Minimum Wage

     Minimum wage should continue to be in practice because it allows many people who would otherwise be in extreme poverty or die, to at least survive with the bare minimum. Without this wage many people wouldn't even be able to have or support their current families. Additionally, without a minimum wage their would be high unrest among the workers who make minimum wage with the government because they wouldn't be able to survive without the wages they would earn without a minimum wage. Furthermore, these workers would eventually elect a president or other public official to office that would promise to create a minimum wage for them to survive. If there was no minimum wage in the U.S. there would be an increased amount of people applying for welfare and food stamps, etc., or there would be a massive amount of people that will die of starvation, sickness, or from the elements because they don't make enough money to support themselves; however, there would be some people that wouldn't die without a minimum wage they would be highly depressed and hard worked in order just to survive without minimum wage (especially in our economy where prices are raising every year for all sorts of goods, etc.).

Price Floors

     I think that prices floors should be used in the economy for food goods like corn, tomatoes, etc. This should occur because it keeps these goods at a constant (if at the price floor) price/value. This is important because it there is a surplus of one of these goods one year, farmers won't be forced to quit farming because they can't sell their goods at a high enough price to keep their farms going. If this were to happen countless people would be affected in later years because there would be less farmers, thus less food and people would start to starve and food prices would sky rocket because of the shortages of food. Even though there would be surplus of these goods in the market, it is better to keep farmers farming and lose food, than to lose the source of those who make our food (and starve).

Price Ceilings

     I agree that there should be a price ceiling for some goods in our economy. This is because if there wasn't a price ceiling for some products many people wouldn't be able to afford them. For example, the price ceiling on apartments in New York allow many people afford housing that they wouldn't otherwise have without an affordable price ceiling in place. This would cause some market imbalances for landlords, etc. because they wouldn't buy many services for the upkeep of these buildings because they can only charge their tenets a certain amount for rent. However, this is an acceptable trade off in the economy because even though this may lessen jobs for those whose job it is to upkeep these buildings; people will have shelter from the elements, which helps lessen chances of a person (many) from becoming sick or dying from exposure to elements, etc. and thus lessens the amount of people that would occupy a hospital. Even though there would be a shortage of apartments making it harder for many to find homes, it's better for many to have homes than a few to have homes (while the many have a high chance of being sick and dying).

Supply Wrap Up

Demand Finale

Elastic/Inelastic Demand 

     An example of elastic demand in my life occurs most frequently in the grocery store for me. For instance, my mother drinks a lot of soda but we can only buy so much at a time because the cost for one 20 pack of sprite costs about $6.99. When it's at this price we only buy one at a time because we wouldn't be able to buy much of any other food. However, when sprite is at a price of $4.99 we will buy two packs because my mother is willing to pay because it's cheaper than two at a higher price. I always hope that the sprite is on sale because when my mother doesn't get to drink sprite in the morning she easier to set off, so I look out for the price of sprite in the store every time I go. 

     Inelastic demand also occurs in my life by way of the grocery store. In my family of five we drink a lot of milk, at least 3 gallons a week (sometimes more, for sure more during the summer when we eat a lot of PB&J's). The price of the type of milk we drink  right now is about $2.29, which is a product we must have available everyday because we eat cereal with milk for breakfast every morning, sometimes with dinner when we have PB&J's, and with our lunch of PB&J's on the weekends. I know that with as much milk as we drink (I believe though that I'm probably the one who drinks it the most because I eat PB&J's all the time) that we will buy it up to a price of at least $4, my parents may even buy it if it went up to $5. Milk is important to my family that if its price went up to $5 we would have to give up other food stuffs we buy, like buying less meat (beef and chicken) so we would be able to afford the milk. (I wouldn't like this very much because I would have to drink less milk with my meals so my whole family could drink equal amounts of milk, while budgeting how much we spend on it).

     What we've studied in class about elastic and inelastic demand has shown me that the market for elastic products is strongly influenced by the price, which in my life the prices of elastic products heavily influences whether I'll buy it. Also, for inelastic products the prices don't affect the quantity that will be demanded, in my life it is the same because if milk price went up we would still buy it; however, we would probably give up an elastic product all together.

Question: I would like to know if elastic demand products give great profits to companies? (Can they manipulate how much profit they'll make by changing the product's price and make a better profit than if the product was at market price?). I would also like to know how companies that produce inelastic products do in the market profit wise, do they make more profit than a company that makes elastic products? Do they have the ability to make more money than an elastic product producing company or will they make less of a profit?

Wrap Up Demand

Elastic and Inelastic Diagrams/Curves

Demand Headlines!

Headlines

1. Complementary Demand: " New Lord of the Rings movie released today, as the poster industry sales increase!"

2. Substitute Demand: "Digital book prices drop, Kindle sales rise!"

3. Elastic Demand: "Hershey's chocolate prices at an all time high, while millions are plagued with depression!"

4. Inelastic Demand: "All drinkable water now comes bottled at a price of $25.00 a bottle!"

     In the United States, due a drought occurring all over the U.S, all natural sources of drinkable water have either dried up or are dangerously low. Due to the big corporations of Nestle, Pepsi and Coca Cola refusing to restore lakes and ground water environments from their overuse and removal of millions of gallons of water (for free) per year water has become scarce, and what is left was contaminated by the plants of these big corporations. Additionally, the U.S government has charged these companies with environmental endangerment; and thus, making the companies pay for the restoration of all environments their factories have caused harm. These companies also must provide clean FDA regulated water (multiple teams of regulators supervising this process). Currently, all available water is highly priced, but as soon as these companies have water proccessing plants up and running the price of water will lower with the hope that with environmental restoration of water locations that there may soon be more water available to the world.

Question: Why are corporations allowed to buy land that they use to make a profit, but then aren't expected or won't clean up the land they contaminate or destroy? Why aren't they made to help the communities their factories harm with pollution and the chemicals they use?

Demand Schedule and Demand Curve

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