I’m a believer that among all of humanity’s technologies, storytelling is the most powerful.

Stories can help us preserve knowledge across the span of millennia. For example, in Canada, there was a ‘discovery’ in 2017 of a 14,000 year old village that proved human beings had been here since before the last Ice Age ended. This was counter to the popular narrative in settler academic circles at the time.

We’re using the word ‘discovery’ here in the same way that Columbus ‘discovered’ America.

Because here’s the thing: The Heiltsuk people have been telling settlers that for a long time. It’s in their oral tradition — knowledge preserved across over ten thousand years in this particular instance. Through storytelling.

NOTE: In the time since, there have been additional ‘discoveries’ also supported by First Nation oral traditions extending this timeline back even further.

Storytelling isn’t just a powerful way to preserve the past. The stories we tell inform the world around us. They don’t necessarily have to be based in reality, but popular narratives have an outsized impact on the outcomes we live with everyday.

Over the past couple of years, I have been thinking deeply about what that means for economics. For individuals and their personal finances.

And about how powerful it would be to get better outcomes if we started using the technology of storytelling to better ends. Changing a narrative is a Herculean task, but the most worthwhile tasks always are.

The Common Narrative

In 2022, I was doing ghostwriting for quite a few clients on massive news sites. While the focus of each client was slightly different, overall everyone was hyper focused on the economy.

I know the past few years have been a blur, so here’s a reminder of what was happening at the time:

• Inflation had peaked.
• The Biden Administration had failed to extend any additional pandemic aid or tax relief. It was highly encouraging everyone to get back to work, and a big part of that was ending assistance programming.
• The populace was not immediately willing to get on board with this plan, which led to big headlines about labor shortages.
• While there were recession worries throughout the pandemic, they really started coming to a peak in 2022 when the Fed started raising rates. We’ve been living in that collective anxiety for two years now.

Because I was writing on this topic a lot, I was sure to keep up on it in my spare time. At a certain point, I started noticing that the research I was reading was counter to the common narrative. Not just because the headlines I was writing diverged from the stories everyone else was leaning into, but also because I started getting pushback from editors.

I could back up everything I was saying, and most of the time the story still ran relatively in tact. But I do find the points of contention I ran up against interesting. Let’s look at some of them.

Inflation was caused by the poors building up their ‘pandemic war chests.’

Something interesting happened when all that aid was released to the general populace. First, we reversed a pretty deep but also incredibly fast recession that started in 2020. It was so severe that the NBER actually declared it the shortest recession in American history — but a recession nonetheless.

But that aid saved a lot of American households. It was the opposite of the approach we took during the Great Recession of 2007/8 when we provided bailouts to banks and corporations rather than the American people, and the economy recovered so much more quickly because of it. We’re talking recovery in months instead of it taking over a decade.

Something else interesting happened at that point in time, too. We got to see exactly what lower- and middle-income people would do when they had enough money.

NOTE: Not all lower- and middle-income people had enough money during this time. But the governmental aid released did uplift a historic number of households.

As it turns out, they didn’t blow it on extravagances, only to find themselves with empty pockets the next day. Instead, they paid off credit card debt. Many households were able to build meaningful savings for the first time in their lives. Imagine — an emergency fund that’s actually three to six months of your income!

In other words, they were incredibly responsible with their money while they had it.  But by and large, most headlines demonized this fiscal responsibility, with stories labeling these adequate emergency funds as people’s ‘pandemic war chests’ and the like. That framing persists — you can still find it in newly-published stories to this day.

Money stashed into savings is money that’s not being spent on consumer goods or services. It’s inherently money that’s not driving up demand or prices on consumer goods and services.

Increased wages caused inflation.

While it’s true that at a certain point during the pandemic we saw wages in some industries go up, it was never enough to keep up with inflation — nonetheless cause it. The wage gap in this country has been exacerbated so severely for decades across economic classes. The moderate gains we saw as employers tried to entice workers to come back into sometimes dangerous in-person work environments wasn’t enough to make up for the cumulative damage of those decades, nonetheless push the needle further into inflationary territory.

As these headlines were running in 2022, the Economic Policy Institute released reports showing this fact. Rather than wage increases being the primary cause for inflation, they found that price gouging by major corporations was the primary culprit. Sure, supply chain issues caused some of the initial problems, but they were egged on exponentially by companies charging more simply because they could.

It wasn’t just the EPI that arrived at this conclusion. Lots of executives were openingly admitting to the practice on their quarterly earnings calls. 3M was one that got a lot of attention, but they certainly weren’t alone.

The idea that paying people a living wage for their labor — or even a wage that’s closer to a living wage even if it’s not truly a full living wage — caused inflation is a harmful narrative that only widens the wealth gap and lessens economic opportunity and mobility in America. Yet at the time, it was accepted as gospel in the headlines.

People just don’t want to work.

It’s hard not to laugh at this one. In 2022, we were coming off the most deadly winter of the pandemic in America. Sure, there were shots for adults, but there was a slow uptake. We were being encouraged to take off our masks by the highest officials in our nation. More and more employers were forcing people into offices to do jobs that could absolutely be done remotely. They had just spent two years proving it.

