Saras Totey
Fairview High School student in Boulder, Colorado. Research Analyst Assistant at Northeastern University. Builder of econ.mom, EconLever, and LocalLedger.
| Check | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Source URLs | Pass | Every metric links to its public source. |
| Dataset names | Pass | Displayed metrics include dataset labels. |
| Fetch timestamps | Pass | Pipeline timestamps are included. |
| Null handling | Pass | Unavailable values are explicit. |
| Static export | Pass | Data is bundled at build time. |
| Integrity checks | Pass | Validation runs before build. |
About the founder
Saras Totey is a student at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado, and a Research Analyst Assistant at Northeastern University, where he assists with research on the socioeconomic legacy of Reaganomics, specifically analyzing how the 1981 to 1989 reduction in top marginal rates and welfare retrenchment shaped post-tax income disparity.
He also serves as Head Economics Researcher at The Dividend Collective, a youth-led economics and policy research organization, while publishing his broader economics work through econ.mom.
Economics work
A 2x National Economics Challenge Qualifier and an International Economics Olympiad Winter Challenge Bronze Medalist, Saras is also a competitive extemporaneous speaker and a social-impact founder. He builds tools that turn dense economic research into something students, debaters, and regular people can actually use.
It started with EconLever, a single-purpose calculator built to demystify the levers behind macroeconomic policy. Students used it. Debate teams cited it. Teachers shared it. But one tool was never going to be enough.
The Mother of Econ
Saras kept building. The Mother of Econ is a collection of twelve purpose-built instruments for AP and policy economics. Each one answers a question that, until now, had no public answer, or whose answer was paywalled, stale, or wrong.
The Mother of Econ was built independently in a bedroom in Boulder with no team and no budget. The lessons from shipping it, including how to make a free tool feel serious and how to earn trust without a brand behind you, eventually became the foundation for ATT Agency, a Boulder, Colorado marketing and brand studio Saras went on to co-found.
LocalLedger
LocalLedger carries the same idea to local economic data: every tool is readable, every formula is shown, and every dataset is cited. If official data is not available, the site says “Data unavailable” instead of filling the gap with an estimate.
The simulator
The site also has an interactive economy simulator. It is a small model nation with ten million simulated people, written from scratch in TypeScript. It runs the classic rules from econ class: the Taylor rule, Okun's law, the Phillips curve, banks with real balance sheets, bubbles, trade, the gold standard. It also keeps a social ledger: inequality, discrimination, housing, homelessness, health coverage, and a happiness index.
Every mechanism is explained on the page, every dial has a plain-language note, and a test suite checks that the economics hold up: hyperinflation follows printed deficits, 1929 settings produce a crash, discrimination opens a jobs gap and makes everyone poorer. It exists because policy trade-offs are easier to understand when you can feel them fail.
“Si vis pacem, para statistica.” Peace through numbers, not through pretending we have them.
Links
- econ.mom
Primary site and sister project for Saras Totey economics work.
- LinkedIn
Founder profile and professional background.
- Buy Me a Coffee
Support Saras Totey and independent economics tools.
- EconLever
Macroeconomic policy lever calculator.
- The Dividend Collective
Youth-led economics and policy research profile.