basic economics a citizen’s guide to the …（公民的基本经济学指南u2026）.pdf

Basic Economics A Citizen’s guide to the Economy By Thomas Sowell Author of the Vision of the Anointed 1 Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources, which have alternative uses. When a military medical team arrives on a battlefield where soldiers have a variety of wounds, they are confronted with the classic economic problem of allocating scarce resources, which have alternative uses. Unless their time and medications are allocated efficiently, some wounded will die needlessly. The inherent reality is that there are not nearly enough beachfront homes to go around and prices are just a way of conveying that underlying reality. When people bid for a relatively few homes, these homes become very expensive because of supply and demand. But it is NOT the prices that cause the scarcity. Even if Congress were to declare that beachfront homes were a basic right of all Americans, it still would not change the realities of the situation. Prices act as a guide for consumers and producers. A free market economic system is sometimes called a profit system, when it fact it is a profit and loss system. And the losses are equally important for the efficiency of the economy, because they tell the manufacturer what to stop producing. Resources tend to flow to their most valued uses. From the standpoint of society as a whole, the COST of anything is the value that it has as in alternative uses. The real cost of building a bridge are the other things that could have been built with that same labor and material. There is also a scarcity of time to consider and the alternative uses of that, as well. The cost of watching a television sitcom or soap opera is the value of the other things that could have been done in that same time. In a price-coordinated economy, any producer who uses ingredients that are