people face tradeoffs (principle 1 _ microecons)

description

  • Principle of Scarcity / There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch / People Face Tradeoffs
    • TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
    • Things appearing free always have some cost paid by somebody, and nothing in life is truly free
    • In order to produce, you must give in resources β†’ either you or the other pay the price
    • To get one thing, we have to give up another
    • Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another
  • Efficiency vs. Equality
    • Efficiency: Society gets the most it can from its scarce resources
    • Equality: Benefits of those resources are distributed fairly among the members of society