Group items tagged

The Minister of Education, Mr. David Laws, wants to reduce the national expenditure on school uniform. He believes that the inflated price of school uniform up to 52 million pounds per year is excessive. The schools in the UK have to reduce the opportunity cost of demanding overly priced uniform. This practice must be stopped. In implementing this policy, British families would be able to save 52 million pounds in one year, which is a sizeable proportion of many poor families budgets. In many lower income families in this period of recession, families who are depending on food banks will benefit from this opportunity cost of spending on uniform as they have a scarce budget. This will help them to shift their household expenditures to more essential items such as food. The opportunity cost of them budgeting a significant percentage of their limited income to an inelastic demand for uniforms may create problems of great scarcity to families with many school-going children. The guideline by the minister stated that the uniform must be purchase from the cheaper suppliers, which will reduce the opportunity costs. This will mean savings for the parents. The question is how do these new policies going to be effectively worked out because some rich parents with no scarcity problems will insist or prefer their children to wear higher quality and more expensive uniforms, some even tailoring them.

This is my article for this week. It connects to one of this week's key concept of Economics, Opportunity Cost. The concept of opportunity cost are reflected in the choice companies makes in relation to technology. For my full write-up, please go to: https://pamojaeducation-com.campuspack.eu/Groups/13.Y2.ST.ODP.MAY.ECON.SL.A/Nattanopthorns_Economics_Blog/2013/09/2-4_-_ScarcityOpportunity_Cost - Bee

This is my article for this week's topic - price controls. The article above relates to Thailand's government's attempt to control prices of goods. My write-up can be viewed here: https://pamojaeducation-com.campuspack.eu/Groups/13.Y2.ST.ODP.MAY.ECON.SL.A/Nattanopthorns_Economics_Blog/2013/11/11-2_-_Price_Control_Newsstand - Bee

This article "Opening the flood gates" illustrates the opportunity cost in building a dam on the yangzi river. The yangzi river contains a rare fish reserve as well as farmers reaping good harvest, the dam on the river will affect the good harvest from the farmers as well threaten several endangered species.

my article

Supply, technology, unemployment

The following article is about the high demand of the recently founded company Raspberry Pi which has begun creating single board computers, which is basically just the "heart" of the computer. They produce their computer chips at an incredibly low price of only 20 pounds per unit and have now sold over 1 million units do to large demand of the cheap processor. Due to its low and affordable cost it has become immensely popular and is predicted to grow even more over the next few years.

The following article talks about how Obama is trying to help the poor of the United States by "expanding low income tax breaks" and offering them other benefits as well. This would hopefully not only benefit the poor, but also increase AD in the economy as now more people have more money to spend.

The following article talks about the riots that have been occurring in Venezuela throughout the past few months. It discusses how protesters are angry at the government for rising unemployment and the scarcity of basic items and other commodities. It talks about how already 25 people have died during the riots, according to the government.

This article talks about the change in taxation of cigaretts.

As many of us know Marijuana is on its way of being decriminalized and legalized in the U.S., some states like Washington and Colorado have already legalized Marijuana completely. Now people in Colorado have voted for a 15% excise tax on wholesale and a 10% sales tax on retail Marijuana to help regulate the trade.

This is my week's article regarding the domestic Ukrainian steel scarcity. 

This article is a very good example of how the idea of scarcity exists within Chinese banks.

The following article discusses how the strict price controls set in the Venezuela are causing more harm then benefit. The ceiling prices are set so low that producers cannot make a profit anymore, causing a reduction of production but an increase in demand. This is causing a crisis in Venezuela where people struggle to purchase the goods which are being produced less and less due to the price controls.

Car prices in Venezuela are expensive so the government put a price ceiling it.