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GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT, INS AND OUTS: Gross domestic product is the total market value of all goods and services produced within the political boundaries of an economy during a given period of time, usually one year. Obtaining this value is not a simple task. It requires combining a lot of information from a number of different sources. For the U.S. economy, this includes trillions of dollars worth of production, hundreds of million of consumers, hundreds of thousands of businesses, and a bunch of market transactions each year.

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Lesson Contents
Unit 1: The Concept
  • A Definition
  • So What?
  • Unit 1 Summary
  • Unit 2: Resources
  • Factors
  • Working Together
  • Free or Scarce?
  • Comparisons
  • Unit 2 Summary
  • Unit 3: Opportunity Cost
  • The Concept
  • Economic Cost
  • Unit 3 Summary
  • Unit 4: College Cost
  • Out of Pocket
  • What Else?
  • Unit 4 Summary
  • Unit 5: THE Problem
  • No Free Lunch
  • Solutions?
  • Unit 5 Summary
  • Course Home
    Scarcity

    In this lesson you'll see why scarcity tends to make economists grumpy. You'll see that scarcity is a perpetual condition that exists because people have unlimited wants and needs, but limited resources. You'll also see how this scarcity problem underlies the common notion of cost, which is integral to the study of economics. The five units contained in this lesson provide a tour through the economic problem of scarcity.

    • The first unit, A Big Problem, examines the fundamental concept of scarcity -- the combination of limited resources and unlimited wants and needs -- that is virtually synonymous with the study of economics.
    • The second unit, Resources, discusses the four basic categories of limited resources -- labor, capital, land, and entrepreneurship -- which produce the goods that are used to satisfy unlimited wants and needs.
    • In the third unit, Opportunity Cost, we take a look at the notion of opportunity cost and see how it is related to the scarcity problem.
    • We then turn out attention in the fourth unit, College Cost, to a simple example of the explicit and implicit costs of attending college.
    • The fifth and final unit, THE Big Problem, in this lesson then ponders why scarcity is considered THE economic problem and provides a little insight into why economists are grumpy.

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    PRICE FLOOR

    A legally established minimum price that is imposed on a market ABOVE the price that otherwise would be achieved in equilibrium. A price floor is placed on a market with the goal of keeping the price high, presumably based on the notion that the equilibrium price is too low. If imposed on a competitive market free of market failures, a price floor creates a surplus, or excess supply.

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    APLS

    BLUE PLACIDOLA
    [What's This?]

    Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time waiting for visits from door-to-door solicitors hoping to buy either a how-to book on surfing the Internet or a computer that can play music and burn CDs. Be on the lookout for crowded shopping malls.
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    Only 1% of the U.S. population paid income taxes when the income tax was established in 1914.
    "The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those that fail. "

    -- Napoleon Hill, author

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