FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMICS

It is sometimes said that even if we are not interested in economics, economics is still interested in us.

Economics is a dimension of social life that we encounter every day. When prices rise, when we talk about housing, wages, or taxation, when we think about unemployment or economic growth, and even when we consider the future of our society, we are dealing with economic questions.

But the point is not simply that economics affects our lives. In a society, we are not merely consumers of economic decisions. As citizens, we can—and should—participate in the decisions that shape the economic direction of society. When we vote for a political party, evaluate government policies, or discuss the kind of society we want to live in, we inevitably encounter important economic questions:

Why are some countries richer than others?
What should the respective roles of governments and markets be?
Does higher taxation always produce greater justice?
And why do people who share many of the same goals still disagree so strongly about these questions?

Without a conceptual framework, debates like these can quickly become disputes over political labels and identities. Economics is not meant to tell us which political position is correct. Instead, it gives us tools for examining the economic claims made by different positions more carefully.

Economics does not tell us what we should want. It helps us understand what choices are available in pursuing the goals we already have: what each choice costs, who benefits from it, who bears its costs, and what its direct and indirect consequences may be.

Most of us, for example, may agree that poverty should be reduced, while disagreeing about the most effective ways of reducing it. We may all value justice, while reaching different conclusions about the effects of higher taxation on incentives to work, investment, and the distribution of income.

In this sense, economics is a toolkit for thinking. It can help us reason more carefully and understand the world in which we live more clearly. Economic knowledge offers a conceptual lens for examining social life—a shared language through which we can think more precisely about questions that concern all of us and have more informed conversations about them.

For those of us thinking about the future of Iran, these questions take on particular importance. Any vision of Iran’s future remains incomplete if it does not also consider the economic dimensions of a desirable society. We cannot think seriously about politics or culture without also asking how the economic life of that society should work.

The aim of this course is not to turn participants into economists. It is to help us understand economics better, think more carefully, and make more informed judgments about the societies we live in and the futures we hope to build.

The course is an invitation to develop, together, better tools for understanding the world around us.