The, Big Picture Economics, By Naroff And Scherer

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.

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

While most taxpayers agree that tax reform is necessary for our country the problem they encounter is the difficulty they experience when trying to understand all the political terms used when discussing tax reform. This paper is an attempt to help the taxpayers of our country to better understand the political terminology and gain knowledge about some of the proposals that have been explored.

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

They explained that: “Changes in incentives influence human behavior in predictable ways”. The main point of this concept is that the more attractive an option is the more likely an individual to choose it. Another point that they also focused on was the fact that if a particular product more costly, the more unappealing it will become to the consumer. They used examples such as employees will worker harder if they feel that they will be greatly rewarded or a student will study material that they feel will be on an

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.

The bizarre economy that we live in has affected us in many ways than our simple mind can fathom. After World War II there was massive push in innovation. Human were gifted with inventions like the Airplane, color T.V., polyvinyl cups, and precooked dinners. Nevertheless, these “gifts” came at an enormous cost. That cost was pushed onto the environment and people living in that environment. “The Market Economy” by Marge Piercy illustrates the movement in American aimed at bring attention to a global problem as well as an effort to save the planet along with the people living on it.

People do not enjoy talking about taxes because they are too political, confusing, and depressing. It is no secret that the American tax code is a mess and something many economists describe as too broken to fix. Despite this, politicians have never stopped from trying to “fix” the code, yet they have had very little success. The U.S. Government’s tax code currently comprises “more than 67,000 pages of complexities” (Boortz, Linder, & Woodall 14). The Americans for Fair Taxation (AFFT) was founded in 1995 with one goal: create the simplest and best tax reform plan that would work in the modern market and economy. The AFFT’s best solution was a bill which they promptly called the FairTax.

With the recent developments in the economy there could have not been a better time to

"A revolutionary change in our tax system is fundamental to re-energizing the American economy and restoring the American dream" (Moore 1). Currently, there are two major plans being considered to try and fix the tax system in the United States. These two plans are the Flat Tax and the National Retail Sales Tax. "Both the Flat Tax and a National Sales Tax would replace today's discriminatory tax structure with a single low rate. Either plan would promote the kind of capital formation that America needs to boost workers' incomes and raise long-term economic growth" (Mitchell 1). This means that the flat tax would take away the savings from the government and pass them on to the citizens and businesses. By doing this, there would be a rise in long-term economic growth.

Throughout history, taxation on United States citizens has proven to be a necessary component of a growing economy as means of generating revenue for the federal budget. The federal budget funds the many government programs implemented to keep the disabled, elderly, and unemployed from falling bellow the poverty level. Unfortunately, this fund is not always available when catastrophic evens, such as an economic recession, deplete the revenue coming in and create a budget deficit. In order to regenerate money coming in and replace the deficit, the government calls on money gained from taxes. What happens when tax money is already appropriated to other programs? A tax reform. A tax increase has many times been the

     “In addition to theses endless pleading of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group and to neglect

Using the Librarian Internet Index, two sources were found for investigating financial reform in the United States. The first was the website for the Tax Policy Center, which is a collaborative effort between the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. This site offers independent analyses of federal tax policies and financial issues. The other source was a publication produced by the United States Government Accountability Office entitled "Understanding the Tax Reform Debate: Background, Criteria, and Questions." This publication offers an overview of the debate over how to collect and distribute taxes that was prepared by the GAO, a non-partisan branch of the federal government.

In the Dec. 12, 2011 issue of Time Magazine's online "Healthland" series, Maia Szalavitz summarizes recent medical research on the analgesic effects of combining medical marijuana with oipiod painkillers (Szalavitz, 2011, n. pag.). Researchers found that use of the two drugs together had a beneficial pain-reducing effect that could reduce the risk of potentially deadly opiate overdose, which is a growing problem in the U. S., but because of legal restrictions, such use was prohibited, study was difficult, and doctors hesitated to prescribe due to possible criminal prosecution (Szalavitz, 2011, n. p.). The article discusses dynamic factors that illustrate most of N. Gregory Mankiw's "Ten Principles of Economics" (Nantz and Miners, 2007), which is important to me as the debate about U. S. marijuana decriminalization unfolds over states that have and those that have not repealed prohibition. All future voters and health care consumers have a responsibility to educate themselves on this debate and Prof. Mankiw's framework provides an organized structure with which to consider the effects of an issue that becomes more prominent and contentious every day (McKinley, 2012, e.g.).