Economists only care about money?

I always find it funny when people accuse economists of claiming people only care about money or material well-being. Nothing could be further from the truth! Economists study what people value. That may be material goods, but it may be leisure as well, or family time, or religion, or whatever else they value. Economists look at how people use their scarce resources (whether it be time, or love, or attention, or labour, or whatever) to achieve their values. In conversations, economists will tend to be the ones least concerned about money.*

The father or mother who quits a job to spend more time with kids is perfectly understandable to the economist. The man or woman who quits a high-paying job to do something else with their time acts in perfect accordance of economic theory.

A casual study of Adam Smith, David Hume, Frederic Bastiat, Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Vernon Smith, Armin Alchian, William Allen, and countless others will show this.

Price, in economic modelling, is not just monetary price. It is the cost of all foregone opportunities. It represents a measurement, a way of thinking, about how people behave.

There are trade-offs for every action. Since that unfortunate event in the Garden of Eden, trade-offs are a fact of life. This fact does not mean we are myopically obsessed with monetary and material well-being, but rather see that everything has a cost. The cost of working longer may be less family time. But that may be a choice someone makes if they can afford a longer vacation. Economists are interested in how people choose given these costs.

*As an aside, I find socialists tend to be the ones most concerned with money. They tend to use it to measure a person's moral value.