经济学原理 第一章解读.pptVIP

* * Decision-making is at the heart of economics. The individual must decide how much to save for retirement, how much to spend on different goods and services, how many hours a week to work. The firm must decide how much to produce, what kind of labor to hire. Society as a whole must decide how much to spend on national defense (“guns”) versus how much to spend on consumer goods (“butter”). * HEADS UP. The 5th edition uses “equality.” The fourth and earlier editions used “equity” here. You may want to elaborate verbally on the last bullet to insure that the point is clear. “Redistribute income from wealthy to poor” is accomplished through the progressive tax system, as well as social programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance that try to provide a safety net for people at the low end of the income distribution. “But this reduces the incentive to work” – the reward for working hard is a high income. Taxes reduce this reward, and therefore reduce the incentive to work hard. * Here’s a fun tangent if you have the class time and are so inclined: Ask your students about the saying “The best things in life are free.” Ask them to name some of these things that supposedly are free. Ask them what “free” means in this context. The idea here is to get them to see that even things without an explicit monetary cost are not truly “free” because they have an opportunity cost. For example, when you ask them to name the “best things” that are “free,” they will respond with answers like love, sitting at the top of a mountain you just climbed and enjoying an awesome view, or maybe witnessing the joy of a child who has just been given a new toy. In each case, there is no explicit monetary cost, but there’s an opportunity cost. For example, a day spent climbing a mountain represents a day of foregone wages. And the fact that the mountain offers the incredible view probably means that land has been set aside for a national park that might otherw