A more widespread understanding of Econ 101 would reduce the likelihood of destructive government policies winning public support.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
In a 2015 podcast conversation with American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, Vox’s Ezra Klein declared that “there’s nothing more dangerous than somebody who’s just taken their first economics class.” Often expressing a similar contempt for Econ 101 is University of Connecticut law professor James Kwak.
This expressed skepticism of Econ 101 comes across as wise and sophisticated—even hip—to many people who don’t grasp Econ 101. And it gives the mistaken impression that those who warn of the alleged folly of taking Econ 101 too seriously are experts not only in elementary economics but also in advanced economics.
Yet this contemptuous dismissal of the relevance of Econ 101 is foolish. Those who express it either really don’t know any economics whatsoever or mistakenly presume that the theoretical curiosities explored in Econ 999 are more relevant than is the reality revealed by Econ 101. But the truth is that Econ 101 taught well supplies ample, important, and timeless insights into the way the world works.
These insights, sadly, are far too rare among those who are unexposed to elementary economics.
Kernel of Truth
No one denies that a deeper understanding of economic reality is supplied by training in sound, advanced economics. If, for example, we’re interested in understanding and predicting many of the details of how people react to changes in particular government policies—and in tracing out some specific consequences of these likely reactions—knowledge of economics beyond that which is conveyed in an intro-econ course is useful.
Similarly, if we want to better understand many observed commercial practices—practices such as corporate stock buybacks or automobile dealerships’ penchant for clustering near each other—then knowledge beyond principles of economics is often necessary. No one can doubt the usefulness of more advanced economic training.
But it doesn’t follow from these observations that knowledge merely of economic principles is “dangerous.” The young person who absorbs Econ 101 but who takes no further courses in economics will nevertheless, and for the rest of his or her life, possess a genuine understanding of reality that is distressingly rare among politicians, pundits, preachers, and the general public. Far from being a danger to society, this person—inoculated against the worst and most virulent strands of economic ignorance—will serve as a beneficial check on the spread of ideas that are dodgy and sometimes perilous.
The true danger is not knowledge of “only” Econ 101. The true danger is ignorance even of Econ 101.
The typical protectionist opposes free trade not because he aced an advanced econ course and learned that, under just the right circumstances, optimally imposed tariffs can be justified on economic grounds. No. The typical protectionist opposes free trade because he doesn’t understand the first thing about economics. He doesn’t understand that the purpose of trade is to enrich people as consumers and not to guarantee the incomes of existing producers. The typical protectionist doesn’t understand that exports are costs and that imports are benefits. (He thinks it’s the other way ’round.) Failing to understand that the act of importing not only destroys but also creates particular jobs in the domestic economy, the protectionist mistakenly concludes that the more we import the fewer are the number of jobs in our economy.
The typical protectionist, in short, doesn’t understand the first thing about economics. Yet had he taken a well-taught Econ 101 course, he’d not swallow and repeat these and other myths about trade.
Likewise, the typical politician doesn’t support minimum wages because she has concluded after careful study that employers of low-skilled workers possess a sufficient quantum of monopsony power in the labor market, in addition to monopoly power in the output market, to nullify the prediction of basic supply-and-demand analysis that minimum wages shrink low-skilled workers’ employment options. No.
She supports minimum wages because she naively supposes that wages are set arbitrarily by employers and that higher wages come out of either employers’ profits or consumers’ wallets without prompting any changes in employers’ or consumers’ behavior.
And most of this politician’s constituents share her economic ignorance. They miss the reality revealed by Econ 101—namely, that wages are not set arbitrarily by employers and, therefore, that when the cost of employing workers is raised by minimum wages, employers respond in part by employing fewer workers.
In both of the above examples (and these are only two examples of many), more widespread understanding of Econ 101 would reduce the likelihood of these destructive policies winning public support.
Principles Are Foundational
They’re called economic principles for a good reason: What is taught in a solid economic-principles course are the principles of the operation of a competitive economy guided by market prices. They describe the logic of markets and, accordingly, in most cases offer a trustworthy guide for understanding the economy—and an understanding of the consequences of government interventions into the economy.
