Econamics 1st sem

• What Is Economics?

  People often think that economics is boring and only about money.

  But some of us want to make a world where everyone has what they need to survive
• Economics is about the things that people need and want. It is about the production (making), distribution (dividing up and transporting) and consumption (using) of these things.
• What are the four main issues of economics

  1.What things to produce, and how many.

  2. How to produce them.

  3. Who will receive them.

  4. How much they should cost.
• Needs are things that you must have to survive. For instance, if you did not have water, you would die. When people live together (in communities and societies), education, healthcare and safety become basic needs.
• But people often want a lot more than their basic needs. Many people want nice clothes, big houses, new cars, televisions, cigarettes, and many more things. Often, the more people have, the more they want.
• In today's world there are huge differences between what some people have and what other people don't have. In economics this is called 'wealth inequality'. About 1.1 billion people around the world live on less than US$1 per day. Many of these people find it difficult to supply their basic needs of food, water, and housing. Nearly 11 million children die before their fifth birthday because of poverty, and about 800 million people go to bed hungry every day. While the poorest 50% percent of the world's population own just 1% of the world's wealth, the richest 10% own 85%.
• Goods are things you can touch like pens, longyis, rice, books, charcoal, computers, mobile phones, animals, etc.
• Needs and wants are either goods or services. In economics, a good or a service is sometimes called a commodity.
• Services are things that people do for you, or you do for other people. They are things you can't touch, like education or healthcare. When you go to the clinic or the hospital, a doctor or a medic examines you and does tests. This is a service. When you go to class, a teacher is giving you a service: teaching a lesson. When you buy a cup of tea in a teashop, you are not only buying tea, water and milk (goods). You are paying for the services of sitting in the teashop, of someone making the tea, bringing it to you and cleaning your cup when you finish.
• There are never enough resources to produce goods and services to meet people's wants. This is the problem of searcity
• Things are scarce because human wants are greater than the resources available. Re- sources are limited; wants are unlimited. Often when people get what they want, they find new wants. This happens if they are rich or poor
• People, communities and governments all need to make choices about which services are the most important. They must find a balance between what they want, and what they can obtain.
• Often in our lives we need to make choices about goods and services.
• National money is sometimes called a currency. An example of a currency is the Burmese Kyat.
• Exchange Rates

  There are many different currencies in the world. Each currency has a different value in relation to other currencies. These values change all the time. For example, in May 2007, US$1 was worth approximately:
• Different things used as money

  Money is very important for every country in the world. The things that people use as money change as we move through different countries in the world, and different periods of history. People have used coins, metal rods, shells, cloth, stones, feathers, weapons, and teeth.
• Yap Stone Money

  The states of Yap consist of four islands in Micronesia, an archipelago (group of islands) near Indonesia. Traditionally, the people of Yap used circular stones with holes in the middle as money. They call them 'rai. Some of these stones are huge, with diameters up to four metres. Their value is based on their size and their history. There are about 6800 stones around the island. This stone money can still be legally used in Yap, though usually people use US dollars. Many people keep Yap stones outside their house to show people that they are wealthy.