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President Obama, a seemingly great fan of Keynesian economics has developed a program of government expansion and nationalization of various aspects of the lives of the American people (such as the government takeover of health care, intervention in banks, and the nationalization of various automobile companies such as General Motors), the federal government is now embarking upon a program of government-directed wireless internet (Wi-Fi) delivery.

The UK started reducing government expenditure, easing its fiscal policy to compensate for debt: There are a couple of notable points raised by the BRC in the Outlook: one is their view of economic growth and the other is the number of job losses caused by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne's public spending cuts. The BRC state that they believe the UK economy will continue to recover but at a slower pace than after the recessions of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. They put this "sluggish outlook" down to "the gradual normalisation of credit conditions, efforts to reduce private sector indebtedness and the impact of the Government's fiscal consolidation."

In Indonesia, where the land was once seemed to be covered by endless dark waves of treetops, almost indiscriminate logging is taking place - both legal and illegal. The irony is, this deterioration of forests in the country is actually recorded as progress. This is because the land which is cleared is used for other purposes which are considered less 'scarce'. Logically, in a country with plenty trees, the scarcity of trees will not be very high. Thus, by reducing supply of something which they have an ostentatiously an 'infinite' supply of and acquiring more scarce means of economic production, this economic phenomenon is recorded as progress in Indonesia.

In India, new cars are being registered at a rate of nearly two million per year. The Indian auto industry has become the world's seventh largest, now having overtaken every European country except for Germany. This exponential rate of production comes at an opportunity cost however. A mixed externality takes place. The stimulation in the auto industry increases the demand, and therefore the possession of cars in the country, which will hence increase the amount of green house gases released by general motor transport, aggravating atmospheric pollution.

Since it's not in the government's favor to impose taxes or increase interest so as to gain the people's voices in the case of re-election, some country's central banks have become independent, as in the case of Mexico in this article. With this independence, the central banks opt to impose their control of inflation through the increase and decrease of interest rates with the objective of maintaining a low, stable rate of inflation. Recently, Mexico's annual inflation rate cooled in February to its lowest in 14 months despite some sharp increases in food prices. This kept the pressure off the central bank to raise interest rates soon.

Perhaps the most striking finding in the United Nations' recent 20th anniversary "Human Development Report" is the outstanding performance of the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Here was Tunisia, ranked sixth among 135 countries in terms of improvement in its Human Development Index, or HDI, over the previous four decades, ahead of Malaysia, Hong Kong, Mexico and India. Not far behind was Egypt, ranked 14th. The HDI is a measure of development that captures achievements in health and education alongside economic growth. Egypt and especially Tunisia did well enough on the growth front, but where they really shone was on these broader indicators...

While the economic definition of 'scarcity' may seem obscure to this particular scenario, on closer inspection we find that the definition of 'unlimited needs/wants but limited resources' can indeed be applied to the scarcity of jobs as a result of the recession. The 'want' in this case is labour seeking employment and the limited resource is the relative liquidity of business. While this article is generally about foreclosure and its effect on the economy, I feel it demonstrates a highly relevant application of economic scarcity in the current environment.

I totally agree with you and the website. Jobs are also a scarcity problem. Because resources cannot be limited (some maybe not), but jobs is definitively limited, due to the fact, there are not enough jobs for everyone. Day by day, people are suffering more to find jobs, due to the amount of people trying to get them. Popularity in the world is increasing greatly, jobs is not so much; therefore, jobs is a scarce "good".

Jobs are the main scarcity problem in my country and I think it's a huge problem for the world too. Like resources, there are limited amount of jobs for the people and sometimes adults stay jobless. As the world's population increases, number of unemplyed people increases too. When there was an economic crisis in the world, many poeple were fired from their jobs.

Imposition of levies (taxes) by G20 governments to reduce government budget deficit: The G20 summit held in Canada over the weekend has confirmed the trend of fiscal consolidation which is happening in many of the major world economies in the wake of the financial crisis and recession. Leaders have agreed that debt as a proportion of gross domestic product needs to be stabilised or actually reduced by 2016 and it was noted that all the G20 countries had committed to halving their respective deficits within three years. Plans to introduce a global levy on banks have, as expected, been dropped although the summit confirmed that member countries would be free to introduce their own measures. The UK introduced a levy in the emergency Budget last week and some other European countries also have plans to do so...

"Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy, and it usually drives growth during economic recoveries." This article discusses how the truth is that consumer spending does not account for 70 percent of economic activity and is not the mainstay of the U. S. economy. Investment is! Business spending on capital goods, new technology, entrepreneurship, and productivity are more significant than consumer spending in sustaining the economy and a higher standard of living. In the business cycle, production and investment lead the economy into and out a recession; retail demand is the most stable component of economic activity.

In a new study of federal fiscal policies between 1977 and 1992 entitled "Inequality and the Federal Budget Deficit," the nonpartisan group concludes that the tax cuts enacted in that period enriched the wealthy, increased the tax burden of the middle class, and grossly inflated the national debt. The study concludes that the tax cuts have resulted in lower overall federal tax burdens for only the very poorest and very richest of U.S. taxpayers. Most other families are paying a greater percentage of their family income to the government than they would be if the tax code had remained unchanged since 1977.

