if demand falls prices fall and visa versa with supply.  Now I know this channel is called Economics Explained but for most of you listening, all of this should pretty much go without saying.  The only issue is that this rosy picture is in no way a reflection of the real world.  So what is going on here? In this episode of Economics Explained we will explore the following questions: How are prices decided if not through supply and demand? What does this mean for regular people in the economy? How could all of this be used to make better policies and business decisions? And how does this all make the case for a zero dollar minimum wage? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The long-suffering generation of millennials are now set to be significantly poorer than both baby boomers and Gen X'ers.  Having entered the workforce during the fallout of the 2008 mortgage crisis and then being hit particularly hard during this current crisis has meant that today millennials only account for 3% of national wealth, where boomers at the same point in their lives accounted for 27%. This trend is more than just another pity party for our fellow latte-sipping millennials. On a wider level, the share of wealth owned by people under the age of 40 has shrunk from 13% to just under 7% over the past 3 decades.  Even if we ignore the social issues of younger families having to make do with half that of what their parents did this can have some serious  Therefore if this trend continues businesses around the world might start to lose out on their Goldilocks zone of consumer spending.  What is causing this downward pressure on wealth in younger generations? What will this mean for the future growth of nations like the USA? And could this just be a waiting game of wealth, inevitably getting passed down?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is California, the Golden State and one of the largest economies in the world in its own right.  If California was counted as a sovereign nation it would be the fifth-largest in the world by GDP, with a 3.2 trillion dollar gross state product putting it just behind Germany and just ahead of India.  In this episode of Economics Explained, we'll explore the following questions: What made the state so prosperous before the 2020 downturn? What were the underlying issues impacting the economy? How will these issues be impacted by this decline? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Communism vs Laissez-Faire Capitalism Both of these opposing theories are very extreme and, for what it's worth, don’t exist in any modern economies anywhere around the world today, despite what some nations might have you believe.  In this episode of Economics Explained, we'll explore the following questions: So what are the economic arguments for and against a communist economic system?  What are the economic arguments for and against a completely free market? Are there any examples of these extreme systems actually working throughout history? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The bottom line is the most important part of any functioning business. Profit after costs, expenses, and taxes.  The money that the founders and investors in companies get to put back into their pockets for the risk and effort they put into a business.  Sounds like business 101 right? And it kind of is. A business that doesn’t turn a profit is like a freezer that kind make ice, it’s more or less pointless.  And sure there are things like non-profit charity organizations out there but most businesses exist to make money! So why is it that some of the biggest companies in the world are not turning profits? Why is it that they don’t even plan to? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inflation is something we more or less take for granted these days. The idea that 5 dollars today is not going to be able to buy 5 dollars worth of stuff in the future, and the fact that you used to be able to buy a family home for 10 grand, are all the result of inflation.  The idea that over time money becomes worthless and less influences a lot of decisions in out lives. Everything from retirement planning to salary negotiations take this relatively benign and constant force into account.  But it is something that should be feared.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inflation is something we more or less take for granted these days. The idea that 5 dollars today is not going to be able to buy 5 dollars worth of stuff in the future, and the fact that you used to be able to buy a family home for 10 grand, are all the result of inflation.  The idea that over time money becomes worthless and less influences a lot of decisions in out lives. Everything from retirement planning to salary negotiations take this relatively benign and constant force into account.  But it is something that should be feared.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Taiwan, or officially, the Republic of China, a country in east asia, which if you can’t tell by how delicate I am being with these titles here is consistently under a bit of ehh let’s call it scrutiny.  So contentious in fact that any country that is doing business with the people's republic of china, you know China, has to officially declare that they recognize the island of Taiwan as the sovereign territory of China. While this is all very confusing, the fallout is that the nation of Taiwan is only officially recognized by a tiny selection of countries from around the world.  These countries include economic superpowers like Guatemala, Haiti, the Marshall Islands and Vatican city collectively making up only accounting for around 50 million people and covering a tiny portion of world trade. So it's not exactly like they have brought their A team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