It’s true that reality sometimes serves up circumstances that render knowledge only of economic principles inadequate. But if economic principles did not on most occasions give reliable and useful insights into how real-world economies actually operate, they would be anti-principles. They ought not be taught, and students should demand tuition refunds along with compensation for being defrauded by their colleges.
But in fact, again, enormously important insights are conveyed in a good Econ 101 course. Here’s just a partial list of what an attentive Econ 101 student learns:
Our world is one of unavoidable scarcity, and so to use more resources to produce guns is to have fewer resources available to produce butter. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, a free gun, or a free anything else.
Wealth is goods and services; wealth is not money. And so to create more money without creating more goods and services is to create not more wealth but only more inflation—along with the distortions and uncertainties that inflation unleashes.
When the cost that a person incurs to take some action rises, the attractiveness to that person of taking that action falls. This fact is why higher taxes on carbon emissions reduce carbon emissions and why higher taxes on income-earning activities reduce income-earning activities.
Profits are entrepreneurs’ reward for successfully satisfying consumers’ wants; profits are neither stolen from consumers nor extracted from workers. Therefore, the greater the good performed in the market by entrepreneurs, the higher the entrepreneurs’ profits.
Prices and wages aren’t arbitrary. They’re set in markets by consumers competing against each other to purchase goods and services and by sellers competing against each other to sell goods and services. Sellers in competitive markets no more control prices than do buyers.
Because of the principle of comparative advantage, it’s literally impossible for one country to monopolize the production of all goods and services.
I submit that these and other lessons taught in Econ 101 are vitally significant and need not await being polished and conditioned by the lessons of higher-level economics courses before becoming immensely useful. Far from being dangerous, these and other Econ 101 lessons are beautiful and essential.
This article was reprinted from the American Institute for Economic Research.
Donald J. Boudreaux
Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Mercatus Center Board Member, and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University.[supanova_question]
I WILL NEED YOU TO PUT MY PAPER I DID IN PRESENTATION FORM 6.1 Assignment: Team Presentation Project Hide
I WILL NEED YOU TO PUT MY PAPER I DID IN PRESENTATION FORM
6.1 Assignment: Team Presentation Project
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Instructions
Students are expected to work in teams to develop a PowerPoint presentation of no more than ten-minutes that would be presented to a Medical Center Resource (Funding) committee for approval.
Your presentation slides should include notes that address each slide. You have the option of developing a fictional organizational unit or you may use an actual unit where one of the team members works that is in need of additional staff.
Your team represents a mid-size (20–40 FTE) organizational unit in a large, inner-city Academic Medical Center. The Center’s primary mission is to provide comprehensive healthcare services to a diverse population. The Center is facing financial challenges; your unit, however, needs to expand in order to meet a growing demand for its services. Your presentation should include the following criteria:
The type of organizational unit
The number, types, and kinds of positions requested
How the request is aligned to the organization’s strategic goals
How performance for this initiative will be evaluated
Budget considerations
An analysis of the current staffing, addressing why the need cannot be met through staff realignment, efficiencies, or system redesign
How you will assess the performance of the new staff
In addition to the PowerPoint presentation, each team should develop a handout summarizing the request.
Each team is also responsible for completing a feedback sheet for the other team/s and posting it before the Live Session.
Please upload your presentation to the General Discussion forum.
ALSO NOTE, EACH TEAM WILL DO THEIR PRESENTATION IN CLASS. SINCE YOU WILL ONLY HAVE 10 MINUTES, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT ONLY ONE (POSSIBLY TWO) TEAM MEMBERS DO THE PRESENTATION.
Please indicate what each team member contributed to the project on an additional final page of the handout.
