Learn About Inflation with Tuttle Twins
High-quality entertainment complete with clever writing, side-splitting humor, and essential lessons on freedom and economics? Sign us up! Following Ethan and Emily Tuttle and their time-traveling grandma, Tuttle Twins is a smart, witty, and educational series with oodles of value for all. Each episode has a new key lesson for every good citizen with many zany adventures along the way. Season 1 Episode 6: “The Inflation Monster,” is full to the brim with wisdom and wit for citizens of all ages.
Episode 6: The Inflation Monster Plot Summary
The Tuttle family is having a fun day together at the carnival when Ethan and Emily notice a particularly exciting item at the prize counter: a telescope. It’s the perfect one to see Junie’s Comet, which will cross the sky that night. But when Ethan and Emily make their way over to check the telescope’s ticket price, the pair notice some extreme increases in the tickets required for each prize at the counter. In the midst of their despair and confusion, bumbling Copernicus slides up to the stand with an absurd amount of tickets and effortlessly purchases whatever he wants.
This is when the twins discover Karinne, wielding a wheelbarrow of tickets and handing them out to her potential constituents as candidate for Kids’ Club President. Karinne reveals that her uncle, who runs the carnival, had put her in charge of printing the tickets for each carnival game. In an effort to bribe her voters, Karinne began printing extra tickets to hand out to the neighborhood kids.
When Ethan and Emily inform Grandma Gabby about the ticket-printing fiasco, she whisks them away on an adventure to learn about the dangers and causes of inflation.
The gang’s first destination is Stockholm, Sweden in 1976. Gabby and the kids pick up the legendary Milton Friedman, just before he’s to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
With Friedman in tow, Grandma Gabby then takes the twins to Ancient Rome, particularly to where the government minted their coins. The gang watches as these early individuals start to fall prey to inflation, making their coins with less and less precious metals and in higher volumes. Milton Friedman explains that the Inflation Monster–which the twins can see with special goggles–always starts out this way; a government begins creating more money than is responsible, devaluing the currency and spreading the monster’s effects into everyone’s financial lives.
The group’s next stop is a brief visit to Washington D.C. in 1925. They visit the Federal Reserve, the American institution responsible for controlling the value of the nation’s currency. Ethan and Emily learn that, while the Inflation Monster grows every day, its effects are so gradual that they often go unseen before it’s too late.
In one final stop before they return to the carnival, Gabby, Milton Friedman, and the twins visit Harare, Zimbabwe in the year 2008. Grandma Gabby introduces the group to her friend, Tatenda, who explains that Zimbabwe is facing a devastating financial crisis. Food prices rise daily, leaving people hungry and struggling. All of this began when the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank incited hyperinflation by overproducing currency, to the point where a single U.S. Dollar equaled 1 trillion Zimbabwean dollars in value. “Inflation makes poor people poorer,” Tatenda teaches the kids. Now the twins know what they need to do: they need to stop Karinne from printing excess tickets.
After getting Milton Friedman some stylish new skinny jeans, Gabby, Ethan, and Emily drop him back off to receive his Nobel Prize and race back to the carnival to stop Karinne. The twins try to teach her about inflation, but she doesn’t listen. Just as Karinne is about to restart the printer to do additional damage, Derek the raccoon manages to put the special goggles on Karinne so she too can see the Inflation Monster. After seeing the devastating reach of the Inflation Monster in the carnival, she experiences a change of heart.
When Karinne explains her mistake to her uncle, he tasks her with removing the extra tickets in order to normalize prices. He gives the twins the prized telescope they would’ve been able to afford, had the Inflation Monster not had its field day. The family’s night is saved, Karinne gets to work burning the excess tickets, and the twins marvel at Junie’s Comet together.
What Did We Learn in “The Inflation Monster”?
This episode of Tuttle Twins teaches us about the consequences and causes of inflation. When Ethan and Emily experience firsthand the effects of inflation, they learn from Milton Friedman, the Ancient Romans, and Yatenda from Zimbabwe about the slippery slope–and devastating real-world effects–of this financial phenomenon.
Ethan and Emily Tuttle learn from world-renowned economist Milton Friedman about the basics of inflation. In fact, Grandma Gabby swings by and picks Friedman up just as he’s about to win the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics. But who is Milton Friedman, and what did he believe and teach about economics?
Milton Friedman was a proponent of free-market capitalism and monetarism, or a theory that emphasizes the role of a government in controlling the amount of currency that circulates in a nation. Friedman believed in a hard money policy, where the amount of money that’s in circulation increases in lockstep with the growth of the country’s economy. When both of these processes move at the same rate, inflation is curbed and currency retains its value. His policies were implemented by the Federal Reserve in 1979, and he had influence on the economic policies of President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
While times have changed since the 1970s, the ideas of people like Milton Friedman are still relevant and important today, as inflation continues to affect our society. Kids can fully expect to encounter the effects of inflation in their everyday lives. Just as the prices of the carnival prizes skyrocketed and kept Ethan and Emily from getting their long-awaited telescope, the prices of clothing, food, entertainment, and other everyday goods and services are ever-increasing. A toy on a child’s wish list, for example, might cost more today than it did a year ago. While these increases are typically gradual, they can make a big difference in one’s plans and budget.
By the end of this episode of Tuttle Twins, they not only save the carnival with their newfound knowledge about inflation, but they also know what they need to do as citizens: vote for politicians who make wise choices about government spending and the printing of money. While kids have to wait a while before voting for their leaders, they can spread their financial knowledge and wisdom to those around them.
Ethan and Emily learn that they can protect their own finances from inflation by investing and saving wisely. To protect one’s wealth against inflation, citizens can invest in good companies, as well as in securities that aren’t controlled by the Federal Reserve (gold, silver, bitcoin, and more). These investments, though risky, can help to preserve the value of one’s money against the Inflation Monster’s devastation. Teach your kids how to invest properly, and how investing can preserve the value of their money over time.
Be Like Ethan & Emily
Kids and their families can learn so much from Ethan and Emily Tuttle, as they learn from their own mistakes and experiences, as well as from the wisdom and experience of those who have gone before them.
Parents, discuss with your kids the dangers of the Inflation Monster. You can teach your kids how to curb its effects and protect their hard-earned money, and help them to become financially savvy citizens before they even earn their first paycheck.
How can you teach your kids about inflation?
Teach them how to budget, and create a budget for their current wants and needs
Help them set up a savings account at your bank
Provide them with opportunities to earn their own money and learn the value of a dollar
Show them how they can invest in the stock market, and teach them the difference between stocks, cryptocurrency, precious metals, etc.
Teach them how to save their money strategically and wisely.
Use Tuttle Twins as a jumping-off point, and make a valuable investment in your children’s futures by teaching them both the dangers of inflation, and how to mitigate its disastrous effects.
Support Tuttle Twins
Ready to set out on a mission through time with Ethan and Emily Tuttle? Watch the next episode of Tuttle Twins: “Cake, Pies, & Flat Earth Guys,” full of crucial lessons, delicious dessert, and true love for Derek the raccoon. There are so many episodes, so there are plenty of Tuttle family antics to enjoy! You can enjoy Tuttle Twins for free by downloading the Angel Studios app, on your television or mobile device, or on your computer at Angel.com/TuttleTwins.
We need your help to make more episodes of Tuttle Twins so that we can keep sharing these important messages worldwide. To support us in this mission and fund more time-traveling adventures with your favorite gang, you can Pay it Forward at the Angel Studios website. Our Pay it Forward model relies on our loyal audience to help us fill the world with light.
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