Intro. to Economics Fsu Notes - Joab Corey
Basic Economic Principles:
Is life getting better or worse? The media makes it seem like life is getting worse, but economics is different. Economists look at objective measures: life expectancy, health, income, education, entertainment. Look at these objective measures and most people would agree life is getting better. For instance, crime is actually very low compared to other decades but many kids are afraid of being kidnapped. Technology is so much better and much cheaper than they used to be. Medicine is much better: back in the day you would get drunk and have your leg sawed off and now we have MRIs and all kinds of things. Entertainment: game systems like Atari vs. PS3 and Xbox 360. People forget how good life actually is, and the media portrays life as getting worse.
Economics is the science of how individuals make choices under scarcity
Science: developing and testing objective theories
Individuals: a person or a group of people – someone in the media or wherever says “France is mad at
Germany” …the question in the eyes of an economist is “who in France is mad at who in Germany?”
Choice: the act of selecting among alternatives
Scarcity: the concept that there is less of something freely available from nature than people would like. * Ex. Time, money, cars, etc. Just about everything in the world is scarce. It is hard to think of something that is not scarce, like air…but even though there is enough air to go around, but it might not be clean, so clean air is scarce. Since everything in the world is basically scarce, everything falls under economics. 1. Scarcity is not the same thing as poverty. What is considered poor in America now is probably not considered poor in some nations in Africa today. What is considered poor today was probably not considered poor back in the day. 2. Scarcity necessitates rationing. Who gets it? a. Rationing – allocating scarce goods to those who want them. If you know the right people, maybe you
Is life getting better or worse? The media makes it seem like life is getting worse, but economics is different. Economists look at objective measures: life expectancy, health, income, education, entertainment. Look at these objective measures and most people would agree life is getting better. For instance, crime is actually very low compared to other decades but many kids are afraid of being kidnapped. Technology is so much better and much cheaper than they used to be. Medicine is much better: back in the day you would get drunk and have your leg sawed off and now we have MRIs and all kinds of things. Entertainment: game systems like Atari vs. PS3 and Xbox 360. People forget how good life actually is, and the media portrays life as getting worse.
Economics is the science of how individuals make choices under scarcity
Science: developing and testing objective theories
Individuals: a person or a group of people – someone in the media or wherever says “France is mad at
Germany” …the question in the eyes of an economist is “who in France is mad at who in Germany?”
Choice: the act of selecting among alternatives
Scarcity: the concept that there is less of something freely available from nature than people would like. * Ex. Time, money, cars, etc. Just about everything in the world is scarce. It is hard to think of something that is not scarce, like air…but even though there is enough air to go around, but it might not be clean, so clean air is scarce. Since everything in the world is basically scarce, everything falls under economics. 1. Scarcity is not the same thing as poverty. What is considered poor in America now is probably not considered poor in some nations in Africa today. What is considered poor today was probably not considered poor back in the day. 2. Scarcity necessitates rationing. Who gets it? a. Rationing – allocating scarce goods to those who want them. If you know the right people, maybe you