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Transcript

On a recent Economics Happy Hour Podcast, Jadrian and I went through the economics of Halloween. You can watch the full video below, but one of my favorite parts was recounting how we handled Halloween candy. We never simply combined all candy into one container for our three kids - we wanted each to own their personal property.

Why? Because community ownership - communism - would have encourage bad incentives. It would encourage hoarding and eating candy too quickly. So if you have multiple kids, three tips:

  1. Don’t have them combine their candy, have them keep it separate.

  2. Explain why. Communism killed millions of people, and it’s never too early to teach them. You could explain that sharing would be “candy communism”, but I might also go with something like. “You each put in work to get this candy, and it’s only fair that you each get to keep the candy you earned”.

  3. Trading, of course, is allowed, and you can also share with them that the economy sees enormous gains from trade!

Halloween is a big deal - so hopefully you can use it to help teach kids about some important economics lessons!

For our full podcast episode, you can find us at any major podcast provider or watch the YouTube video below.