SCARCITY
Economics is the social science of how individuals, businesses, and societies allocate scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants and needs. 🥱 Talk about world's most boring definition. Let's play around with this concept to get to a more plain English definition of economics that we can actually remember.
Scarcity is the fact that humans have unlimited wants but only limited resources. Economics is how we deal with scarcity.
Examples:
We might want to both study 📚 and watch Netflix 🎥 and get a good night's sleep 😴 but the catch is there's a limited amount of time in the day. ⏳
We might want want to eat enormous amounts of sushi, ramen, pizza, 🍣🍜🍕 without gaining weight, but our digestive system is limited by metabolism. ⚙️
We might want to buy a new phone📱and buy a new clothes 👗 and maybe even travel ✈️ but there's only so many dollars in our wallets. 💸 Wump. Wump.
Scarce Resource Allocation AKA Choice
Given that there is not an unlimited number of pizza slices 😔 we have to use our resources carefully. This is called allocation - the distributing of resources to different uses - basically a fancy word economists use for the simple fact we have to make choices.
So if the formal definition of Economics is the social science of how people deal with the issue of scarce resource allocation, the plain English definition which you can easily remember is that economics is the science of how people make choices.
So in a way, it's about 🎉 🗽FREEDOM! 🇺🇸 🦅 YEAHHH!!!! but if you get asked on your test just remember it's about scarce resource allocation.
Think you got all that? Try the problem set. Don't worry if you don't know each answer yet. You can always get a tutor!
Fun Fact: Ahh, the mighty saguaro cactus 🌵 - the international symbol of scarcity (or so we officially deem it.) In the absence of true leaves, cacti's enlarged stems carry out photosynthesis. Which you would know if you had a biology tutor.
In the words of Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, "You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six." That's one way to deal with scarce resource allocation.