Attn: Econ Majors
Lemme tell you about my economics class.
I love Macalester, but Econ here isn't Econ in Uetz's class. An excerpt from the first chapter:
"Another trade-off society faces is between efficiency and equity. Efficiency means that society is getting the maximum benefits from its scarce resources. Equity means that those benefits are distributed evenly among society's members. In other words, efficiency refers to the size of the economic pie, and equity refers to how the pie is divided. Often, when government policies are designed, these two goals conflict.
(here's where it gets really bad)
Consider, for instance, policies aimed at achieving a more equal distribution of economic well-being. Some of these policies, such as the welfare system or unemployment insurance, try to help the members of society who are most in need. Others, such as the individual income tax, ask the financially successful to contribute more than others to support the government. Although these policies have the benefit of achieving greater equity, they have a cost in terms of reduced efficiency. When the government redistributes income from the rich to the poor, it reduces the reward for working hard; as a result, people work less and produce fewer goods and services. In other words, when the government tries to cut the economic pie into more equal slices, the pie gets smaller."
It also discusses rational man, and how economists assume that everyone acts like rational man. It ends that section by saying it takes time to get used to the logic of thinking like rational man. WHAA?
Oh, and here's a caption you'll find amusing. The picture is of LeBron James. The caption: "Basketball star LebBron James understands opportunity cost and incentives. He decided to skip college and go straight to the pros, where he has earned millions of dollars as one of the NBA's top players."
Friday before class I brought up the above paragraph, and Veblen's theory of leisure class, with reference to the Walton family - perhaps Sam Walton was a hard working guy, but then he kicked the bucket and left his five kids with billions of dollars for doing nothing but picking the right dad. They're not working hard, and having money in hedge funds and offshore accounts is certainly no more efficient than paying the janitor who works 40 hours a week doing real labor. I was told that they have to work hard to manage their money (I brought up that they have lawyers and accountants who do that for them, but this was ignored), and they're still more efficient. Then the clock struck 9:40, and the conversation ended and class started with me feeling awfully sour.
It's worth noting that our text is written by N. Gregory Mankiw, the chair of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors from 2003 to 2005.
Sweet karma has kicked in, though. Later in the class period the professor completely screwed up his own example and got totally confused and everyone in the class thought he was a complete fool (we all knew what he was trying to do and how to do it, but he and his math were wrong on such a fundamental level that nobody bothered to say anything). There's also a program here called EXCO - experimental college, where the classes are free and on awesome topics. I think I'm going to be taking "Read Marx's 'Capital' Politically," which is much more my thing. A quote from an email the instructor sent back to me:
"Sorry you had to find out about our econ department the hard way. Our
reading group is going to have a few different tracks to it. Some people
(like me) are interested in reading volume 1 of Capital in its entirety.
Others are planning on interspersing texts on cultural and labor
history. Either way, I think that it would provide you with plenty of
ammunition for arguments with neoliberals."
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I didn't have much more to say than that. I mostly just needed somewhere to put my frustration with this book, and I thought that you could probably relate or at least see where I'm coming from. Linguistics is interesting. The other day it was explained why Chomsky is a genius - he's the first one to give a real definition and explanation of the word "Do." Data Analysis and Statistics should be pretty easy. We get to watch Princess Mononoke in Asian Religions.
I love Macalester, but Econ here isn't Econ in Uetz's class. An excerpt from the first chapter:
"Another trade-off society faces is between efficiency and equity. Efficiency means that society is getting the maximum benefits from its scarce resources. Equity means that those benefits are distributed evenly among society's members. In other words, efficiency refers to the size of the economic pie, and equity refers to how the pie is divided. Often, when government policies are designed, these two goals conflict.
(here's where it gets really bad)
Consider, for instance, policies aimed at achieving a more equal distribution of economic well-being. Some of these policies, such as the welfare system or unemployment insurance, try to help the members of society who are most in need. Others, such as the individual income tax, ask the financially successful to contribute more than others to support the government. Although these policies have the benefit of achieving greater equity, they have a cost in terms of reduced efficiency. When the government redistributes income from the rich to the poor, it reduces the reward for working hard; as a result, people work less and produce fewer goods and services. In other words, when the government tries to cut the economic pie into more equal slices, the pie gets smaller."
It also discusses rational man, and how economists assume that everyone acts like rational man. It ends that section by saying it takes time to get used to the logic of thinking like rational man. WHAA?
Oh, and here's a caption you'll find amusing. The picture is of LeBron James. The caption: "Basketball star LebBron James understands opportunity cost and incentives. He decided to skip college and go straight to the pros, where he has earned millions of dollars as one of the NBA's top players."
Friday before class I brought up the above paragraph, and Veblen's theory of leisure class, with reference to the Walton family - perhaps Sam Walton was a hard working guy, but then he kicked the bucket and left his five kids with billions of dollars for doing nothing but picking the right dad. They're not working hard, and having money in hedge funds and offshore accounts is certainly no more efficient than paying the janitor who works 40 hours a week doing real labor. I was told that they have to work hard to manage their money (I brought up that they have lawyers and accountants who do that for them, but this was ignored), and they're still more efficient. Then the clock struck 9:40, and the conversation ended and class started with me feeling awfully sour.
It's worth noting that our text is written by N. Gregory Mankiw, the chair of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors from 2003 to 2005.
Sweet karma has kicked in, though. Later in the class period the professor completely screwed up his own example and got totally confused and everyone in the class thought he was a complete fool (we all knew what he was trying to do and how to do it, but he and his math were wrong on such a fundamental level that nobody bothered to say anything). There's also a program here called EXCO - experimental college, where the classes are free and on awesome topics. I think I'm going to be taking "Read Marx's 'Capital' Politically," which is much more my thing. A quote from an email the instructor sent back to me:
"Sorry you had to find out about our econ department the hard way. Our
reading group is going to have a few different tracks to it. Some people
(like me) are interested in reading volume 1 of Capital in its entirety.
Others are planning on interspersing texts on cultural and labor
history. Either way, I think that it would provide you with plenty of
ammunition for arguments with neoliberals."
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I didn't have much more to say than that. I mostly just needed somewhere to put my frustration with this book, and I thought that you could probably relate or at least see where I'm coming from. Linguistics is interesting. The other day it was explained why Chomsky is a genius - he's the first one to give a real definition and explanation of the word "Do." Data Analysis and Statistics should be pretty easy. We get to watch Princess Mononoke in Asian Religions.