The Basics
My dad gave me one dollar bill
‘Cause I’m his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
‘Cause two is more than one!
And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes- I guess he don’t know
That three is more than two
Just then along came old blind Bates
And just cause he can’t see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes
And four is more than three!
 We
are Currently in a Economic
Recession (Bad).
 The economic recession is in part due to
a failing housing market
 Why did the housing market fail?
• Mostly do to variable rate mortgages
 In
what ways could this have been
prevented
 Bismarck
State: 4,029
 Dickinson: 5,249
 Mayville: 5,793
 Minot State: 5,389
 NDSCS (Wahpeton): 3,890
 North Dakota State: 6,410
 University of North Dakota: 6,727
 U of M: 11,466
 Average
room and Board 19 meals/week:
• 6,000 Dollars!
 Study
of how people/nations use scarce
resources to fulfill their wants
• Resource: tool in obtaining what you want
• Scarcity: Basic Problem in Economics
- Idea that you do not have enough resources to
fulfill your every want
 Resources are SCARCE: Income, Time, etc.
• You choose how to use your scarce resources
 How
you make these choices is
economics
 Needs:
Food, Clothing, Shelter (enough
to survive)
 Wants: Everything else
- Needs are greater than wants
Five Resources that allow for production and
fulfillment of wants
1. Land: Surface and natural resources
 Location
 Ex. What’s worth more, and acre in Oklahoma, or an acre in
Kuwait?
2. Labor: The work you do
3. Capital: Property people use to make goods and
services
 Machinery to make cars
4. Entrepreneurial Ability: ideas that improve
business or create new ones
5. Technology
 Value
of the next best thing given up in
favor of what was chosen in a tradeoff.
• What is the Opportunity cost of you studying
economics for an hour?
 There
Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free
Lunch
 Idea that nothing is free
• Someone ALWAYS Pays
 Trade-offs:
Exchanging one thing for
another
• I traded money for socks last night!
• I traded two extra hours of sleep for a viewing of
the movie Body of Lies
 Production
Possibilities: all the
possible combinations of goods that can
be produced from fixed amount of
resources in a given time period
• Show trade-offs and opportunity costs visually
A
government
spending decision:
• Guns vs. Butter
• Guns: Military
spending
• Butter: Civilian goods
a.
b.
c.
d.
Economics is the political science that deals
with unemployment, inflation, taxes, business
cycles, money supply, etc…
Economics is the social science that studies
money and banking.
Economics is the social science that
examines the interaction of supply and
demand.
Economics is the social science concerned
with the problem of scarcity.