Group items tagged

This is an example of scarcity in the Mexican government. It is scarcity of capital and of labor. The scarcity of capital is the limited quality security resources. The scarcity of labor is not just of people, but as well a scarcity of good people. Many prison guards are corrupt, and there aren't a lot of them. This is also a good example of what I'll call a gambling opportunity cost. The government decided to not invest enough in security with the gamble that there could be a prison break. It would have been a good gamble if there were no prison break, however, it turned for the worse. Not only, of course, did the prisoners escape, but now the government needs to pay the wages of all of the sudden security requirements. They most likely are having to pay as much for the mistake as they would have had to pay to do it right the first time.

The article I chose talks about water scarcity. I think this is very interesting because in some of the discussions we talked about wether salt water is scarce or not. The article shows that the quantity of fresh water is limited in some countries.

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.

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.

This article doesn't have as much economic terminology as I would have liked but it proves a very important point using a topic I really enjoy, chemistry. Helium is not thought to be a very useful nor uncommon element and while the former is completely untrue, the latter is just a bit misleading. It is the second most abundant element in the universe, the first being hydrogen, but it's not as easy for us to get. As most people know, helium is lighter than air, so every time we find helium we have to catch it before it escapes into the atmosphere. Once it makes it out of our grasp, whether via a balloon or from careless mining of natural gas reserves, it might as well be gone. In the late 20th century, the US government had a huge reserve of helium gas and so, to get rid of a lot of it, they artificially set the price so that it costed less than it really should have. Even though we now recognize the value that this noble gas has, the price still hasn't been increased properly and it is still being sold off by the tank full for birthday parties and other celebrations. Helium is used for a lot more than sounding like a chipmunk. Without it, technology such as rockets, lasers, and the Hadron Collider wouldn't work. What this all goes to show is that the scarcity of a product isn't just about how much of it exists, but how much of it we can get to.

This article talks about the scarcity of jobs for citizens living in Greece. Greek citizens are not having much luck finding any occupations, even simple ones such as working as a waiter in a restaurant or working in a supermarket. This is mostly a dilemma for the Greek youth, furthermore, data shows that more than half of the citizens under the age of 25 are out of work. The greatest challenge for employers is not a lack of cheap labor but a shortage of demand for their products, therefore, due to the fact that their products aren't selling they can't hire people because their company will be going into debt.

Because of the people's declining trust in the safety of China made products there is an increasing demand for products made else where. Everyday people cart bulk packages of coffee, diapers, and ramen, onto Hong Kong's trains to get them into china. Their destination is the shelve's of corner shops, who make a bigger profit selling "imported" goods. This is an example of scarcity of resources.

This article for me was the perfect example to show how the human needs have trouble coexisting with the finite amount of resources present. Fred Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC Holdings said, "Countries such as China have seen droughts over many years. Now we see other parts of the world facing some water shortages, which is starting to impact the global price of certain goods."In this article it basically states the fact that some areas are running low on water and simply cannot keep up with the growing demand for food. Thus instead of having a balance the price of food increased at an alarming rate.

Because of the decreased amount of work opportunities the unemployment rates go higher. That is bad enough for any country, and even worse for a country like China who are dependent on their production and export. The scarcity of work opportunities get bigger, and creates competition on the market. This will contribute to a poorer population since the competition gets higher and people then work for less money.

After Sandy hurricane devastated the Eastern Coast of the United States, gas became scarce. Due to this, authorities introduced so called odd-even gas rationing which limited the consumption the same as when governments introduce price ceilings and shift the demand curve to the last. With few major differences. Too many people needed fuel to power generators. Government gave subsidy to oil importers, so price slumped a bit (not significant) - so this was the maximum price. Simultaneously, also the demand grew bigger and there were only a few gas stations operating and those who were operating experienced inevitable chaos. So authorities shift the demand curve to the left until equilibrium is reached at maximum price to limit the consumption, so that queues were manageable. This rationing ends tomorrow as recovery is completed.

This article is about how energy regulator Ofgem warns about how there will be energy shortages by 2015 unless the market can be reformed to reach an equilibrium.

This article describes how oil has become less elastic through the past years. It also discusses the balance between the scarcity of oil and the demand being supplied and the quantity demand. Oil is still in the ground, and it has been supplied frequently the past ten years, but there is some economical decisions to make to set the standard for the future of oil.

The demand of oil has been increasing over the past year which is playing a role on the demand and supply balance. Because the demand in oil is increasing, the price of the oil would also increase. It takes longer for oil to be drilled from the ground which causes the oil to take longer time and a change to the response in price. "In economic terms, the oil supply is becoming less elastic as new oil supplies come increasingly from unconventional oil." The demand for oil reflects on how much we need oil in our everyday life. Individual people can reduce the amount of oil they use by using public transportation, if where you want to go is close by. This saves gas and oil because you do not need your car and the bus would carry a lot of people.

This article describes the change in oil prices on the population. The article states that the supply of oil is becomming less elastic and therefore there is a increase in price. The way to win oil becomes harder, because deeper holes have to be made to extract it from the earth. The article furthermore looks into changes from an economical point of view. It looks at examples of what can be changed and where changes have been made.

I know this may be a very ridiculous selection, but it points out one very obvious and necessary resource that many rural and suburban Indians do not possess, namely, a toilet!! The fact the even toilets can be considered a scarce resource was interesting, and helped to cement the idea that literally everything can be thought of as a scarce resource. The opportunity cost can be thought of as the other public works that Indians won't get because the government has to spend money on toilets. This also shows an example of economic growth, as the basic livelihood and welfare of Indian citizens may now increase, thanks to improved public hygiene.

This article talks about how the prices of food have increased in many countries around the world. In the past years the price of wheat was low, for example in May it was about $200 but in September the cost rose to $400, just within some months. Economists say that the prices of foods have increased continually since 1845. Food scarcity is also caused by the weather because if there is no rain in a country then the crops would not be able to grow well for example Australia. However, the wants for meats in countries like China and India is high and this also increases the demands for cereals. The cereals are used to feed the animals in this countries so that the country can have enough meats.

This article tells the reader about the problem of too few human organs being are avaiable that could be transplanted. "The shortage of available organs is a global feature of organ transplantation and has been a challenge almost since its inception." Meaning that human organs are extremely rare since they are on demand.

This article discusses the controversies involved in the sale of wildlife and a global ban in the trade of a species when it is threatened with over-exploitation. The author relates to trade bans as something that do more harm than good. This is perfectly illustrated by the following quote: "Combine inelastic demand, lack of substitutes, scarcity and open access to habitats with a trade ban, Dr Conrad argues, and a black market will flourish." Some of these conclusions also relate to arguments against protection we did in class, such as the limited options that consumers and firms have.