Economics Discussion Questions
Economics Discussion Questions
The discussion of scarcity limits it to the resource side. This approach does not recognize that demand is so scarce that sellers spend lots of money to convince consumers to buy their products/services. IHS estimates that advertising activity represented $3.4 trillion (or 19%) of the $18.2 trillion in US GDP in 2014.(p. 11) This means that the US Industry spent almost 1/5th of GDP on advertising to convince people to buy their products and services. This is more than Health Care which is 17% of GDP.
- Is this evidence that scarcity also exists on the demand side and not just on the resources side?
2. Does the concept of scarcity apply only to resources or is scarcity also applicable to demand as seen by corporations and sellers of goods and services? For example, human beings are suppliers of labor .
3.According to the Federal Government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) stands in March 2020 at 63.2%. That means 26.8% of the labor sellers are unable to find buyers for their labor energy. This is another measure of unemployment.
- Is demand for labor scarce or are labor resources scarce in this situation?
- Can you think of other examples in which demand rather than supply is scarce??
