Dr Sam Wylie

So you probably don't know anyone who's called an economist who studies economics and wants to understand it at a deeper level or teaches economics in school or at university or works in a government department on economic policy.

So you probably don't know anyone like that, but people use economics.

use the fundamental ideas about the things we were talking about earlier, making choices and what those choices add up to and the different institutions and intermediaries and organizations.

It gets used all the time and everywhere.

Well, that's a great question.

That was the second half of your question.

Thanks for reminding me of that.

So, yes, look, you need to take it with a grain of salt.

So in a couple of ways, right?

People present themselves as being experts when they're not necessarily.

And they present themselves as knowing things that they don't or can't necessarily know.

But having said that, yes, you do need to pay attention and you do need to find good sources of information

and elevate yourself going forward.

Now, let me give a couple of examples of what I mean about people pretending they know more than they do.

So when people stand up and start looking at graphs on the TV, so you're watching the nightly news or you're watching a website or a podcast or something, and somebody comes up and they're looking at a graph and they can explain what's happened.

The price of gold went up and here's why.

Well, you can always explain graphs.

You can always explain history.

Everyone can look backwards into the past and impose an explanation on what happened.

I'd be impressed if they could look forward.