I added this to my list of books to read a while back, believing that it was a decent read about the modern economy. Kyla Scanlon made a name for herself by making financial education content on social media. She coined the term vibecession to capture the state of the economy that looks good in terms of conventional economic statistics but feels bad to ordinary people. I’d expected to know a lot about the basics of economics but this book still surprised me by how basic and watered-down it is. Worse, Scanlan places herself firmly as part of the Gen Z and so writes primarily for them. As such it espouses Gen Z values and ideals that I feel aren’t necessarily a part of economics proper.

This book does begin with the very basics, explaining that the economy actually does consist of everyone in it (meaning us!) and how since we as humans are subject to emotions, so too is the economy as a whole is affected by our vibes. To a very real extent, she explains, the economy is said to be good largely because the participants in it feel that it is good. More conventionally, she does also cover topics like the history of money, how institutions like the Federal Reserve were established, how fractional reserve banking works and so on. We also get all the usual lessons on demand and supply, what GDP is and how it is measured, inflation, trade and much more. As a book that was published very recently, it covers everything up to the economic crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequently recovery and the ongoing fears of inflation. A quirk of this book is that Scanlon ends almost every chapter with a personal opinion, a way for readers to reconcile what they have just learned in the context of Gen Z values. I believe that appeals to many of fans as they feel that without this sort of judgment, the economics lessons lack personality. Needless to say, I feel that this is very subjective and therefore unnecessary.

The main issue for me is that I’m reasonably well-versed already with the basic principles of economics so this book is mostly beneath my reading level. I still found it informative in some minor ways as it explains in detail exactly how different parts of the US economic apparatus works, such as the various metrics by which unemployment is reckoned, the many levers available to the Federal Reserve to affect the economy and even the types of bonds issued by the US Treasury. All these are specific facts that can be easily looked up however and I don’t feel that the way Scanlon frames her explanations of economic concepts (“economic kingdoms”, “the uncertainty cake”) makes them any easier to understand that the more straightforward approach used in textbooks. All of this is very US-centric as well. There’s not much in here about international trade nor about any country at all apart from the US.

Well, you could say that Scanlon knows exactly the target audience she is writing for, that is Gen Z Americans, and I’m not in it. The thing is that in advocating for the interests of her in-group, she doesn’t consider than other groups may have different, competing interests. For example, on the issue of overly expensive housing, she supports building more and therefore opposes the NIMBY movement, which is of course what I myself agree with. Yet she ignores why there are those who oppose more building as they like it when their own houses gain in value and doesn’t suggest how to overcome their opposition. Similarly, she consistently argues in favor of strong environmentalist positions, which is great, but doesn’t address how this priority might be in tension with other laudable aims. Affordable housing is all well and good, but adding requirements to specifically make them environmentally friendly would add to, not reduce, their cost. This fault occurs throughout the entire book. I am astounded that for a book that is supposedly about economics, she neglects to mention even once what I consider to be one of the key insights of the field: that you can never have everything that you want and there are always trade-offs. What do you prioritize when your resources are limited? What do you value one good against another? Instead Scanlon pretends that you can have your cake and eat it too.

That’s why this was a book that I actively disliked and had to force myself to finish. It doesn’t contain much that I didn’t already know and while it gets across the basics of economics well enough, it doesn’t answer the key question of why economics matter. It pulls quotes from a wide variety of sources to give the impression of wisdom but to me these sound like notes of reassurance to Gen Z Americans that their values and their worldview are valid and correct. I very rarely regret buying any book but this is one of them.