Group items tagged

I chose the article because it was talking about how Syria was giving a $25-million reward for the capture of the president. I thought it related to scarcity because, now a days, money is very important for a person to sustain life, and if they wanted to capture the president the best way was giving a lot of money so people would do it as fast as possible. If people have an opportunity to get a lot of money, they will take it. Money is a limited resource; it is scarce and it will always be. If the government decided to print more money, then every time we would have more money to spend and everything would be more expensive.

The article relates more to monetary policies and demand-side policies but I believe that it can be connected to supply side policies. In fact, the government is spending a lot of money meaning that those money could be invested for supply-side policies. It doesn't say how much money the government will spend, but the increase in government spending could be related to supply side policies and an increase in the supply of products/goods and services.

While there was a lot of economic lingo in here that I didn't completely understand, what I did pick up was the use of price increases to help the government make more money. The government makes its money off the financial interactions between households and firms. This is done through income tax, sales tax, etc. Starting to sound familiar? So, by increasing the price on diesel, the government ensures that large transactions will be made between the household and the firm, meaning they get a bigger chunk of dough. But the political motive behind this is that the government can now use the extras cash-money to fund public programs and what not for social benefit.

In this article it talks about the poor economy in Indonesia and the little income some of its citizens have. Due to so little income some people cannot buy proper food for their families resulting in malnutrition. This is a huge problem for the economy as it cannot get back on its feet if people do not spend money, but if there is no money to spend then what can one do?

This article tells us that because the prices of foods as increased, there is poverty and malnutrition is countries like Indonesia. Two different types of surveys was taken in Indonesia before 1996 and immediately after the economics crisis in 1999. The result was that some food nutrients like iron and calcium was more than usual during the crisis years and and food nutrient like Vit C was almost nothing.

This is a great show of how the government needs money and so, not out of spite for any business but out of a need for funding, they are considering putting a tax on a local Enterprise Car Rental franchise. Obviously, the owners are not happy with this and say that price would hurt them and the customers, which would only consist of out-of-towners and not the locals who want the downtown renovated in the first place. The suggestion they made, which seems fair to me, is to put an even smaller percentage tax on all restaurant's goods and services. This way there is less harm done to any single producer, because restaurants as a whole have a much lower inelasticity than car rentals in a single town, and any given customer, of which there would be many more for a restaurant, would not feel they were losing as much money to this tax. Plus, a tax on restaurants would force those citizens that wanted their community to look nicer to pitch in a little.

This article is a perfect example of economics and corruption. Corruption if when money within governmental lines is distributed "off the chart", something citizens don't like since it could have ben used for their benefit. In this case, the money came from donations from companies and individuals. If we apply this to the flow chart of a macroeconomy, there is negatives from both households and fabrics, but no input. Though, the input gets there by the government employees spending more. So there is a hidden extra flow that should not be there.

This article talks of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its overall economic and political impacts on the society itself. For their cause they closed down a shipping port in Portland to try and cut corporate costs. The movements followers believe that these corporations are largely responsible for the current economic crisis faced by the US today. The political impact of this movement was a statement made by Republican pollster Frank Luntz who says he's "scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death." Luntz said he believed the movement is "having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

The article talks about corruption in China, and how the government spends the money of the people to buy 4 or 5 houses, and some even to pass driving tests. When I read the article, I thought of the circular flow with three sectors open. The firms get the government expenditure that should go for hospitals and schools, and with the corruption a lot of money are given illegally from the government to the firms.

This article talks about how people in the UK tried to buy cheap meat, and instead got horse meat. The article is related to aggregate demand as it involves the whole economy of the country: people can't consume as much, therefore they are buy cheap meat online or importing it so that they won't spend as much money. However, the government is preoccupied as there is no control over the meat. This is not only happening in the UK, but also in other countries where the population is not consuming as much due to the lack of money and the economic crisis.

This article talks about the increase in demand of gold and the amount of price paid to get gold between 2010 and 2011. The demand of gold increased by 11% from the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011 while the price increased by 40%. The increase in demand directly increases the supply of gold because if people want it, the rate of mining would increases so that gold is available at all time. Also, the amount of money spent on the gold would also increase because gold does not grow and one day gold would finish. The people who sell the gold would therefore put additional money on the price of the gold to get their own profit. This process would however continue because every time gold is found, the amount of gold left in the earth reduces. This allows the seller to always increase the price of the gold which means that there can never be a balance between the price and the demand. As the demand of gold increases, the price of gold decreases and the amount of gold left on earth decreases. Looking at the chart in the article, we can see that if the demand of gold increases the supply of gold would also increase but there was a slight decrease in the years 2007 to 2009. The article states that 'China's total annual gold demand topped 700 metric tons for the first time ever last year and is expected to keep rising over the next decade'.