Submit the handout portion of the Team Project using the 6.1 assignment link.[supanova_question]
Income Elasticity of Demand Percentage change in quantity demandThe degree of responsiveness
Income Elasticity of Demand
Percentage change in quantity demandThe degree of responsiveness change in quality demand due to change in income of costumer is income elasticity of demand. It can be expressed a
ys:-
Percentage change in income of consumerey =
Types of income elasticity of demand
Positive Income Elasticity of Demand(ey>0)
If there is positive relationship between income and demand for goods there is positive income elasticity of demand. In positive income elasticity of demand when the income increases, demand for goods also increases and vice-versa. Generally normal goods have positive income elasticity of demand.
X
Y1
Y0
Q1
Q0
D
D
Y
Income
0
Quantity demanded
In this figure given above quantity demand and income are measures along x-axis and y-axis respectively. DD is income demand curve which has upward slope and implies positive relationship between income and demand for goods. So, there is positive income elasticity of demand.
Negative Income Elasticity of Demand(ey<0)
If there is inverse relationship between income and demand for goods then there is negative income elasticity of demand. In negative income elasticity of demand, when the income increases, quantity demand decreases and vice-versa. Generally inferior goods have negative income elasticity of demand.
Income
Quantity Demand
X
D
D
Y0
Y1
0
Y
Q1
Q0
In the figure given above quantity demand for inferior goods and income are measured along x-axis and y-axis respectively. DD is income demand curve for inferior goods which has downward slope and implies inverse relationship between income and demand for inferior goods. So, there is negative income elasticity of demand.
Zero Income Elasticity of Demand(ey=0)
If the quantity demand for goods remains constant at any increase or decrease in income of consumer there is zero income elasticity of demand. Generally demand for basic necessity goods has zero income elasticity of demand.
Income
X
Quantity Demand
Q0
0
Y0
Y1
Y2
D
Y
In the figure given above quantity demand and income are measured along x-axis and y-axis respectively. DQ0 is income demand curve for basic necessity goods which is parallel to y-axis and implies no change in quantity demand at any change in income. So, there is zero income elasticity of demand.[supanova_question]
1 Last Name Name Instructor Class Date What to Bring to the
Last Name
Name
Instructor
Class
Date
What to Bring to the Potluck?
I.
The first time I ask my mother about my German ancestry and, specifically its food, I am nineteen years old. We talk over the phone, me in Seattle, her in Kennewick, both somewhat stumped. I want to participate in my class’s ethnic potluck. We are supposed to bring a dish that represents our heritage. Although my mother has never cooked German food, she does her best to come up with some dish that has significant cultural meaning to us.
White people, of course, do not have such things. At least not my type of white people.
German food sounds boring, which surprises me because I am fascinated by Europe. And the names of the dishes are hard to pronounce and even more difficult for me, a college student living in a hovel, to cook. In fact, it sounds like even my mother has no idea what she is describing. She is enthusiastic, listing surely made-up foods that she thinks “sound” German.
“Uh… what about English food?” I ask.
She has no idea. My mother does not even know that the English are actually known for terrible food. “You could just bring peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches? You loved those growing up”
I could not bring sandwiches, because my instructor was very clear that our dishes must be authentic, unique, representative of a culture, not a stereotype. So, Italians couldn’t bring pizza and Jews could not bring bagels, and I could not bring a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.
There is so much I don’t know. My family is not like my classmates’ families, and they disappoint me. They are supposed to instill in me a sense of pride, help me continue a legacy, the foundation of identity: how to cook a meal that no one else can.
My instructor and classmates have expectations, and my family fails to meet them, especially because my family is so culturally confused. I don’t understand what it means to have traditions passed down from generation to generation; I notice only the ways in which invent our own mishmash of identity markers. My dad teaches my origami. My mother sings Spanish songs on her guitar. On the weekends, I listen to my little brother freestyle to a borrowed Dre beat. But we are white and all of that, I have learned from my class, is called “culture appropriation.”
I don’t go to the potluck. I stay home and make a collage that depicts my family’s legacy: McDonald’s, bean and cheese burritos, peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. And I feel disappointed in being white. I do not yet understand so many things.
II.
At the age of thirty-three, about the potluck, I laugh and think, The real problem was not your lack of culture but your utter lack of any cooking skills.
