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Reading is a strong habit I have had all my life. I don’t read many business or economics books, but this year I picked up a book on our economy that I found refreshing and thought-provoking: Kyla Scanlon’s In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work.
Gary Logan
Wes Shannon
Like many baby boomers, my understanding of economics was shaped by Paul A. Samuelson’s textbook Economics: An Introductory Analysis, the textbook of choice for colleges from 1948 through 1984 (I studied it at UTA in 1983). We “boomers” also got a healthy dose of Milton Friedman, who influenced Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party in the mid-1970s. By the 1980s and 1990s, we would adamantly defend different economic theories as part of our politics.
Economics had become something I felt I had a grasp on, and I was smug in my unwillingness to accept new theories or viewpoints (a sure sign, by the way, that curiosity is giving way to aging).
This changed when I watched a young woman interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. She spoke about a book she had written that explained our economy in simple-to-understand terms.
Kyla Scanlon was introduced as a social media content creator focused on human-centric economic analysis and providing context behind the headlines. She had been an associate at Capital Group, an elite research organization. She holds a degree from Western Kentucky University’s Gordon Ford College of Business, with a triple major in financial management, economics, and business data analytics.
To say the least, I was impressed and immediately downloaded a copy of her book, In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work, published in 2024.
The foreword to her book was written by Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, a book published in 2020 during the pandemic that I found so good I bought copies and sent them to my clients.
In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work is divided into five parts:
The Vibe Economy, a term I was not familiar with but came to understand as a name for something I had observed without knowing what to call it. I was brought up to believe that economies and stock and bond prices were based on hard economic data, principles, and logical behavior. I had seen, however, that some stocks and prices defied logic and fundamentals. This book explains that “vibes” are a significant factor that can defy the basics. I never thought the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” was also an economic reality.
How Money Works. Here, Scanlon explains the “weird world of money.” Money is weird — it’s just paper — and it works in weird ways. Using Gen Z language, she explains the workings of currency and banking in the modern world. She uses stick-figure drawings to explain concepts such as how “excess reserves are the secret sauce in the banking world” and act as “The Invisible Sheriff.”
How Money Is Measured. She begins to expand my thinking with the chapter “What Does GDP Really Mean?” Is growth the only way to determine the success of our economy? Doesn’t growth come with strains on the environment? “Does it mean people are healthy and happy, or does it just mean that they are spending money?”
How Money Moves. In this part, the author explains fiscal policy, debt ceilings, the Federal Reserve, and questions such as whether the government can survive. Labor markets and monetary policy are also explained.
Theories, Problems, and Opportunities. This is a section I greatly appreciated as a reader. Now that you have explained what the economy is, give me some ideas about problems and solutions. She writes about “the economy and mental health,” “the state of the American Dream,” and demographics.
All of Scanlon’s explanations and writing are apolitical. She simply tries to explain facts without judgment. She does, however, raise questions that moved me out of my smug, older-person, I-know-it-all-by-now thinking. The passages I highlighted during my reading are too numerous to list here, but I will share a few:
- Economics can be seen as the ultimate tool for decoding our collective decisions.
- This discord between hard data and lived experience is the core of the “Vibe Economy.”
- When the world gets “weird,” the dollar usually becomes stronger.
- She uses wine as an analogy to explain how economic beliefs, preferences, and confidence are formed less by objective reasoning and more by social signaling, narrative reinforcement, and status cues. It aligns with her broader argument that markets — and people — are driven by stories we tell ourselves and each other, often long after the evidence should have changed our minds.
- Modern economic thinking is moving from how much we produce to how well we live, and at what cost. It’s not utopian; it’s corrective. It’s a reminder that measurement is moral, whether we admit it or not.
I recommend that every one of my boomer peers, along with Generation X and millennials, read this book. You need to understand what the next generation is thinking.
By the year 2030, it is estimated that more than 20% of Americans will be over the age of 65. That means Gen Z will live in a less populated world when they are in charge. Can you imagine what that will look like? That is the real reason a book like this is so appropriate. The next generations need to understand the world we are leaving them, and we should start thinking more about our legacy, too.
Wes Shannon CFP® is a Certified Financial Planning Professional for Brazos Wealth Advisors in Fort Worth.