Dusseldorf There is probably no young person today who is not interested in climate protection. It is the defining issue of our time. So if you want to get young people excited about business, use the climate as much as possible.
And so the business journalist Alexander Hagelüken dedicated a separate chapter to climate change in his book “Business for Kids”. “When a car manufacturer orders sheet metal for bonnets, they pay. So far, if the same company blows CO2 into the air during production, they have not paid anything.” With descriptive sentences like these, the author explains the basics of our economic system.
Hagelüken, editor-in-chief for economic policy at the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, has written an introduction to economics – but, as the subtitle suggests, one of a different kind. It is an introduction for children, more precisely for children aged 13 and over. The target group is thus clearly defined from the outset. Accordingly, Hagelüken addresses the readers on a first name basis: “Have you ever negotiated with your parents for pocket money? Are you wondering how to prevent a climate catastrophe? Do you think about what you want to be when you grow up? It all has to do with the economy.”
Hagelüken begins where its readers probably first come into contact with business themselves – with pocket money. The chapter on career and work is true to life, in which he explains to the kids how important education is: “One in five people without vocational training ends up in unemployment. 20 percent, that’s a very high risk.” The unemployment rate for people who have completed their training is only around three percent, and for academics it’s as high as two.
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The proportion of unskilled workers is steadily decreasing. The reason is clear: advances in technology are making many of their previous jobs superfluous. “There are hardly any simple workers in the factory anymore,” writes Hagelüken. And as a rule, the higher the level of education, the higher the salary. A little motivation boost for the readers.
Alexander Hagelüken: Economy for Kids
Publisher CH Beck
Munich 2022
191 pages
12.95 euros
The author invites you to actively help shape the economy. “We are all economy. We benefit from it or suffer from it. But we can change it – as consumers, professionals and political activists. It helps to understand how the economy works.”
He devotes a chapter to entrepreneurship, reports on Kai Lanz, who founded a company that uses an app to help students who are being bullied.
Or from Jenny, who wants to sell vegan pizza in her food truck. In another, he explains how even young people can invest their money as sensibly as possible. These practice-oriented chapters alternate with sections on the best economic system or globalization.
Hagelüken’s goal is exactly what the business book prize has set itself as its goal – “Understanding business”. In the book, the reader learns that he has four sons between the ages of six and 23. So he knows what he’s talking about and what interests children of different ages – what they already understand and what they don’t.
The author approached his project in a very useful manner. Economic terms such as sales contract, balance sheet or standard wages are in bold in the text and listed in a list at the end, which can be used to search for them throughout the book. Other terms that take more time to explain, such as gross domestic product or the different types of business, are grouped in boxes that you only need to read when necessary.
Finding the right balance for what needs to be explained was probably not always easy. For example, the author does not introduce people strictly. So Steve Jobs gets the addition “founder of the iPhone company Apple”, but Karl Marx stands for himself with his name.
On less than 200 pages, Hagelüken draws an arc from Stone Age people to the emergence of agriculture, the beginnings of trade and the social market economy to cryptocurrencies. It almost goes without saying that the explanations cannot be too profound. Instead, the book is a loosely written collection of economic topics that could or should be of interest to adolescents. Quasi a compact written business and social studies course.
More: How a departure from the car could succeed