What is Economics about?
Economics is exciting and important. Anyone who thinks otherwise has failed to realize that economic ideas and practices have moved people to rebellion, and nations to war. The great issues that confront us today - among them international conflict, unemployment, inflation, poverty, discrimination, and environmental pollution have economic roots, liven the small issues — the seeming impossibility of finding a parking space, the endless hours we seem to spend on "hold" on the telephone, the high price of hooks at the campus bookstore are economic in nature. In order to analyze these problems, big or small, we must understand the economic forces that shape them.
It will be helpful to begin our exploration of economics with a definition:
Economies is a social science concerned chiefly with the way society employs its limited resources, which have alternative uses, to produce goods and services for present, and future consumption.
This definition of economics needs some amplification, first, why is economics a social science? Because it deals with the interactions of people (in particular, their interactions as they buy. sell, produce, and consume). Other social sciences, such as psychology and sociology, also deal with human interactions - sometimes even economic interactions.
But in economics, we study human interactions from a special standpoint and with special tools.
Second, what are resources, and what does it mean to say that they me limited? Resources comprise anything that can be used to produce goods and ser vices. This includes human resources - labor and the skills workers posses; and material resources, such as machinery, buildings, and land. Resources are limited in the sense that, taken together, people want more goods and services than can be produced . This means that doing one thing with a resource requires giving up another. Because limited resources have alternative uses, they are called scarce by economists.
Unlike history, mathematics, English and chemistry, economics is a subject that most students encounter only briefly sometimes not at all, before they begin college. Economics is a basic discipline, like those just listed, not an applied subject like accounting or drafting in which specific skills is taught.
Economics has some similarities to mathematics because logical reasoning and mathematical tools are used in it extensively. It also has some similarities to history because economics studies people as they interact in social groups.
Like chemistry, economics employs the scientific method, although some of economics has a descriptive rather than an analytical flavour. Finally, like English grammar, economics has a few simple rules and principles, but from these principles economics can derive many conclusions.
Economics is the science of making choices. Individuals must decide whether to study another hour or to go for a walk, whether to buy a six-pack of Pepsi or a 0,5 gallon of milk at the grocery, whether to choose fire fighting or teaching as an occupation and whether to play golf or to watch television for an afternoon of recreation. As a group, people must also choose through their governments whether to build a dam or to repair highways with their taxes, whether to invest money to business or to expand national parks.
In feet, economics is the study of the choice that people make and the actions that they take in order to make the best use of scarce resources in meeting their wants.
Economics is about the everyday life.