Friday, March 31, 2006

The Law of Economics


My wife and I went to Kennesaw College together for two years. We mostly took the same classes. Because she was having a hard pregnancy she dropped out and I soon followed her, I didn’t have anyone to take class notes for me.

I went a quarter more than she did. No, actually we are even, because she started a quarter before I did. Before Kennesaw College I went to technical school studying data processing and computer programming.

One of my classes after my wife dropped out was some kind of economics class. I think the name of it was something like World Economics or International Economics. The professor was a doctor, a PhD. He was a little black fellow with a heavy accent of some kind. He was very gentle and very polite. He spoke everything with a smile.

Somebody must have told him, “In the south, you better smile when you speak.”

He told us in one hour the key to his entire course. He said his theory of economics was: price depends on supply and demand.

And that is it. Anything else added is totally elaboration.

Any ten year old kid street kid knows that. The more you want something the more you are willing to pay for it. The man has a PhD because of that very insight. I knew that at an early age – don’t I deserve a PhD also?

I guess it is the way you present it. Maybe the doctor put it in more of a consumer - demand kind of thing in his dissertation than I would think of. Or maybe in commodity terms. Like people need gasoline so the price goes higher.

I could relate it on a more personal level. One time when I was a kid I wanted the complete collection of MAD comic books. I did not have issue number 4. The kid I knew that did have it realized how much I was willing to pay for it, and upped his price, MAD comic #4 or 1000 barrels of oil, it is the same thing, as far as supply and demand.

I got a good grade in that class, but another course, a college algebra, I failed, and slid right off the Dean’s List – but that is another story.

3 comments:

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Eddie said...

I think I bought 200 acres of Georgia Swamp from this man.

Anonymous said...

Bush goes ballistic about other countries being evil and dangerous, because they have weapons of mass destruction. But, he insists on building up even a more deadly supply of nuclear arms right here in the US. What do you think? How does that work in a democracy again? How does being more threatening make us more likeable?Isn't the country with
the most weapons the biggest threat to the rest of the world? When one country is the biggest threat to the rest of the world, isn't that likely to be the most hated country?
What happened to us, people? When did we become such lemmings?
The more people that the government puts in jails, the safer we are told to think we are. The real terrorists are wherever they are, but they aren't living in a country with bars on the windows. We are.