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Economics
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Economics is the science of choice, exploring the choices
made by individuals and organizations. Over the last few
centuries, these choices have led to substantial gains in the
standard of living around the globe. In the United States, the
typical person today has roughly seven times the income
and purchasing power of a person 100 years ago. Our prosperity
is the result of choices made by all sorts of people,
including inventors, workers, entrepreneurs, and the people
who saved money and loaned it to others to invest in
machines and other tools of production. One reason we
have prospered is greater efficiency: We have discovered
better ways to use our resources raw materials, time, and
energy to produce the goods and services we value.
As an illustration of changes in the standard of living and
our growing prosperity, let s compare the way people listened
to music in 1891 with how we listen today. You can
buy an iPod shuffle® for $49 and fill it with 500 songs at
$0.99 each. If you earn a wage of $15 per hour, it would
take you about 36 hours of work to purchase and then fill an
iPod. Back in 1891, the latest technological marvel was
Thomas Edison s cylinder phonograph, which played music
recorded on 4-inch cylinders. Imagine that you lived back
then and wanted to get just as much music as you could fit
on an iPod. Given the wages and prices in 1891, it would
take you roughly 800 hours of work to earn enough money
to buy the phonograph and all the cylinders. And if you wanted to keep your music with you, you would
need 14 backpacks to carry the cylinders
Arthur O Sullivan,Steven M. Sheffrin and Stephen J. Perez - Personal Name
7th Edition
978-0-13-255523-4
NONE
Economics
Economics
English
2012
USA
1-792
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