In the highly competitive social environment, everyone is "rolling", as if they are all racing, and even breakfast can only be solved on the road.
We are going to be late for work, and everyone is in a hurry.
I am anxious because I am afraid of being late, and being late has something to do with my income. Maybe it's because everyone was in a hurry, but they didn't think it over carefully. As the screw of the whole social and economic operation, our "rotation" every time is within the calculation range of this system.
Author Liang Jie, Ph.D. in Economics, Fudan University, postdoctoral fellow, Monash University, Australia. He is currently a researcher at the School of Economics and Asia College of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
In fact, economics is not so profound, but exists in every corner of our lives, every day of our lives.
Going out, navigating, eating, walking and going home, what we have to do every day, has become the name of every chapter of this book.
A cup of coffee can connect international trade; A piece of scallion cake can talk about "hunger marketing". Every example in this book is a story that you and I have experienced, or are experiencing and will experience.
In the author's words, I started from my daily life and walked through shop after shop along the familiar road. Seeing every scene, he started a discussion around him and introduced a related economic knowledge and practical application.
With the help of economics, the world we see may be different.
Poverty and wealth are topics that economists can't escape anyway. Wealth is always concentrated in the minority class of this society. Why do those high-income people have so much wealth here?
What kind of job is ideal? Simple people tell the truth in seven words: more money, less things, and closer to home. Rich and free, this kind of treatment is the ideal working mode.
As for the determinants of income, the author gives us four criteria: education, ability, nature of work and working hours.
Whether you want to admit it or not, education is hard currency in many cases, and many people are stopped at the door just because of education. It doesn't necessarily mean that high education means high income, but at least high education can improve the probability of having high income.
As the saying goes, "things are rare", this sentence also applies to people. The scarcity of our personal abilities is directly related to our income level. In the entertainment circle, the investment in film and television dramas and the fees paid to traffic stars. It takes up most of the investment and can't be helped. In this era when traffic is king, the faces of these stars are scarce resources. Because they are irreplaceable, they become a kind of "uniqueness". People who pay the bill need them, and the market needs them. Therefore, as long as there is no substitute for a position, people in this position can get huge income.
There is also a saying that "there must be a brave man under the four rewards". The quality of the working environment, the quality of the working environment, the quality of the working place and the intensity of work are all directly related to income. Envy those high-income people, may not have thought that these people may be engaged in those remote and hard jobs. They will face separation from their families, a difficult environment, and even at the expense of health. So this kind of work must be achieved by "rewarding"!
If you want to start a business and increase your income, the "nine to five" schedule won't work. Those high-income people with superficial scenery may still be working when we are resting and sleeping, and 007 and 996 may be the normal state of their lives.
So many times there is a reason for the gap between the rich and the poor, and our position on the balance between the rich and the poor depends on these factors.
What you think of as free choice has been decided.
There is a classic line in the Hollywood movie "The Devil Wearing Prada", which was said by a fashion source to her young female assistant: "You chose that blue striped sweater, and you think you chose this dress carefully according to your own meaning. In fact, you don't know: from the press conference in Oscar de la renta in 2002, sky-blue dresses appeared for the first time.
Soon, sky blue appeared in the press conference of the next eight designers, and then swept the world's major high-end stores, and finally swept the streets on a large scale, and then you bought it in cheap stores.
You think the clothes you wear are your own choice, and your choice is outside the fashion industry. Actually, it is not. The clothes you wear are actually chosen for you by people in this room. "
None of us will deny that as human beings, we have a sense of autonomy. Unfortunately, this is not the case!
The author emphasizes in the book that Internet companies are influencing our choices in a more complicated and advanced way.
For example, all kinds of apps in our hands are pushing all kinds of information every day, and this information is just right for our taste. We thought that the decision we made by ourselves was the result they wanted to see, but we unconsciously fell into their hub!
The freedom we want is actually the freedom that the economic system wants us to see!
Write it at the end
In fact, for us ordinary people, economics does not represent complex formulas, obscure concepts and abstruse nouns. It is precisely the existence of the most fireworks, and it is the most ordinary and life-oriented knowledge in our lives.
No matter how much the world changes, no matter what the trend of the world economy will be, the ultimate goal is our life and our daily necessities.
As a "little ant" in this society, I have to know what the meaning of my work is. For our "ant colony", we can learn about our nests through these tools.
And we know economics because it makes us discover that with such tools, we can better understand the world and know the world better.