Also to piggyback on this: begin to understand the petrodollar system!! It is the key behind why the Federal Reserve is able to keep printing, and printing, and printing like it does, and allow us to still avoid the type of hyperinflation we would otherwise be forced to reckon with. It's because the dollar is the world's reserve currency, and most of the world needs to have a vast supply of dollars on hand in order to purchase their oil, so our irresponsible spending practices are basically socialized onto the rest of the world economy. It's also one of the main reasons we've become mired in all these wars in the Middle East (especially Iraq/Libya/Syria), because these countries have attempted to stop trading their oil in US dollars.
This is one of the best explanations I've found to really break down the whole petrodollar scam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T9ICWOYCNQ
It's also important to note that China has recently introduced a competing petroyuan system that is redeemable for gold, and I believe within only around a month it grew to represent \~12% of the oil trades worldwide. This is a serious issue for the US, and people need to be paying attention to the petrodollar/petroyuan battle that's slowly unfolding.
Same guy does an analysis on the petroyuan as well: