Topic 5: Ripple Effects and Elasticity

Ripple effect is when the price or quantity of a product increase or decrease, other things in the economy are also affected, just like when you throw a stone into the water, it creates ripples. When the oil prices rise, other products such as car tires also increase in price. Airline ticket prices also rose by 9% and even things like carpets and diapers, which seem totally unrelated to oil, also rise in price. The increase in oil prices greatly affected our daily lives because we depend on oil on a lot of things. Candles, balloons, and even eye glasses are made somewhat with oil. The increase of oil prices can also increase the price of toothpaste, which can then affect the price of toothbrush. Not just oil will have a ripple effect on other products, other things such as bronze might also have an effect on other products. Elasticity is the measurement of how changing one economic variable affects others. Some products are inelastic. For example, medicine is inelastic because no matter how much the price is, people need to buy medicine to prevent themselves from dying. Most products are elastic, but not a lot of things are perfectly elastic. For me, drinks at the stores across our school are elastic. When the prices rise, I will just drink and buy less of them. When the price decreases or is on sale, then I will perhaps buy more. Things that are inelastic to me are limited edition products or medicine.

Topic 4: Where Choices Lead

There are many opportunity costs for attending PAS. First, obviously there is the money. Each year, my parents spent thousands of dollars in this school, keeping in mind that we have three children at the school. Second, we were not able to live in our home in Taipei but instead had to move to live in Hsinchu. Actually... now that I think of it, there's really not much costs. Think about it, if I don't go to school, what else would I be doing? Working? I doubt it. Maybe just another American school or local school. Therefore, during this time of my life (or most people's lives), school is the most important thing at the moment and we can't really be doing anything else. Other costs can include getting distant from my friends from my previous school, more minor costs...etc. The opportunity cost of being in the AP Microeconomics class is that I was not able to take another AP that I wanted to take: AP Chemistry. I also have to spend a lot of time doing the Study Plan... I guess that's another cost because I spent like hours redoing the questions. Although I did not really make the decisions, I'm sure my parents' decision was rational because they are experienced, and they know what's good for us. The benefits do of course outweigh the costs because now I can study abroad and go to better schools. I also became a more globalized and enriched person. The extra time I spent doing homework and studying for SAT will eventually pay off when I go to a good college and later on get a better job. I'm sure I would eventually figure out that studying abroad is good for me but when I find out, it's probably too late. Therefore, I dearly thank my parents for sending me to an American system.

Topic 3: Incentives to Attend School

I think the students at a private school and a public school are actually quite different. Students at a local school can choose whether they want to attend school or not because they don't have to pay to go to school. On the other hand, students in private schools have to pay to get in, so either they know they shouldn't waste their parents' money or are forced by their parents. Therefore, I think these two different types of students have different incentives. At our school, our incentive for students is "if you don't come for blah blah blah days, then you will be kicked out from our school." A disincentive at school might be the lunch. Because the lunch is gross so perhaps some people don't want to come to school (not very realistic but may happen.) We don't really have any rewards for attending school as described in the video such as giving out laptops. It's either you come to school to learn or you don't come and waste your money (or not just even attend the school afterall). Sometimes I think that this is a bad incentive because students will slowly think that they are just coming to school to be here. They don't really enjoy what the classes are doing or teaching anymore. I mean, they are effective, don't get me wrong. It's just that people's minds and thinking are starting to corrupt slowly from this. For example, the late policy of sending people home when they don't arrive at 7:55 is pretty effective. Not many people are late now. However, I don't think students really understand why. Why they should be on time. Why they are doing this. They are just doing this because they are either yelled by Pamela several times or by their parents. Therefore, in my opinion, different standards of schools produce different incentives for students.

Topic 2: Scarcity at School?

Scarcity is everywhere in our lives. Even at school we face scarcities. Students have to decide on studying or surfing on facebook for the night. When they surf on the internet, then they have to give up the time to study for tomorrow's test. Teacher faces scarcity when they run out of time to teach on certain topics or chapters. In order to finish the topics, teachers might have to ask students to stay one or two hours after school, which the teachers may have other things planned to do already. Office staff sometimes faces the scarcity of textbooks. The school will have to buy more.The school as a whole also faces scarcity. For example, we don't have enough money to build better facilities. haha.. in order to build better facilities, we might have to pay more. At PAS, the most important scarcity I, or everyone else, faces is time. We either have to trade a time to do this for another time to do that. During the AP week, I had a scarcity of time because I had to study for four APs. I had to trade an hour for sleeping for an hour of studying. Some other tradeoffs I had to make is losing a period of study hall to have an appointment with Pamela, spending 3000 NT to trade for a textbook, and spent extra hours after school for the MUN mock debate instead of doing my homework. 

Topic 1: The Big Questions

The first big question is: “How do choices end up determining what, how, and for whom goods and services get produced?” Take PAS as an example. The goods and services are the knowledge and skills that the teachers teach and pass down to the students. Pamela provides the school and hires teachers to produce the goods and services for the students. The teachers have good backgrounds and they "sell" their goods and services (knowledge) to us. The goods and services are produced for students. Ms. Pamela makes the choices governing what, how, and for whom these goods and services get produced.
The second big question is: “When do choices made in the pursuit of self-interest also promote the social interest?” Teachers are here to teach us because of self-interests (some for social interests). Their motivation or incentive is the salary they get at the end of each month. Students are here for self-interests too: they want to learn and get into a good college. Altogether, this becomes a social interest because it promotes and improves the education system in the country as a whole. This benefits the whole society because as the people in the  country become more well educated, the country becomes more developed.