An Assessment of the Economic Way of Thinking

READ: Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, Charles Wheeland, W.W. Norton, 2003. Completely- cover to cover.

READ: Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, Charles Wheeland, W.W. Norton, 2003. Completely- cover to cover.

1. Describe two examples of important things that financial planning skills can help you do, and explain why these things are important to you personally. (4-6 sentences. 2.0 points)

In the first week of classes we learned seven economic principles that would later be reinforced with examples in the class along with providing our own examples and analysis of the concepts in our own written work and debates about real world issues and events. We first talked about how incentives matter. In agriculture, and many other business sectors, incentives are very important and come in many forms such as subsidies or tax breaks from the government. It was also very important to learn about the shortages and surpluses that could amount from such incentives. For example, if the government were to give farmers prices above equilibrium, farmers would then be able to over produce above the demand levels. This is not to say that the government can’t sometimes improve the market outcomes. If a market failure is present and the government interferes, it would result in a positive market outcome. Next we discussed the importance of trade-offs and the opportunity costs behind those trade-offs. We make our trade-offs among three pillars of values: social/cultural, environmental, and economics and only when all three are balanced are we completely sustainable. In agriculture, trade-offs and opportunity costs are faced daily, and decisions should be made according to what is most sustainable now, and in the future. If a farmer decides to drain a wetland for more crop space to produce more (economic), the opportunity cost is the ecosystem being destroyed (environmental). Another example is if a farmer decides to farm organically, the opportunity cost is the increased yields of non-organic farming practices. Next I learned that rational people think at the margin. An example of this within agriculture is that a farmer does not think that he will hire five people to run two tractors, he thinks at the margin, hires two people to do the job, and therefore profits from that decision. I learned that markets are a good way

In the book, Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science talks about the basics of economics and how an individual or business can make the most of their overall happiness. Wheelan does the justice of taking professional economist ideas and language to the level of where beginner and/or individuals that are looking for an easier way to understand economics. Wheelan is has had a lot of experience with economics, by graduating and becoming a professor at Dartmouth College, as well as, the author and founder of the Centrist Political Party. He does a good job on breaking down a few of the implantations that economics has for an easy to explain. This

As an avid problem solver, I had often been encouraged to take up Mathematics as a degree. However, I find myself engulfed in an increasingly uncertain economic landscape, where even the most intuitive economists cannot prevent suboptimal outcomes. In Mathematics I enjoy the challenge of finding the right answer, but the challenge of finding the right answer where one might not even exist has drawn me towards economics.

One of the issues that economists fail to discuss, then, is the fact that market-oriented economics is merely an artifact of our own social structure and that the grounding concepts of economics are quite different. Indeed, the grounding concepts of economics deal with the fact that people need to produce food, shelter, and clothing for their survival and that "economics" is born within the formation of any arrangement to solve the survival problem. The essential factors are production and distribution by and within the community. Economics, in other words, is part of the culture of any surviving community.

Economists perform studies, publish them in scientific journals, join numerous conferences where they present and discuss their findings along with their implications, get feedback, criticize, and inspire each other. In his article, Keohane argued that “the rhetoric of economists inhibits conversation between economists and other social scientists” (1988, p. 245).Conversely, I do not share his perspective. I believe that it is rhetoric that keeps the conversation within economics and between economics and also other fields of study going. The rhetoric in economics is what makes it easy to connect economics with other

Although my exposure to economics consists of only two introductory classes, I am fascinated by the allocation of resources, through people’s incentives, to reach an equilibrium. From the specialized courses offered, I hope to obtain an understanding of the global economy and apply these theoretical concepts to solving real-world

Historically, economics has focused on the study of the distribution, production, and allocation of scarce goods, and how firms and individuals make decisions while inevitably facing trade-offs between costs and benefits. Economics has slowly evolved as a discourse community characteristic of quantitative theories that seek to set the stage in which economic and political policies and decisions can be diffused through the nation and the world. The field of economics is a discourse community whose purposes are to quantitatively analyze economic research questions, come up with hypotheses, construct models and equations to test the hypotheses’ validity and argue about its findings. Economic scientists and professionals gather and publish their

The economic discourse community can be loosely identified as a set of shared values and knowledge in the field of economics. Different from other writings, economic discourse community usually include some technical economic terms and visual information, i.e. diagrams, tables and charts, etc. Each writing piece has its intended audience, and economists’ writing is no exception. Economists’ writing is usually targeted at economic majors or practitioners in the field of economics. Economic discourse community helps its intended readers to pick up information efficiently and effectively.

I chose, after reading through a brief biographical description of each of the six economists and their different theories, to conduct a study of Milton Friedman. I choose Friedman in particular because I thought it might be interesting to study his extremely controversial views in greater detail, and it

The basic economic problem refers to a situation where human wants are unlimited while human resources are finite; it is the economic problem of scarcity of resources. At any one particular time, the resources of the earth are capable of producing a limited number of goods and services, however, human wants exceed limited production possibilities and this gives rise to what is known as the economic problem of scarcity.

imagine living in a world in which there are infinite amounts of goods and resources to satisfy every human desire. People will not find need to budget their limited incomes, businesses will not worry about the cost of labor, and governments will not have reason to tax its citizens, or give importance to environmental issues. People living in this society will be equal to one another and everything would be free, like water in the ocean and sand in the desert. All prices would be zero and society will not find need for markets or financial institutions. Unfortunately we do not live in a utopia of limitless possibilities; we live in a scarce world of unlimited wants. Given unlimited wants, we must make the best use of our limited resources, a science our ancestors have developed and named economics. This study measures how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them efficiently among different people.

A smarty-pants old story says that if you want a "learned economist," all you have to do is get a parrot and train the bird to squawk "supply and demand" in response to every question.