Basically, article is about Egypt's endeavor to find foreign investors for financing infrastructure projects and increasing its dwindling foreign currency reserves. Two of the most important terms derived from the week 2 are scarcity and opportunity cost. Turkish investments of $20 bn dollars and 500 mio euros from the EU (depending on Egypt securying the loan from IMF) in Egyptian infrastructure and foreign currency reserves deficit have an opportunity cost of spending that amount of money for other purposes. In this article, Egypt's foreign currency reserves and budget are scarce, so Egypt wants to get money to reduce unemployment rate via economic growth (4.5 %). Here we also have the factor of production - this is capital which comes from investments in physical capital (infrastructure) and in my opinion also human capital (reducing unemployment, improving education and healthcare perhaps ...). One thing that will be crucial for Egypt is the factor of entrepreneurship.

The article was initiated by a series of event regarding a man, Mark Shuttleworth that transferred money to the South African Reserve Bank. Through powers granted under exchange controls legislation, the South African Reserve Bank imposed a levy of 10% to the money deposed. A big scandal started around the court cases which brought up several good points for the economy of South Africa. It was stated that controlling currency flows gives smaller economies more stability as well as independence. The free flow of capital would also cause account deterioration, inflation and currency devaluation. It was also mentioned that large institutions in South Africa (like its reserve bank) are not interested in red tape or levies, but some how imposed on on Shuttleworth. In addition, they stated that free trade comes as a cost that comes in a form of lost tax revenues and a loss of jobs in South Africa.

the article talks about a change in the income tax paid by the highest bracket of the English economy; this means that all the money earned above £130,000 will have to pay 50p per pound (50%) rather than 40p per pound. Economists predict that the income change will not have any effect on the earnings as the income elasticity of the bracket of economy is 0.46.

These article talks about how people spend less of their income for charity. This could be income elasticity, since people would spend their income or something they would find more necessary (such as food for their families or just buy necessary things for their own good). Therefore, there is no more demand for charities and people do not offer their money to charities anymore.

This article is a good example of how tax can be imposed for a reason. In this case the reason is to boost revenue of the government. Though, it is debated by the people in L.A, since this is a tax made for consumers to pay so that the market can thrive but on the same time provide the government with money in their time of crisis.

The article talks about the demand for more affordable homes, and how house prices rise and rise. It says that mean age for affording a home has risen to 35 due to the high prices. What Britain wants to do is to build more affordable houses, and they hope to make the economy better in that way.

This article describes the new tax on various medical wares such as replacement hips and defibrillators. The new excise tax is within the US, and the prediction is that it will raise $20 billion by 2019. The tax will affect smaller companies the most, and as much as 10% of small companies earnings per share may be paid in tax.

This article talks of the excise tax placed on replacement hips, implantable defibrillators and other FDA-approved wares. This was originally done to help fund the health laws expansion of insurance coverage. However, this tax is starting to hurt companies producing these goods as they are having to introduce cost cutting plans. "Stryker Corp. said in a statement Thursday that the $130 to $150 million in will owe next year could consume one-third of of its research and development budget." The tax is becoming a burden on companies as they must give the money to the government instead of their research funds.

The article talks about how an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and caused 11 injuries and 2 people missing. This is an expample of a negative externality, because now the company will have to pay for any health treatment the workers will have to take, and they will also have to use their time trying to find the 2 people missing. The company will lose money.

Ok, this one may be a bit of stretch this week but it flows more into "margin" than "negative externality", but stick with me. What I really like about this article was that it could have focused on the Chinese sweat shops or the lack of parking lot security, which, admittedly, are negative externalities, but it went in depth on the differences between the externalities of Costo's labor force as opposed to Wal-Mart's. You see, people really like Costco because it pays it's workers between $11-19 an hour while Wal-Mart only pays $11-12. Many would like to say this is because Wal-Mart is the child of Satan brought to Earth to annihilate humanity and do battle with the son of God... who is also God... And to that I say, "corporations aren't people", but that's besides the point. Wal-Mart doesn't just do this because they want more money and because Costco is socially conscious, it's because the margins are much different between both companies. You may not think about it, but all that organizing and "everything you need is here" costs a lot more than what twice as customers can suffice. A lot of that low paid wage goes towards menial tasks like waiting at a cash register for a half hour before the rush of customers arrive or going from aisle to aisle putting the cereal back on the correct shelf because you're just too lazy to do it yourself. What we don't realize is that, sometimes, the negative externalities that we see are a product of our own self-entitled sentiment.

This article talks a lot about the recent "fiscal cliff" that congress or some government branch put together to ensure that the two United States parties, the democrats and the republicans, tried to come to some sort of agreement on where cuts can be made to try and fix the deficit. What's interesting about this article, more than the content itself, is the site it links to which talks a lot about how individual cities are doing their part to try and fix up the country. The fact is, the US has gotten some very bad grades lately (whatever that means), so mayors and representatives are getting citizens to invest in projects that will cost a lot of money but will go a long way toward a better future. Fixing up public resources, like water ways and levies, is crucial to trying to build a better community, even if the effects are long term. This is probably the closest we'll see to a sustainable economy.