Little care was exerted for people who were high risk or might be going home to take care of people who were high risk. We were being encouraged to give up on each other, both in our workplaces and our communities.

The first pediatric shots didn’t come out until June of 2022, right when inflation was peaking. Many people still hadn’t felt safe sending their children back to in-person school, and mothers in particular felt forced out of the labor market due to societal expectations surrounding childcare responsibilities. Those expectations were enforced brutally during the pandemic.

It’s hard to look at those conditions and decide ‘people just didn’t want to work.’ Many people were just still uncomfortable risking their lives for a paycheck that wasn’t going to compensate them adequately for the risk.

And, sure. Maybe they had a little extra bargaining power if they had chosen to responsibly save some of the assistance money. But even under those circumstances, negotiating a fair salary for your labor and the sacrifices it requires is a smart and responsible money move — not a demonstration of laziness.

The failure of the market to adequately compensate labor does not mean the problem lies with the laborers.

What’s the new story?

We’re addressing things that happened two years ago, but it’s really the background we need to look at what’s happening around us today.

We never officially dipped into a recession after that blip in 2020, but America’s unhoused population has exploded over the past several years. Those who have been able to hold onto stable housing are racking up credit card debt at rates we saw prior to the pandemic, injuring their financial health because it’s the only option they have.

Remember, wages didn’t keep up with inflation, and they were already inadequate in 2019. The savings people built up could only carry them for so long under these circumstances.

What lessons can we learn as we tell these stories? As we look at the data and lived experience of the masses to determine how we can create a financially healthier society?

Examining whether or not financial literacy efforts are actually helpful.

A lot of times we act like the salve to poverty is financial education. And in some ways, no matter your economic class, properly-delivered financial education can provide an incredible net benefit.

This is especially true when that financial education is delivered as a coaching service relevant to a financial situation you’re currently experiencing. It’s why so many homeowners assistance programs require a home buyer’s education course.

You might forget half of what you learned in 10 years, but in the moment, it’s incredibly helpful to understand the financial products you’re about to immediately engage with once you sign your name on the dotted line.

Have enough money to invest? You can do things like read The Simple Path to Wealth or sit down with a financial advisor who will provide product knowledge information to you based on their professional experience.

Want to learn more about financial situations you come across when you’re disabled? Take a disability finance course, or look up your state ABLE agency’s YouTube channel.

But acting like financial-literacy-ing your way out of poverty is the solution to poverty is a shallow assessment. When people had money, they paid off debt. They saved. Many even invested for their future.

In other words, they knew what to do. And they did it.

The problem of poverty or ‘middle-class’ American struggles is not usually one of personal responsibility that education on its own can fix.

It’s a systemic issue that requires systemic solutions.

We need to compensate people better for their labor.

If corporations can stand to rake in those massive profits, they can afford to pay people a living wage.

Instead, they often offload this burden onto the state via programs like the EIC. Walmart and McDonald’s employees make up a huge portion of people on social welfare programming.

While stockholders are happy with perpetually raising profits, the lack of humanity displayed towards the labor force as a whole is alarming.

And when it catches up with us? We tend to blame the victims for the problem rather than the people who are causing it.

Because don’t forget: In America, corporations are people.

Unpaid domestic labor needs to be compensated.

In case there were doubts before, we saw during the pandemic just how severely caretaking responsibilities can impact women’s ability to participate in the workforce. These responsibilities shouldn’t fall disproportionately on women, but they do.

The value of this unpaid labor is estimated to be anywhere between 10% and 39% of GDP depending on the country. It’s a bigger contribution to the world economy than the tech industry as a whole.

Much of the discourse around solutions suggests shifting more of this unpaid labor to men. That’s not a solution I’m against by any means.

But I’d take things a step further and suggest fairly compensating people for this labor — even when it happens in their own homes — as it’s the engine that allows modern economies to exist at all.

Would that require restructuring of our systems as we know them?

Yes.

Labor should not determine your ability to have your basic human needs covered.

Another controversial take, I know.

But the dignity of affording your basic needs should not hinge on your ability to contribute marketplace labor. Being a human being should afford you that dignity on its own.

We see a lot of talks about this with UBI and AI, likely because a lot of people with cushy jobs (and power) are worried about their own viability in the labor force in the near-term. And to be fair, if AI is going to be shoved down our throats with minimal regulation, that’s probably a conversation that should be had.

But this same concept also applies to disabled populations, who are currently forced to survive on an unsurvivable amount of money each month through programs like SSI. Many of the assistance programs meant to supplement SSI, like housing, are so dysfunctional both in terms of ridiculous waitlist times and the percentage of available units that are accessible for disabled people that they’re not practical solutions.

These are instances of basic human dignity not being respected already — even before AI busted onto the scene.

So if there is UBI in the future? It needs to be 100% exempt from the ridiculous asset tests and income limitations that we place on this population that lives in forced poverty without equal access to basic rights like marriage.

Ideally, it would be great if we could get rid of those restrictions altogether, UBI or no.

Which narratives are you shifting?

If storytelling is our most powerful technology, shifting the narrative is one of the most powerful things we could do to create a better reality.

And the beautiful thing is, changing the narratives we percolate doesn’t require massive amounts of economic power.

It just requires conversations.