Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It explores how individuals, businesses, governments, and societies make choices to allocate resources to meet their needs and wants. Economics is often divided into two main branches: microeconomics and macroeconomics.

1. Microeconomics:
   • Microeconomics focuses on the behavior of individual economic agents, such as households, firms, and industries. Key topics in microeconomics include:
     • Supply and Demand: The interaction between buyers (demand) and sellers (supply) in markets.
     • Price and Elasticity: The impact of changes in price on the quantity demanded or supplied.
     • Consumer Behavior: The study of how individuals make choices regarding the allocation of their resources.
     • Producer Theory: Examining the decisions of firms, including production, cost minimization, and profit maximization.
2. Macroeconomics:
   • Macroeconomics examines the overall performance and behavior of the economy as a whole. Key macroeconomic concepts include:
     • Gross Domestic Product (GDP): The total value of goods and services produced in a country within a specific time frame.
     • Unemployment: The percentage of the labor force that is unemployed and actively seeking employment.
     • Inflation: The rate at which the general level of prices for goods and services is rising.
     • Monetary Policy: The control of the money supply and interest rates by a central bank to influence economic activity.
     • Fiscal Policy: The use of government spending and taxation to influence the economy.
3. Economic Systems:
   • Different economies have various economic systems that determine how resources are allocated. Common types include:
     • Market Economy: Resources are allocated based on supply and demand in free markets with limited government intervention.
     • Command Economy: Centralized government control over resource allocation.
     • Mixed Economy: A combination of market forces and government intervention in resource allocation.
4. International Economics:
   • International economics examines the economic interactions between countries. Key topics include:
     • International Trade: The exchange of goods and services across borders.
     • Exchange Rates: The value of one currency in terms of another.
     • Globalization: The increasing interconnectedness of economies around the world.
5. Development Economics:
   • Development economics focuses on issues related to poverty, inequality, and economic development. Topics include:
     • Income Distribution: The distribution of income and wealth within a society.
     • Sustainable Development: Balancing economic growth with environmental and social considerations.
     • Poverty Alleviation: Strategies to reduce poverty and improve living standards.
6. Behavioral Economics:
   • Behavioral economics integrates insights from psychology into economic analysis. It explores how psychological factors influence economic decision-making.
7. Financial Economics:
   • Financial economics examines the behavior of financial markets and the pricing of financial assets. Topics include portfolio theory, risk management, and asset pricing.
8. Labor Economics:
   • Labor economics studies the behavior of workers, employers, and government policies related to employment. Topics include wage determination, labor markets, and human capital.

Economics provides analytical tools and frameworks to understand and address a wide range of real-world issues. Economists use models and empirical analysis to explore how individuals and societies make choices and allocate resources, helping policymakers, businesses, and individuals make informed decisions.

Did Donald Trump just say that he’s hoping for an economic crash? Not exactly. But what he did say was arguably even worse, especially once you put it in context.

And Trump’s evident panic over recent good economic news deepens what is, for me, the biggest conundrum of American politics: Why have so many people joined — and stayed in — a personality cult built around a man who poses an existential threat to our nation’s democracy and is also personally a complete blowhard?

So what did Trump actually say on Monday? Strictly speaking, he didn’t call for a crash, he predicted one, positing that the economy is running on “fumes” — and that he hopes the inevitable crash will happen this year, “because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”

If you think about it, this isn’t at all what a man who believes himself to be a brilliant economic manager and supposedly cares about the nation’s welfare should say. What he should have said instead is something like this: My opponent’s policies have set us on the path to disaster, but I hope the disaster doesn’t come until I’m in office — because I don’t want the American people to suffer unnecessarily, and, because I’m a very stable genius, I alone can fix it.

But no, Trump says he wants the disaster to happen on someone else’s watch, specifically and openly so that he won’t have to bear the responsibility.

Speaking of which, when did Trump start predicting economic disaster under President Biden? The answer is before the 2020 election. In October 2020, for example, he asserted that a Biden win would “unleash an economic disaster of epic proportions.”

Now, everyone who makes economic predictions gets some of them wrong. I personally predicted a recession if Trump won in 2016, partly because markets seemed to believe that a Trump victory would be bad for the economy. But I retracted that call just three days after the election, acknowledging that I had briefly succumbed to motivated reasoning.

Trump, by contrast, has been predicting disaster under Biden for more than three years, without ever admitting that his predictions haven’t come true. What we’ve gotten from Trump instead is a series of desperate false claims about the state of the economy. No, the price of bacon isn’t “up five times” under Biden.

Some of these false claims fall into the category of: Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Last month, for example, Trump declared that gas costs “$5, $6, $7 and even $8 a gallon,” when there are big signs all around the country advertising gas prices a bit over $3.

Maybe he doesn’t get out much.

What Trump surely does do, though, is watch a lot of TV, which means that he’s aware that the stock market has gone up a lot lately. This clearly troubles him. Indeed, he’s apparently so rattled by stock gains under Biden that in a recent speech he managed both to dismiss those gains as irrelevant — just “making rich people richer” — and to claim credit for them: “The stock market is good because a lot of people think we’re going to win the election.”

If this sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. Here we have a guy who spent much of his time in office bragging about a rising stock market suddenly declaring that stock gains are bad when someone else is in power, while insisting that he deserves credit for good things (or are they bad things?) that happen when he isn’t even running the country.

Does this matter? Trump may want an economic crash, but he doesn’t have any tools I’m aware of that could produce one. But as I wrote the other day, there’s a risk that pressure from Trump and his allies will lead the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates too high for too long.

Practical concerns aside, however, Trump’s flailing on the economy and the stock market deepens the mystery of his political appeal.

I hate saying this, but I do understand why millions of people are drawn to Trump’s dictatorial ambitions, his encouragement of violence, his declarations that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The sad truth is that there have always been many Americans who fundamentally don’t believe in America’s democratic ideals.

But I find it puzzling that Trump doesn’t pay more of a political price for his boasting, whining and transparently self-serving lies.

MAGA types tend to idealize the 1950s, largely based on a delusional image of what life was really like at the time. It was especially terrible if you weren’t a white male, but things could be pretty bad even if you were. One thing the ’50s did have, however, was an image of how men were supposed to behave, one that emphasized stoicism, honesty and a willingness to take responsibility for one’s actions — what my parents would have called being a mensch.

Trump is as far from being a mensch as is humanly possible. Yet his supporters either don’t see that or don’t care, which seems to me to be a bigger departure from traditional values than all the wokeness in the world.