Naked Economics Chapter 6 Summary

The chapter starts by giving the example of how the head of Coca-Cola Europe decided to give away Coke to East Germans as the Berlin Wall was falling in 1989. This gamble, which began as a loss, eventually paid off for Coca-Cola. Six years later, the former East Germany had matched West Germany in the consumption of Coke, an excellent example of the power of markets. The author gives a simplistic explanation of the communist economy. There is no law of supply and demand. The price of an item is the same regardless of where one buys it. This is due to the fact that every business is paid the same by the government for selling a specific item regardless of the amount sold. Our economy is a market economy and economists make two important assumptions.

Author Wheelan writes, "Life is about trade-offs, and so is economics." Indeed, so is Naked Economics. This book promises to be a good introduction to economics for the layman. Throughout the book, the author uses easy-to-understand language and vivid examples to illustrate his points in strategic places maintaining a sense of lightness with the readers in reading the material. Here is a summary of each of the 12 Chapters of the book Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan.

Charles states as his number one point that economics is really unpredictable. He uses the Coca-Cola Company as a fine example for this. That company starts of turning out to be loss and failure but within 10 years since it started it turned out to be very profitable. Charles also states that markets are extreme powerhouses over individual’s daily lives. Markets are also self-correcting because they use prices to allocate their resources. Individuals all work for their own self-interest so they can be better off in the society. One very good example the author provides is the Soviet’s socialist economy and how it failed because the bureaucracy controlled the economy, or basically he’s saying that

The economy of Brazil is in the top ten largest economies along with the United States. It is the biggest in Latin America. Actually it is the seventh largest in the world. Brazil has used its newly found economic mechanism to syndicate its outcome in South America and show more of a role in the Global Businesses. The Obama Administration’s National Security Strategy recognizes Brazil as a developing center of effect, and greets the management of the country’s joint and global issues. The United States and Brazil associations mostly have been good in the recent years. But Brazil has other strengthening relations with neighboring countries and expanding ties with nontraditional partners in the South that’s developing.

Imagine that you have decided to open a small ice cream stand on campus called "Ice-Campusades." You are very excited because you love ice cream (delicious!) and this is a fun way for you to apply your business and economics skills! Here is the first month's scenario--you order the same number (and the same variety) of ice creams each day from the ice cream suppliers, and your ice creams are always marked at $1.50 each. However, you notice that there are days when ice creams remain unsold but other days when there are not enough ice creams for the number of customers.

Chapter 8: A question that has stuck with Wheelan for years, asked by one of his peers was, “If people know so much about public policy, then why is everything so messed up” (175)? The reason for that is because it leads to something far more significant: Even when economists reach consensus on policies that would be to our advantage, they frequently run into political opposition. And when it comes to interest groups in politics, it pays to be small because the tail can wag the dog. This can have a huge impact on the economy. They are usually the most successful because the consequence of requests they receive are spread over a large, disunified group of people. Wheelan states that small problems begin to distort the simplest jobs of a market

When I first looked into finding this book I didn’t think much of it as I just thought it was just another type of text book or some sort. I was thinking that this would be some kind of auto biography or something I would not be interested in. In fact after reading this book I was stunned by the different views and aspects of economics that was explain and I would had never thought about them in that sort of way. This book covers a lot about we discussed in class. This book explains different examples of economic concepts that may be used in our daily lives. They

A fiscal deficit is when a government's total expenditures exceed the tax revenues that it generates. A budget deficit can be cut by either reducing public expenditure or raising taxes. In this essay, I am going to analyse the benefits and costs of increasing tax rates to reduce fiscal deficits instead of cutting government expenditure.

The book begins by saying that economics has more incorrect arguments than any other study. The two critical reasons for this are: People don’t care about the long term health of the public, as much as the care about the short term gain in their private lives. Special interest groups create or reuse correct-sounding fallacies to promote their viewpoint. Economics consists in looking at more than the immediate policy; It includes seeing the problems of the policy for not just one group but for all groups. The misconception that government spending boosts the Economy, is a result of a system of misconceptions. The fact that, we don’t address deficit spending and inflation and assume that public spending will be covered in taxes, is a delusional dream.

An indication of the overall impact of fiscal policy (FP) on the state of the economy is the fiscal outcome. The three possible outcomes include a fiscal surplus (positive balance where government expenditure exceeds revenue), fiscal deficit (a negative balance where government revenue exceeds expenditure), and fiscal balance (a zero balance where total government revenue equals expenditure). The main aim of fiscal policy is to achieve fiscal balance, on average, over the course of the economic cycle. The Howard Government targeted a fiscal surplus of 1% of GDP, whereas the current Rudd Government has raised this target to 1.5% of GDP,

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

12. What advice about investing in the stock market did you find most interesting and/or useful?

1. The richer you are, the more you have benefited from economic changes over the past 30 years.

“There is no inherent reason to believe that investment outlays plus consumption outlays would always tend to equal the cost of any given output; there is no assurance that Demand would tend to equal any given Supply”

For Science and Technology: $10 billion for new scientific facilities (increase) and $6 billion to improve internet access in rural areas (Increase). For the Infrastructure: it included $30 billion for highways (Increase), $31 billion to modernize federal buildings and infrastructure(Stimulate) , $19 billion for clean water (Stimulate), and other environmental investments, and $10 billion to improve public transit and rail infrastructure(Stimulate) . For Education: $41 billion for local school districts(Increase) , $79 billion to maintain schools (Stimulate) , $15.6 billion to broaden the federal Pell Grant program (need based grants to fund education)(Increase), and $6 billion to modernize higher education programs(Stimulate). For Health Care: $87 billion for Medicaid (Increase), $20 billion to improve technology in the medical field (Increase), and $4 billion to improve preventative care (increase). The plan also includes $140 billion directed towards tax cuts of $500 per worker or $1,000 per family over two years, expand tax credits for working poor with children, and a $2,500 college tuition credit. All of this is a part of the G in the C+I+G+Xn, GDP Formula. Gsavings= Taxes -Gov’t Spending-Xn (Exports – Imports). The Treasury’s $700 Billion in TARP funds, which were originally aimed at stabilizing the financial sector, should be used to provide relief to other industries and “for things that look more like stimulus and less like asset purchases.” Some of the things that this includes is: Automatic economic stabilizers like the extension of unemployment insurance, the expansion of health insurance, Mortgage relief for those American’s facing default, the federal reserve’s purchase of mortgage-backed securities and other types of securities in need in the future, and an