This article is a report on the state of burial prices in Hong Kong greatly affected by the lack of supply of room for the dead. For private burials, the costs can go well beyond $25,000!

this article shows the situation in today's Hong-Kong where supply curve has moved to the left because of an increase in prices and demand curve moved to the right, because demand has increased this is caused by a lack of room( supply), so a new equilibrium is now formed which i think will soon change because of a resource being scares which will increase price even higher

this article shows the situation in today's Hong-Kong where supply curve has moved to the left because of an increase in prices and demand curve moved to the right, because demand has increased this is caused by a lack of room( supply), so a new equilibrium is now formed which i think will soon change because of a resource being scares which will increase price even higher.

This Article highlights the problem of water scarcity in war-torn Iraq. The Scarcity of Water has caused the government to make it a priority in solving this problem along with UNESCO and the EU. Any story that involves Iraqi politicians cooperating to solve an issue must be a good sign weither they accomplish it or not. This Scarcity is a central and unifying issue and ironically may produce positive effects.

Nabil, I find this interesting since it associates scarcity with water. I recently read an article that talked about the implications of bottled water being treated as a luxury good in developed nations (branded water even!). And in your article water is being discussed as a scarce resource. Clearly, it would make more moral sense for less water to be sold as a luxury and more distributed to areas where it's scarce, but the profit motive steers the practice in another direction altogether!

Nabil, I also find this particularly interesting because I've always wondered about whether or not water availability will decrease as time progresses and the amount of human beings in the planet increases. I have always thought of water as being incredibly cheap if not completely free (go to a river and sip some water), and this makes it hard for me to think of water as being something that will be depleted any time soon.

This article descibes the simple way of life of the Maasai people. As the article states, since 1885 this people have fasinated the rich western world. What I found fasinating was that the very things that made them as a people so interesting are also the same things that we in the western world do not desire for ourselves. We want comfort and luxury. Given the scarcity of resources that our generation is having to deal with, the Maasai people may become our new model of society.

Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the nobel prize for their researches on graphene. Graphene is a new material that derives from Graphite (the inside of pencils) and it turns out to be the best heat conductor available and to be able to conduct electricity as fast as copper. Its uses are almost infinte and they predict that it might take the place of silicon for faster computers in the future.\nHaving to deal with scarcity people find clever ways to go about with what is available to them, and often by inventing new things, in this case *Graphene*, we can make better use of resources and avoid wastes of other, less efficent, materials.

This article talks about how Taiwan's standard of living has passed Japan's. Although Japan's GDP per capita itself is still far larger than that of Taiwan, when taking into consideration of the price of the two markets, the real relative income for Taiwan is larger than that of Japan. The role that price plays here is that it serves as a clarifier of the numbers which may mislead the people into believing that the standard of living for Japanese people is twice as good as the Taiwanese's.

The article quantifies the external costs of smoking in addition to the private costs imposed upon the smoker. It cites a cost of $150 for cleaning costs (for cars dirtied by ash), with up to $1000 for high-end models. Cleaning a house plagued by smoke is estimated to cost up to $2000. This does not include the costs associated with healthcare payments that need to be paid to employees as part of coverage plans. Furthermore, it is estimated that $96.7 billion is spent on private and public healthcare pertaining to smoker-related illnesses. These negative externalities are not accounted for in the price of a pack of cigarettes (the article states a price of $4-$5 for a single pack) and thus results in an allocative inefficiency - smoking is grossly overconsumed by society.

This is a great article. It covers no only the firsthand costs of smoking, but also the long term effects on costs.

The article talks about the state of Tehran's atmosphere which has turned into a thick brown haze of smog. The inadequacy of public transportation in the city along with government policy promoting automobile usage for its booming car industry has created an atmosphere which has led to the bastardization of its air and the consequent deaths of its citizens. The article is related with this week's topic in the sense that in case of market failure (overproduction of cars) an adequate government response is required to stabilize the situation - which was not the case for Ahmadinejad's Tehran.

Economic growth (increase in the country's level of output, and therefore GDP) in the Philippians condemns a million more Filipinos to poverty from 2006 to 2009. This very example is valid proof that economic growth and development are two entirely different notions. It is shown, in this article how economic growth in the Philippians meant abatement of living standards and a national spread of poverty. Quite the opposite of what can be defined as economic development... " 'Some 185,000 families, or 970,000 Filipinos, became poor', the NCSB said" "The needy totalled 3.86 million families or 23.14 million individuals."

Most developed economies will grow at a steady pace in the months ahead, but growth in Italy and China appears to be slowing, according to an economic indicator from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD's indicators are designed to provide early signals of turning points between the pickup and slowdown of economic activity and are based on a wide variety of data series that have a history of signaling changes in economic activity.

Japan's nuclear crisis and the devastations caused by last Friday's earthquake and tsunami are unlikely to trigger a global recession as happened in the aftermath of the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers three years ago, according to leading economists. However, they expressed fears that automobile and electronic industries around the world, especially in Asia, Europe and the US, may face manufacturing delays, if the Japanese production of components remain crippled for a long period. Even though Japan is the world's third largest economy, its share of the global gross domestic product (GDP) is below 5 per cent. Therefore, the consequences for the global economy from the catastrophe will be very minimal