GDP is one of the most universally recognized terms in economics. Even outside people with an interest in the subject most adults would be able to tell you that GDP is a measure of how large an economy is.... But they might not be able to tell you how it’s calculated, or even what it stands for. In this episode of Economic Explained, we will explore the following questions: What are the limitations of GDP? Are there better figures to look at to get an idea of how prosperous an economy is? And how could focus on something outside of pure productive capacity be good for our economy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fire movement is a growing trend amongst young workers which is growing in popularity thanks to its very enticing goal which is spelled out in the name. FIRE is an acronym of Financial Independence and Retiring Early.  The idea is that by following a very aggressive saving and investing strategy people can get to a point where they are effectively retired at a very young age, sometimes younger than 30.  Getting to that point is harder for some than others, but advocates of the movement argue that this difficulty has more to do with personal lifestyles rather than personal incomes.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Workers today are amongst the hardest worked individuals in history, while simultaneously being the most efficient.  Sure, they have traded in grueling factory floors and coal mines for air conditioned offices so they probably don’t get quite as much sympathy as their industrial revolution contemporaries but the world today is marred by different challenges. Hustle culture and the glorification of roles like surgeons, investment bankers, and corporate lawyers have set a precedent of on-call all the time, under the guise of professionalism or being a team player. Expectations and key performance indicators are increasingly monitored, scrutinized, and increased year on year.  Now the discussion around overworking is not a new one, but it tends to focus on the mental health implications of this reality rather than the economic impacts.  Now we are going to be leaving that aspect of this discussion to the side for this video and instead focus just on the economics of the overworked world. Partially this is because there are many people far more qualified to talk about mental health and partially because well, sometimes for things to get changed it needs to make economic sense for them to be changed.  So the health implications of 100 hour weeks aside, we really only need to answer one question.  Does people working longer and harder make for a more prosperous economy?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The economic impacts of 2020 have been felt far and wide and we have covered these problems in-depth in a handful of videos on this channel. But the logical question that most people are asking is what comes next?  Disasters happen and they are never pleasant but part of being a nation, a business, or even an individual is being able to deal with adversity and come out the other side. Because of this people are expecting a recovery of sorts, and it seems like the only point of contention will be what letter of the alphabet this recovery will represent.   Other speculations include a W-shaped recovery where we will see 1 recovery then another decline as the effects of government stimulus and relief packages wear off only to be followed by another genuine recovery later on.   But amongst all of this, there is one type of recovery that we should all be very afraid of, one that is not getting nearly as much airtime and one that is actually being hurt by a lot of current policies and that is a K shaped recovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Economics is considered a social science, and although some other scientists from more “rigorous” fields don’t always welcome it into their little club, it still follows the same processes to explore the world around us.   And, as with science, or anything that is extremely complex for that matter, there are disagreements between practitioners at all levels of academia and throughout the entire history of the subject. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The market for alternative investments has been a really exciting field in recent years, with everything from Bitcoins, to beanie babies being touted as the next must-have to outperform the boring old stock market.  Now some of these investments have been good some of these investments have been bad, and many haven’t been around long enough to really tell yet, but the aftermarket for high fashion is a really interesting entrant into this world.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world today. In 2019 its growth was only beaten out by a selection of far smaller and far more unstable national economies.   With a huge and very hardworking population not to mention a powerful ally to it’s north this could be the country to watch out for in the next 10 years. But this success is by no means guaranteed. As with many other nations in the Southeast Asian region, it has many hurdles it needs to deal with to become a fair dinkum developed economy.   So, what has been behind Vietnam’s Economic Growth? What will the impacts of 2020 do to this growth? And perhaps most importantly How will this nation break into the Developed Nations club? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China is not playing fair in the game of global trade, they are cheating other countries, companies, and consumers out of business by Manipulating their own currency.   So how does a nation like china control their currency? Can this actually be used to give an unfair advantage in global trade? If it can, why doesn’t every country do it? Can businesses profit from this man-made market failure? And does a currency price even matter? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Student loans are financial tools that have been put in place to give promising individuals the ability to get an education and increase their potential for future earnings with a strong professional career.   On a nationwide level having a well educated and skilled workforce is one of the strongest determinants of economic success. We have seen this time and time again with nations like South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and Germany, who are not necessarily blessed with a wealth of natural resources or great geography but nonetheless hold their own as some of the world's wealthiest nations.   