1. What is Economics?

2. Vocabulary Economics Wants Needs Scarcity Resources Consumer Produce
Goods
Services
Competition

3. Factors that define Economics
Wants vs Needs

4. Need vs. want
Need: A basic requirement for survival (including food, clothing, and shelter)
Want: A way of expressing a need

5. Examples: Need vs. Want
You need to eat, but you can satisfy that need by eating a variety of foods.
You need to get places, and there are several methods of getting there (new car, used car, bus, train, walk, bike)

6. What’s the Difference between a Need and a Want?
NEEDS
WANTS
Those goods and services that are necessary for survival
Food, clothing, shelter
Those goods and services that people consume beyond what is necessary for survival

7. What are goods and services?
Physical objects that can be purchased
Pizza, bicycle, shoes
Actions or activities that are performed for a fee.
Lawyers, teachers, plumbers

8. Scarcity is the basic economic problem that faces everyone
the condition that results when society does not have enough resources to produce all the things people would like to have
Scarcity is the basic economic problem that faces everyone

9. Scarcity Illustrated:
Who likes candy?
Who wants candy?
How do we decide who gets the candy?

11. Types of resources Natural resources: sunshine, rain, crude oil
Human resources: labor, service
Man made resources: machines, equipment

12. Competition We compete for the use of limited resources in 2 ways
Price competition
Non price competition (waiting, examination, lucky draw, violence)

13. Who makes the decision?
Consumers – the people who decide to buy things
Producers – The people who make the things that satisfy consumers’ needs and wants.

14. Then what is the definition?
Economics is the study of how scarce productive resources are used to satisfy human’s unlimited needs.

15. Economics is the study of how we allocate limited resources to satisfy unlimited desire