Economics HL - Jacob Solomon's group - Year 1

This article is about the Canadian e-book company, Kobo, and their fight for sales against Amazon's product, Kindle. Kobo and Kindle are both very similar and have been competing against one another as 'substitutes' (as we've read about) for a long time. However, a new Kindle was just released that is priced even lower than the Kobo just in time for Christmas. Kobo's problem is that since Kindle has lowered their prices, they are sliding along their demand curve and thus increasing their demand. Kobo might not be able to afford lowering their prices much further, and so this might mean their whole demand curve will shift to the left because Kindle has better prices.

I've never even heard of the Kobo and I live in Canada. I guess it doesn't have very much of a chance, especially with the new price competition.

This article is related to oil prices; which are very much connected to our demand for them and the amount that can be supplied. This particular article is in reference to lower oil prices; which would increase the demand for the oil.

It is so amazing to see, how if a country is having problems, then the price for oil is drastically changed. Also, if the price for oil decreases then more countries are willing to buy it and hence it circles around because then the supply becomes limited and the price for oil rises again.

In this video, it talks about how the younger generation and the increase in population has caused for house prices to rise, resulting in the lack of cheap homes for young people to buy. It talks about how the government are buying brown field sites, fields and other places in order to build cheap, small homes for people to buy. It talks about how the demand for houses increased while the supply has stayed the same, resulting in the rise of its prices. Thus, young people who do not earn that much money can not afford to buy a house for themselves.

What really could be constraining the housing demand? is it really the different circumstances covering a householders finances due to weak earnings or higher inflation as suggested or the PRICE?!

This article states the relationship between currencies, which links to prices, and the demand for goods and services. While the currencies are weakened worldwide, the manufacturing industries are highly impacted. Therefore, the supply is lowered.

This article demonstrates how price is used to allocate resources in a free market, in the area of education. Since there aren't enough teachers and universities for every student across the world who wishes to go to university to go, this education must be allocated to people via price. Because of this, only people who can afford the education can go to school. The amount of people who can go to university is also regulated by admissions and marks, but it is an example of where price can affect who gets to make use of the resources.

This article shows how resources are allocated in a free market by pointing out that both the quantity demanded and demand for gasoline fell. The quantity demanded fell because of a higher price; demand is falling because of uncertainty (which pushes the demand curve to the left). This shows allocative efficiency because if fewer people are working it make sense that fewer people are driving because these people no longer have to drive to work. Furthermore, these people may not have the ability to drive as much anymore because of their lower income.

This article talks about the ongoing Social Security debate happening in the U.S. federal government. Some state governments, such as Texas, form their own version of Social Security which has been confusing to the original plan. The trade-off illustrated here is "more you contribute, the more your savings will be." By contributing more money now, you will eventually make more money. However, many people don't want to give up lots of money now!

This article talks about how putting taxes for fossil fuels may help to reduce the the consumption of fossil fuels. This is necessary because fossil fuels are become very scarce and we are running out of them as they are a non-renewable energy source. However, not everyone wants the tax to go up as this would mean increased spending when they cannot afford to do this. Many energy companies will be able to push this increase of tax onto the consumer as it is an inelastic product and the demand will not decrease much if the price is increased.

This piece by The Globe and Mail outlines Canada's ongoing shortage of healthcare professionals, particularly family doctors. Although it doesn't address economics directly, this article applies to our topic because doctors are considered a 'service', and thus not having enough of them is a scarcity within Canada's economy. The author talks about how difficult it is to find a regular family doctor in her area. According to her, there are actual business dedicated to helping people locate doctors. At the end of the article, statistics reveal that this is a normal problem occuring in a large part of Canadians. There is actually also a major shortage of healthcare professionals in developing areas such as Africa, where there aren't even suitable medical locations in the case of an emergency. **By the way: I apologize for my lack of tags other than 'scarcity'... I accidentally posted the article before tagging anything else! **I fixed the tags... finally figured out how, woohoo!!

This is a great example of scarcity, and even opportunity cost. These doctors are somewhat of a luxury, and although they are a need, the scarcity makes them a reasonable want as well. Scarcity may have largely negative repercussions, yet there is an occasional positive outcome for some unit in an economy. It's certainly beneficial to the other businesses (helping to locate doctors) that have evolved from this problem, and those companies are profiting from a Nation's scarcity.