For all of these reasons, young men and women from around the world have grown up with the idea that their education is the best investment they can make… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Physical cash is one of the easiest ways to instantly and reliably conduct commerce.   It has been well-documented that the ease of transactions within a nation is as big of a determinant of a country’s success as is access to natural resources like oil and natural gas, or even a well-educated population.  So, what would happen if we got rid of cash? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a lot of things that we take for granted in our day to day lives, and one of the big ones is how we spend a good portion of our waking hours.  Based on sophisticated youtube analytics we can determine that a majority of people watching this video are full-time employees working 40 hour weeks at their jobs  So is 40 hours really the optimal work week, and are their alternatives that are based more on economics rather than tradition? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The wealthiest generation in history is starting to retire, and die. In doing so they will be responsible for the greatest wealth transfer in history, as they pass along a collective 30 trillion dollars to their beneficiaries over the next few decades, just in the United States alone.    That kind of capital movement is going to have some extremely significant impacts on the economy some of which we are already starting to feel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the 30th of July 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released its 2nd quarter Gross Domestic Product report. The report noted a 32.9% contraction in annual GDP growth in the months of April, May, and June.   For reference, the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 saw an 8% drop in annualized GDP figures at its peak. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ancient Egypt was amongst the first major human civilizations in existence.  Outside of being genuinely fascinating the economy of ancient Egypt is enlightening to really pull apart because it represents an economy in it’s most basic form.   Targeted inflation, debt cycles, derivatives contracts, and even the financial sector are all crucial components of our modern and hyper-advanced economies. Egypt, had none of these... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The big short was a fantastic movie, for finance nerds and regular viewers alike. One of the lines that stood out the most, amongst many memorable lines, was the claim that for every 1% increase in unemployment 40,000 people die.   This is an incredibly significant claim, that adds even more weight to the already significant societal issues that come along with people out of the job.  So is this claim actually true? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Black Market Economics - What Drives the Underground Economy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Vatican city. The smallest widely recognized sovereign state in the world.  This tiny nation exists entirely within these walls, but its influence is felt the world over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are all manner of factors that make poor countries poor and rich countries rich. Many of these factors we have explored in depth when we have looked at economies like the democratic republic of the Congo all the way up to places like Switzerland and Norway.  Political Stability, industry, natural resource wealth are all incredibly important variables but there is something extra here that just doesn’t seem to make sense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The wealthiest among us today live a life unparalleled by any other human throughout history. The greatest Kings and emperors could only dream of the life afforded to today’s billionaires. It doesn’t end there, even mere multi-millionaires are living through a time where they have access to limitless information, unhindered mobility, and personal comforts. But this is all taking place at a time where a swelling population of people is struggling to make ends meet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The justification was that this was necessary to restore balance to a universe that was overpopulated and putting too much of a drain on resources.  Now instantly hazing half of the universe, is a bit extreme, but…  When the same world can’t go a week without some news article telling us that global climate catastrophe is inevitable, natural resources are running dry, or that if everybody lived like the average American we would need 4 Earths to sustain them it starts to sound like we should hear this Thanos guy out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our world is home to over 190 countries using 180 currencies to trade, invest, and collect taxes. The global economy is complex at the best of times and the foreign exchange, or forex market only looks to add an additional layer of confusion and complexity. So this begs the question could the world adopt a single universal currency? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People are told from the time they get their first job to save money. Save for a car, have an emergency fund, send your kids to college, a house deposit, oh and not to mention retirement (if that is still a thing). There are a million things to save for and on an individual level, it is almost always a good idea. So why is it then, that governments and businesses from around the world are so terrified of people saving money? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 2008 Global Financial crisis was kicked off by major structural issues in the global banking system and exacerbated by record levels of household debt. Today the world is on the brink of yet another major financial downturn, and yet again household debts are at record levels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Australia is a major world economy, with highly developed industries and close to 25 million of the wealthiest citizens in the world.  But Australia is harboring a deep, dark secret ... it is an American company! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices