My Future as an Economist

In our my life, economy in the country is not a big thing for me. Before I took the economy class, the only things I know about economy are stocks and banks. After few weeks of the economy class, supply, demand, equilibrium, GDP, central bank, federal government, fiscal policy; I can still go on if you want me to. I think that these materials and concepts I learnt from class will be really useful for me because in the future I am going to deal with financial problem myself but not my parents. So far I think economy is pretty interesting, but in the future, I don't think I am going to study any further about economy. For me, taking this class is not the purpose of learning new stuff for my academic, but the purpose of learning new stuff for my future life.

Topic 13: Supply or Demand?

Both demand side policy and supply side policy are based on the basics of demand and supply. if it is demand side policy, for example, the interest rate decrease, then the demand of the economy will increase because people will have more money to spend or to invest it. As the definition of demand side policy, it means that "aim to change the aggregate demand in existing economy", and the supply side policy means " aim to change the aggregate supply in existing economy". Although these two are different policies, they are all meant to be about increasing the productivity in our workforce, which is basically mean to lower the barriers for people to produce goods and services. Reducing taxes is one of the way to increase the productivity in workforce. The purpose of the action is to increase the flexibility in our production. I think demand side policy is a better type of policy for me compare to supply side policy. The advantages of the demand side policy including being able to stimulate the economy and increase the aggregate demand, and also being able to control the inflation. The disadvantages of the demand side policy including budget deficits with increased debts and policy legs which reduced spending in a healthy economy and more spending during a weak economy.  

Topic 12: Role of the Government

Everyone wants to get rich. Economic boom is the thing they want it happen in their countries. But they always forgot an important thing, business cycle. There are four stages of the cycle and the stage everyones want the economic in their country at stage two: Peak. As the peak go really high, the third stage will come. Stock price starts falling, the boom becomes ashes, everything is gone. I think government should take a little bit of control of economic so they can cool down the economic in their country to stop another economic tragedy in their country. There's a real historic economic tragedy happened n 1929 of America. It's called the Great Depression. The Great Depression happened because the stock buyers were guessing when would the stock price is going up. However, those predictions were wrong ad the stock market crashed, everyone was broke in a minute. During that time, the government believed in a theory call lassiez fair, it means "hands off" policy: the government shouldn't involve the businesses so those businesses will be good. After the Great Depression happened, the government still didn't have any action to help because the government still believed "hands off" policy. The unemployment rate grew to 25%, that means there are 1 out of 4 people doesn't have a job. After FDR became president, he directly help the society and the society got better. As we can see through the history, I think the government should involve and sometimes cool down the business with raising taxes so this kind of tragedy won't happen again.

Topic 11: Unemployment

There are so many jobs in this world, but how come there are still unemployed people? I believe that some people will say that the unemployment increase is because those unemployed people don't have skills to work or those unemployed people think the salary is too low so that they don't want that job. Well the second reason is the pretty reasonable because many young men that graduated from college think they are the best and could get better salary then other people that graduate from normal college. Back to our topic; there are some jobs are less resistant for example, I think farmer, fisherman, are kinds of less resistant jobs because they are seasonable work, and also there are many factors that will make these jobs really hard. So I think they are less resistant job. Long resistant jobs I think it's like office man works in office under a boss. This kind of job is long resistance is because it won't stopped until you retire or quit the job. For me, I think I'm going to major in computer science. In the future, I think I will be the worker that sit in front of the computer all day long writing program and make this world better. So I think my job would be a long resistance work.

Topic 10: How to Boost My "GDP"

I have met a lot of people that came from different places. Some of them are genius, they can understand the concept in the book real quick and then use it well; some of them are not so smart like genius because they have to read the book several times or find a lot of examples of the concept to understand the concept; this doesn't include using the concept in the real world. Going to school is the job of students, and this is the way to increase self-productivity. The main factors that contribute to economic productivity include the quality of labor, technological innovation, energy cost,  and financial market. Although there are four factors that can contribute to the productivity, there are one of them I think is the most important, related to human  and how people could increase their productivity. The first one is quality of labor. Every single person got different level of education. Different level of education can make a lot of people have different productivity. People that got higher education could contribute to the society their knowledge so that this world could be better. That is why parents always think that their kids should always get education and get in to the best school in the world and then their kid could be some one that is great in this world.

Topic 9: Financial Markets

There are so many different kinds of financial assets that we can choose to make profit. Each of them has different risk and return. Personally, I like mutual funds. When investing to mutual funds, there are many people invest the same company as you are. It's not like stocks because when you invest stocks you invest yourself and you will lose all your money when the companies you invest grow downward.  But when investing mutual funds, it's like 10 people invest that company's stock. When the company's stock grows downward, then the loss of the money will be separate to each people. Then it won't be a huge loss for you personally. For me, when I invest something, I will always consider about the safety because if I loss all my money, then I will be broke, and then I won't be able to buy anything. That will be terrible. Not only safety, but mutual funds also have pretty good benefit when the company has pretty nice growth. Although the return isn't as high as stocks, its average benefit won't be too low. So if I have money and I got the chance to invest, I will choose mutual fund. 

Topic 8: Money

Money, the thing everyone wants to earn a lot so that other people can call them rich people. For me, money is like the paper or coin that can exchange the thing I want, and I think money is a really important tool for me in my life because I need to use my money to buy what I need or what I want. There are several ways that I can get money. During Chinese New Year, the members in my family will give me red envelope, but technically I didn't get any money form them because every single red envelope I got will be taken away from my mom. The only red envelope that I can get is the one from my mom. I think money is the most important thing in everyone's life because without money,  you can not buy the thing you need or you want. That's why poor people's living environment isn't really good because they can not afford it. If I don't have money, then I won't be able to buy a lot of thing such as novels, food (breakfast, dinner), movie tickets. If I can not buy anything, then I only can stay at home and go nowhere except school.