Believe it or not, Disney used to be a corporation that cared about people and this country in general. The children's company didn't just create groundbreaking movies and state-of-the-art animation, it also taught kids solid, moral, values. 

It even taught them basic things about the world such as economics. 

You all know who Scrooge McDuck is, as well as his grand-nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Scrooge was famous for his vault of golden coins that he'd dive into and swim in like a pool. But being extravagantly wealthy never made Scrooge the bad guy. In fact, he was always depicted as the caring grand-uncle who looked after the triplets and would assist them in the adventures they went on. 

He was also depicted as a teacher, and one lesson he gave the boys has recently been going around the internet as our real-life economy has been on a steep decline thanks, in part, to a nasty bout of inflation. Due to an inexcusable ignorance in our country about what inflation is, this little lesson from 1967 should be played everywhere. 

At the very least, it needs to be played on every screen in the Capitol and the White House ad nauseum. 

@thebrandonmorse Maybe Scrooge McDuck should be President, Idk. #economy #inflation #scroogemcduck #money #congress #lessons #economics #dollar #hueydeweylouie ♬ original sound - TheBrandonMorse

As Scrooge notes to the triplets, inflation makes currency worth less and less. It reduces the value until a briefcase full of $100 bills is worth less than the briefcase it's carried in. It effectively becomes Monopoly money. 

A perfect example of this is Venezuela. 

Venezuela used to be a thriving economy until socialism took over in a big way. Soon the value of the bolivar, Venezuela's currency, was worth next to nothing. 

In fact, the problem was so bad criminals lost interest in attempting to rob people for their money. The bullets they would fire during a crime were worth more than the money they were taking from people: 

Gang member El Negrito, 24, told Associated Press: “If you empty your clip, you’re shooting off $15.

“You lose your pistol or the police take it and you’re throwing away $800.”

In something of an unexpected silver lining to the country’s all-consuming economic crunch, experts say armed assaults and killings are plummeting in one of the world’s most violent nations.

The economic crisis prompted a whopping 39 percent drop in homicides over a three-year period, with 10,598 killings in 2018. Officials also report a fall in kidnappings.

It gets worse. 

As I reported back in 2018, the bolivar was worth so little that some Venezuelans took to farming gold, silver, and copper...in the video game "World of Warcraft": 

Per Google, one U.S. dollar is worth 68,915 bolivar.

Compare that to the price of WoW tokens, official in-game credits that can be used to extend a player’s play time or buy in-game items. Tokens can be bought with either $20 real world cash or sold for a fluctuating amount of in-game gold. One tracking service lists the current gold price of a token as 203,035 pieces. That works out to about 10,152 gold gaming pieces per USD.

By those calculations, World of Warcraft virtual gold would be worth 6.8 times as much as the bolivar.

If you factor in the black market rate of the bolivar, though, the difference is even more staggering. Dolar Today, which tracks the black market rate of the bolivar, seems to say the currency’s current value is 636,771.03 per U.S. dollar.

By that figure, WoW gold would be worth nearly 62 times as much as Venezuela’s official currency.

It's hard to wrap one's head around the idea that a video game's in-game currency could be worth more than a real-world currency, but that's what inflation does. 

And that's what politicians in Washington seem to either not understand...or don't care about. Either way, it's not a good look, and once more people understand what inflation truly is, they'll look even worse. 

We should hear Scrooge out.