To fight financial illiteracy, we mapped our money system as waterworks

Why is the money system so hard to fix? This argues that part of the answer is a narrow idea of financial literacy. Institutions like the European Commission tend to treat it as personal finance: budgeting, saving and choosing products. The authors call for something broader, “systemic financial literacy,” meaning a working grasp of central banks, payment systems, taxes, pensions, and who gets to create and direct new money.

To make that accessible, they teamed up with cartographer Carlijn Kingma and financial journalist Thomas Bollen on “the waterworks of money,” a hand-drawn map that pictures the financial system as an irrigation network. Kingma spent about 2,300 hours on it, drawing on interviews with more than 100 experts, from central bankers to activists.

In theory, money released from reservoirs at the top of society flows down through wages and spending and is pumped back up again. In practice, the authors argue, trickle-down doesn’t happen: money mostly circulates between the wealthy and the financial sector, inflating asset prices while the everyday economy stays dry. Because this structure is a political choice, they conclude, citizens need deeper understanding to reshape it.

The articles has been translated into French.