This news article is basically concerning the issue of scarcity of natural resources in Africa. We are all well aware that the continent is undergoing an adaptation period with the ongoing climate change and this affects the agricultural aspect of the entire continent (more so in the rural areas). The article talks about the steps that are intended to be taken to withstand the impact of the change in climate and its effects on resources.

By 2030, more than half the world's population will live in high-risk areas By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor Humanity is facing "water bankruptcy" as a result of a crisis even greater than the financial meltdown now destabilising the global economy, two authoritative new reports show.

This seems like a big issue that will unfold during our generation. In Canada, we have one of the world's largest fresh water supplies, and that will be an important resource for our country moving into the future. But even with such a large supply, it is still a very scarce resource. Last year I visited a museum exhibit on the world's water supply, and it demonstrated the amount of water usage per capita in places around the world... In North America, we were using around ten times more water per day than people in Africa. This demonstrated the availability around the world affecting people's usage, but even in places where water is abundant, if we use too much it can still run out, so we need to be careful in everything we do.

The article discusses a pumpkin shortage due to a natural disaster, hurricane Irene, that has destroyed crops such as these pumpkins, in the US. It demonstrates scarcity since the quantity of the resource provided is not meeting the wants of people for the product. For one, prices are rising sky high as a result, and some people who would be willing to buy cannot even get the product.

oh no! I'm gonna need my jack-o-lantern!

I never even thought about how Irene might have affecting something so many of us take for granted seasonally. The hurricane created a sort of chain reaction, ending with some very lame Halloween decorations :( If there are a shortage of pumpkins this year, I wonder if the lack of seeds will mean that future seasons will have low yieldings of pumpkins?

This article is concerned with a very clear case of a resource's scarcity, and one that affects us all. Oil prices have been climbing dramatically recently, due to the fact that there isn't enough of the scarce resource to satisfy the unlimited wants that we have for it.

This demonstrates scarcity by showing that a shortage of drugs, caused by manufacturing problems, is causing high markups from secondary suppliers. 

I recently heard about a similar issue in Canada and I assume the same problem is occurring elsewhere... Drug companies have decided to switch their focus to more expensive drugs, such as cancer treatment drugs, because they can make so much more money on them. At the same time, they are reducing production of the cheaper drugs because of the low profit margin, even though these drugs may be essential in saving people's lives. The scarcity of the drugs for the people who need them could be easily fixed, but is being prevented due to the greed of large corporations.

It's really unfortunate how so many individual events, such as stolen goods or contaminated drugs, have lead to so much suffering. The market is the big, but (as the article says) there are only about a half-dozen companies that produce these drugs, and so when there is one little problem, it quickly becomes something much bigger. It isn't just one reason, this article otulines several, all of which are wreaking havoc on patients and the healthcare system as a whole. Clearly, pharmacists are scrambling to provide for their patients. Hopefully, this shortage doesn't lead to illegal imports or other bad things that can occur when people are desperate.

This article talks about the rising prices of commodities due to the aggressive and proactive economic policy of China. With the surge in Chinese purchases of commodities such as iron ore and oil, a huge demand has been created in the commodity markets, which were previously unprecedented. The sluggish reactions to the commodity demand,due to archaic infrastructure and depleted resources, have lead to a substantial spike in the prices of commodities. I personally believe that the massive purchases of resources by China is leading to a bubble in the commodity markets. As said in the article Iron ore was once 13$ a tonne in 2001, and now is 178$ a tonne. Although some might say that the rise in prices are a corollary to the rise of China as a economic power, I do not believe the mass consumption of commodities can be sustained over time.

Not only is there an opportunity cost for the designer, but the people spending this money on the jewelry have the opportunity cost for other large items - such as a vacation or new computer!

I commented on this article, and now on my screen above it says shared by Monique T... just to clarify, Lola posted the article, not me.

This article demonstrates the scarcity facing the food supply of people in North Korea. Although we would normally expect food scarcity because of, for example, a natural disaster, the food scarcity experienced by the people in North Korea is not only because of a lack of food being made... It is scarce because the government is preventing the supply of food from getting to the people, creating a greater demand than supply. Food is a limited resource, but the problem of scarcity in this part of the world is because of political reasons in addition to natural.

It's really disturbing to read this. When we're working towards satisfying as many wants as we have, some people don't even get what they need.