Ch1. Ten Principles of Economics (1)

경제학을 공부하는 이유

1.  Help you understand the world in which you live.

Many questions about the economy that might spark your curiosity. (Q. 호기심의 기저는 무엇일까? - 본능아닐까?)

(e..g,  Why are apartments so hard to find in New York City? Why do airlines charge less for a round-trip ticket if the traveler stays over a Saturday night?)

 

2.  Become a more astute participant in the economy. The insights developed in the coming chapters will give you a new perspective on how best to make these decisions. 

(e.g., While you are a student, you decide how many years to stay in school. Once you take a job, you decide how much of your income to spend, how much to save, and how to invest your savings.) 

 

Studying economics will not by itself make you rich, but it will give you some tools that may help in that endeavor

 

3.  Give you a better understanding of both the potential and the limits of economic policy

( Economic questions are always on the minds of policymakers in mayors’ offices, governors’ mansions, and the White House. What are the burdens associated with alternative forms of taxation?) 

 

 

경제학은 그리스어로 okionomos이고, household를 관리하는 사람이란 뜻이다. 

ㅁ 경제학이 하는 일을 okionomos로 비유 가능 

- A household faces many decisions.

- Which household members do which tasks and what each member receives in return

- Who cooks dinner?

- Who does the laundry?

- Who gets the extra dessert at dinner?

- Who gets to drive the car?

In short, a household must allocate its scarce resources (time, dessert, car mileage) among its various members, taking into account each member’s abilities, efforts, and desires

 

 

1) Scarcity : limited nature of society's resources

중요한 사실 : The management of society’s resources is important because resources are scarce.  따라서 management (2) 가 중요하다. 모든 사람을 만족시킬 수 없다. 

Scarcity means that society has limited resources and therefore cannot produce all the goods and services people wish to have. Just as each member of a household cannot get everything she wants, each individual in a society cannot attain the highest standard of living to which she might aspire.

 

2) Economics: study of how society manages its scarce resources. 어떻게 이 scarce resource를 경제 주체자들에게 배분해주어야 할까?

 

The study of economics has many facets, but it is unified by several central ideas. In this chapter, we look at Ten Principles of Economics. Don’t worry if you don’t understand them all at first or if you aren’t completely convinced

(일단 이 10가지 원리를 다 100% 이해하는 것은 불가능. 그냥 받아들일 것- 프리뷰라고 생각하고. )

 

 

ㅁ 먼저 1번째 원칙:  How People Make Decisions

Deicsion에는 Trade-off가 항상 있다.

트레이드 오프에서 현명한 선택을 하는 방법은 무엇이 있을까?

개인의 선호에 따라서 달라지지 않을까? (일종의 다목적최적화문제인데)

따라서 여러 최적값이 나올 수 있고, 개인의 선호, 중요도에 따라 찐 최적값은 달라질 수 ㅇ

 

트레이드 오프: Old saying, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

 

Efficiency 와 equlaity는 왜 트레이드 오프인가?

efficiency만 추구하다보면 빈부격차가 심해지나?

 

Another trade-off society faces is between efficiency and equality.

- Efficiency : society is getting the maximum benefits from its scarce resources.

- Equality means that those benefits are distributed uniformly among society’s members.

어떻게 보면 먹이사슬 강자가 희소한 자원에서 최대 benefit을 추구해도, 그것은 사실 약자가 공헌했기 때문이기에,

그것에 대한 감사의 표시로 일부 노블리스 오블레주를 수행해야한다. 

In other words, efficiency refers to the size of the economic pie, and equality refers to how the pie is divided into individual slices.

 

파이의 전체 크기를 늘릴 수 있는 방법은?

 

 

들려줄 이야기

When government policies are designed, these two goals often conflict. Consider, for instance, policies aimed at equalizing the distribution of economic well-being. Some of these policies, such as the welfare system or unemployment insurance, try to help the members of society who are most in need. Others, such as the in-dividual income tax, ask the financially successful to contribute more than others to support the government. Though they achieve greater equality, these policies reduce efficiency. When the government redistributes income from the rich to the poor, it reduces the reward for working hard; as a result, people work less and produce fewer goods and services. In other words, when the government tries to cut the economic pie into more equal slices, the pie gets smaller