G11 - Week 3 - Day 2

In-class work

1. Questions?
2. The Law of Supply and the Determinants of Supply
3. Why does Supply slope upwards? (The law of increasing opportunity cost and supply)
1. Skim pages 40-47
2. Complete exercise 17-21 (p. 42 & 47)
4. Linear Demand Equations - part 1 (HL Only)
5. Linear Demand Equations - part 2 (HL Only)
1. Exercises 11-16 (p. 40)
2. Read section 2.4 as needed
6. Linear Supply Equations - part 1 (HL Only)
7. Linear Demand Equations - part 2 (HL Only)
1. Exercises 22-27
2. Read section 2.7 as needed
8. Deriving Demand and Supply Equations from Data (HL Only)

---

From the blogosphere

1. The Future of Work
1. Analyze how the shifts in future work might be connected to scarcity of different resources.
2. Evaluate what the opportunity costs might be if education doesn't change and adapt to the technological progress happening.
3. How might some of these changes affect both supply and demand of future markets?
4. How do these questions relate to decisions about your future?
2. PPP Demystified

---

Currently Reading

The Road to Serfdom

"This is the fundamental fact on which the whole philosophy of individualism is based. It does not assume, as is often asserted, that man is egoistic or selfish or ought to be. It merely starts from the indisputable fact that the limits of our powers of imagination make it impossible to include in our scale of values more than a sector of the needs of the whole society, and that, since, strictly speaking, scales of value can exist only in individual minds, nothing but partial scales of values exist—scales which are inevitably different and often inconsistent with each other. From this the individualist concludes that the individuals should be allowed, within defined limits, to follow their own values and preferences rather than somebody else’s; that within these spheres the individual’s system of ends should be supreme and not subject to any dictation by others. It is this recognition of the individual as the ultimate judge of his ends, the belief that as far as possible his own views ought to govern his actions, that forms the essence of the individualist position." (Kindle Locations 2545-2552).

"This is precisely what the price system does under competition, and which no other system even promises to accomplish. It enables entrepreneurs, by watching the movement of comparatively few prices, as an engineer watches the hands of a few dials, to adjust their activities to those of their fellows. The important point here is that the price system will fulfill this function only if competition prevails, that is, if the individual producer has to adapt himself to price changes and cannot control them. The more complicated the whole, the more dependent we become on that division of knowledge between individuals whose separate efforts are coordinated by the impersonal mechanism for transmitting the relevant information known by us as the price system." (Kindle Locations 2385-2390).

G11 - Week 3 - Day 1

In-class work

1. Questions?
2. The Law of Demand - HD
1. Skim pages 26-29
2. Complete exercises 6-9 (p. 29)
3. The Determinants of Demand - HD
1. Skim pages 29-35
2. Complete exercise 10 (p. 35)
4. The Law of Supply and the Determinants of Supply
5. Why does Supply slope upwards? (The law of increasing opportunity cost and supply)
1. Skim pages 40-47
2. Complete exercise 17-21 (p. 42 & 47)

---

From the blogosphere

1. The Real Benefits of Migration
2. Are Saudis More Productive than Germans?

---

Currently Reading

The Road to Serdom

"Whatever merits this book possesses consist not in the reiteration of this thesis but in the patient and detailed examination of the reasons why economic planning will produce such unlooked-for results and of the process by which they come about." (Kindle Locations 1185-1186).

G11 - Week 2 - Day 2

In-class work

1. Questions?
2. Read page 21-22
1. Complete exercises 1-2 (p. 22)
3. Market Structures
1. Skim pages 22-26
2. Complete exercises 3-5 (p. 26)
4. The Law of Demand - HD
1. Skim pages 26-29
2. Complete exercises 6-9 (p. 29)
5. The Determinants of Demand - HD
1. Skim pages 29-35
2. Complete exercise 10 (p. 35)

---

From the blogosphere

1. Does hosting the Olympics make us happier?
2. Euthanasia arbitrage the moral hazard culture that is Belgian French
3. Minority rule: Migration, Brexit and Mandates

---

Currently Reading

The Democracy Project

"The truth is that most Americans have been taught since a very young age to have extremely limited political horizons, an extremely narrow sense of human possibility. For most of them, democracy is ultimately something of an abstraction, an ideal, not something they’ve ever practiced or experienced;" (Kindle Locations 109-111).