My mother is in the kitchen, rambling on as if I am listening. She does not believe I know how to eat correctly, and she expects me to know how to cut a zucchini, steam it, and then (heaven forbid) eat it as my main course.
She remembers her childhood. “You know, I used to have a garden and picked my vegetables fresh each morning.” She says this pointedly, as if I am supposed to be learning something, as if she suspects that I have no intention of learning to cut and steam the zucchini.
Intellectually, I understand that learning to cook would be beneficial and learning to eat vegetables doubly so. In her ramblings, my mom accidently says some pretty useful stuff. Like how to cook a yam and pair it with cottage cheese for a healthy, easy meal. For me, however, cooking anything was just not a part of my culture—individualistic, capitalistic, lazy.
I learned how to feed myself from TV. Friends eating over lattes or martinis at the local “spot.” So, I found my own cafes and bars, trendy restaurants, and guilty pleasures. And I appreciate that is lifestyle is a part of my privilege. Solidly middle-class, no diet restrictions due to health or belief systems, just hedonism at its finest. At home, my mom and I bicker about what to cook for dinner, and though I know she’s right, I order Thai food from down the street instead of going to the grocery store.
My mom is afraid that I will continue to be fat. For my mother, her love of vegetables, and organic anything, means more about her waistline and nothing about her ethnicity. It means something decidedly, definitely, American—to be overweight is an unforgiveable sin. My willingness to toss back a few beers and some carne asada fries must mean to my mother that I am, absolutely, someone she is not.
But we are both American. Me in my gluttony, she in her asceticism. We are both amalgamations and bastardization of other cultures in order to fit our own needs. I sound cynical. I am not.
I am my mother’s daughter. Like her, I do not have knowledge of Germany or England to pass down from me to my own daughter. I want my daughter to know herself through what she experiences. She, too, is white. She, too, will have privilege. But hopefully she knows that she also has something to bring to potlucks. https://onlyassignmenthelp.com/index.php/2021/11/30/please-make-sure-directions-are-followed-for-this-paper-professor-is-extremely-strict-rubric-for-paper-is-attached-also/ [supanova_question]
Instructions for this prompt: I’d like you to write piece similar to
Instructions for this prompt:
I’d like you to write piece similar to something of this sort:
here is another example:
I think it would be amazing if you could write something in this style about how the pandemic has changed my life and has made me seen my family in a more important light as this prompt is personal here are a few things about me you can incorporate in this creative piece:
I am from Pakistan, but I live in Bahrain. I go to mount Holyoke college and definitely have missed campus and my best friends here. I am a sophomore on campus now. During the summer covid had put me in a dark place and I had to go visit my grandma in Pakistan and that whole trip resulted to most of the family getting covid and grandma is a cancer patient. More about me is that I absolutely love writing as an outlet and I think it would be very cool to travel more as I am an avid travel and love adventures. Pls also feel free to incorporate more into the writing as I will have to present it and read it out loud to the class if you want to incorporate any other things that is cool by me! I hope you follow the writing styles I showed u as they are very creative the way its written and I’d like to you to write this prompt in the style you see in these photos.[supanova_question]
Answer Questions
Based on those docs that I uploaded and links to answer questions below.
What Turns a Listener into a Giver?
On-air, online, and on demand: The Changing Face of Public Radio Membership
What is underwriting for a public radio station?
Example of a radio station’s underwriting policy from Radio Boise
1. In your own words, describe the “Stairway to Given.” Describe the steps and its importance to public radio fundraising.
2. Factors including listening, education, belief in the mission of and supporting public media are important predictors of whether or not a listener will give to public radio. While all of these factors increase the predictive behavior to donating, what two factors do you consider to be the most important and why?
3. The FCC outlines specific legal guidelines that public radio stations need to follow to broadcast underwriting announcements on their stations.
The following copy CAN NOT be broadcasted on public radio stations. Explain why this does NOT follow the FCC guidelines for underwriting.
“Support for WXYZ comes from T[supanova_question]