Most economics is a top-down analysis that simplifies and reduces the huge varieties among individuals to a predictable range of characteristics that lend themselves to systematic analysis. This book eschews this conventional perspective, which sees national economies as simply agglomerations of the activities of millions of people, and instead explores the role played by the individual in the economy, in particular, how the individual experiences the economy. In so doing, the book is able to illuminate the economic landscape for the nontechnical reader in a much more engaging and accessible way than conventional textbooks.By placing the individual front and center in its analysis, the book is able to demonstrate how the things we experience, need, and consume fit into the fast-changing and interdependent global economic setting. It shows the role of government, markets, and welfare in shaping our lives, and builds on the latest economic research and data to provide an overview of the workings of the economy that takes as its starting point the interface between the individual and the system overall.