"Everyone involved recognizes that creating a democratic culture will have to be a long-term process. We are talking about a profound moral transformation, after all" (Kindle Locations 149-150).

"The social argument I’ll be making is fairly simple. What’s being called the Great Recession merely accelerated a profound transformation of the American class system that had already been under way for decades. Consider the following two statistics: at the time of this writing, one out of every seven Americans is being pursued by a debt collection agency; at the same time, one recent poll revealed that for the first time, only a minority of Americans (45 percent) describe themselves as “middle class.” It’s hard to imagine these two facts are unrelated. There has been a good deal of discussion of late of the erosion of the American middle class, but most of it misses out on the fact that “middle class” in the United States has never primarily been an economic category. It has always had everything to do with that feeling of stability and security that comes from being able to simply assume that— whatever one might think of politicians— everyday institutions like the police, education system, health clinics, and even credit providers are basically on your side. If so, it’s hard to imagine how someone living through the experience of seeing their family home foreclosed on by an illegal robo-signer would be feeling particularly middle class. And this is true regardless of their income bracket or degree of educational attainment.

The growing sense, on the part of Americans, that the institutional structures that surround them are not really there to help them— even, that they are dark and inimical forces— is a direct consequence of the financialization of capitalism. Now, this might seem an odd statement to make, because we are used to thinking of finance as something very distant from such everyday concerns. Most people are aware that the vast majority of Wall Street profits are no longer from the fruits of industry or commerce but from sheer speculation and the creation of complex financial instruments, but the usual criticism is that this is just a matter of speculation, or the equivalent of elaborate magic tricks, whisking wealth into existence by simply saying it exists. In fact, what financialization has really meant is collusion between government and financial institutions to ensure that a larger and larger proportion of citizens fall deeper and deeper in debt. This occurs on every level. New demands for academic qualifications are introduced to jobs like pharmacy and nursing, forcing anyone who wants to work in such industries to take out government-backed student loans, ensuring that a significant portion of their subsequent wages will go directly to the banks. Collusion between Wall Street financial advisors and local politicians forces municipalities into bankruptcy, or near-bankruptcy, whereupon local police are ordered to massively increase enforcement of lawn, trash, and maintenance regulations against homeowners so that the resulting flow of fines will increase revenues to pay the banks. In every case a share of the resulting profits is funneled back to politicians through lobbyists and PACs. As almost every function of local government becomes a mechanism for financial extraction, and the federal government makes clear that it considers its primary business to keep stock prices up and money flowing to the holders of financial instruments (not to mention guaranteeing that no major financial institution, whatever its behavior, ever be allowed to fail), it becomes increasingly unclear what the difference between financial power and state power really is." (Kindle Locations 157-181).

G11 - Week 2 - Day 1

In-class work

1. Read the article from the blogosphere and the quote from Why Nations Fail below and leave a comment on what your tech ecosystem looks like and what insitutions you think might be considered inclusive or extractive.
2. The Law of Increasing Opportunity Cost and the PPC Model
3. Paper 1 Assessment
1. Economics Guide
2. Grade Descriptors
3. Economics Grade Boundaries
4. Evaluation in Economics
4. Paper 1 Example (handout)
5. Read p. 1-20

---

From the blogosphere

1. My personal tech ecosystem, update

---

Currently Reading

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

"Innovation, essence of inclusive economic growth" (p. 238)
"Organizational change, a consequence of inclusive institutions" (p. 238)

Innovation and organizational change are two key aspects of inclusive institutions, which are key to economic prosperity. The opposite of inclusive institutions are "extractive" institutions.

G11 - Week 1 - Day 3

In-class work

1. Distribute textbooks
2. Introduction to your textbook and resources
3. Read p. 1-8
4. Economic Systems - Market, Command and Mixed Economies
5. Positive vs Normative
6. Scarcity, Opportunity Cost and the PPC
7. The Law of Increasing Opportunity Cost and the PPC Model

---

From the blogosphere

1. Economic Near-miracles Are Still Possible
2. The Meaning of Trust in the Age of AirBnB
3. Aetna Shows Why We Need a Single Payer

---

Currently Reading

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

"The central thesis of this book is that economic growth and prosperity are associated with inclusive economic and political institutions, while extractive institutions typically lead to stagnation and poverty" (p. 85).