system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The lack of business and economic understanding is a major civics crisis for the USA

The reason for this view is that a great deal of our political decision making centers around economic and business context. All public policies have economic components and people being unable to evaluate a proposal means that politicians are rewarded for failing to be realistic in their proposals or their rhetoric.   


Examples of this are numerous, but one common example is that we frequently hear that "government should be run like a business -- with balanced inflows and outflows."   


Except, that for businesses to maximize growth, they don't "balance inflows and outflows." Utilizing debt and leverage is an incredibly important part of running a business well.   


Similarly, with a government, there are valid and sound reasons and times to take on debt. And there are valid and sound reasons to refuse to spend revenues but rather to hold them or use them to pay off/down debts.   


However, because of the near-total lack of business and economic knowledge demonstrated by the average voters (of both parties) serious public discourse around policy impacts almost never happens.  This leads to poor decisions at the ballot box because voters don't have the background necessary to be able to understand how they are being misled.
gpt
Governments and business are hugely different. Teaching to understand business or basics of economics doesn't reach government policy, and teaching about policy impacts takes a lot of time and energy, and is pretty useless for the vast majority of people. What we need to teach people is how to think. How to ask the proper questions and do research for each issue as it comes up, how to look at a wealth of reliable sources and not just pick one study out and stick with it forever. Most of all, we need to teach people how to change their minds. Stubbornness works well when you genuinely think you're right, but there are far too many people in the country that are too scared of being seen as wrong to change their minds. It's not about teaching people to understand the money, because the US government is probably the most complex economic entity in the world, and you can't teach everybody to understand it.