Prompt: We have been learning about economics for a few weeks.  Now is your chance to tell us everything you know about economics! Tell each other what you know about goods, services, opportunity cost, supply and demand, etc.  Talk about how your classroom checkbook and finance lessons have helped you gain more perspective to economic issues. Will you be a saver or spender when you grow up?  Why is it important to save for a “rainy day?”  This blog post will be graded and if possible, please print it out with your name on it!  Happy saving/spending! 

We’ve been learning about economics and personally, I think economics is interesting. My favorite part about learning about economics is the classroom checkbooks. This definitely helps with learning to save money. I think that I’ll most likely be a saver when I grow up. It is important to save for a “rainy day” because you never know if it would rain so much that it floods. And if it was a really bad flood your house would need some maintenance for the water damage. Or even if it didn’t flood the rain could still cause rain damage on the house’s exterior or on its foundation.

We learned that economics is the study of the allocation of resources among alternative uses to attain desired ends. There are many concepts of economics such as socialism and capitalism. Socialism and capitalism are examples of how an economy should be run. Socialism is when the government or state is in control of the production or distribution of goods. Capitalism is when there is a private or corporate ownership of the production and distribution of goods. Another concept we learned was goods and services. Goods are anything that anyone wants or needs, and services are the performance of any duties for another. There are also three types of goods consumer goods(food or clothing), producer goods(raw materials), and capital goods(machinery).

You can’t forget about needs and wants. Wants are goods or services that aren’t necessary. Needs are goods or services that are required. (Although sometimes wants can seem like needs to me.) There is also supply and demand. Supply is how much of a good or service is available. Demand is how many people wish to buy that good or service. Think about what it said in the slideshow we saw in English Language Arts (ELA), as prices rise, product supply rises because people buy less. It also said as prices fall, product supply falls because people buy more. Something else important to economics is opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is when the value or benefit of something is given up so that something else can be accomplished. It’s almost like a trade.

Picture from Pixabay.com.