Elizabeth Chun, epilogue

I thought how wheelan broke down the question of if poor countries will become richer and more developed in forty years was interesting. He pulled that question out of the future and put it into the past by breaking it down into smaller questions. If the countries will make the institutions that can be supported in a market economy, if the industries can be bigger than sustainable agriculture just making food for themselves, if when this happens they can trade with other countries such as the United states and what they will do with their human capital. These are smaller questions, however they are still big questions with complicated and somewhat unknown answers. Many of the changes in order to make these poor countries become rich countries would incorporate large changes to the ways of life in these countries that have stayed the same for so long.

Ram, Epilouge, Q3

In the epilogue Wheelan answers seven of his own questions with hopes that the readers would have there own questions. All of the questions that he proposed are very important for the future, but I am going to focus on a specific one. "Can America get its fiscal house back in order?" Wheelan Proposes some ways to solve this issue. He says that we should find some way to raise revenue enough to pay for whatever government we will have in the future. He also says that we need to pay off all the interest that we have gained in the past years. Then we find a way to solve the issue of the growing population and the costly entitlement promises. So what do these answers have to do with our lives. Well at the end of this section he also proposed that we have to conjure up some serious political leadership and put and end to the thought of the status quo for a while. "Overborrowing always ends badly, weather  for an individual, a company, or a country."(Wheelan) because the three parties borrowed so much we will have to weigh more to solve that issue. The implications for the future that are extrapolated are towards us the students of now. This is the point that Wheelan is trying to make and the implication towards the future that it is us the students that will get Americas fiscal house back in order.

Epilogue

Question 6. Wheelan brought up insightful component to were the U.S. And other countries will be in the near future. The success stories of our countries growth will only depend on how determined we are as individuals. In the end by 2050 will all countries be on the rise of a growth in economic purposes or will they deteriorate. The central idea is how we as a community can help those around us. With the U.S. being so knowledgable we can develop help develop new medicines and ideas that can help the economic growth in third world countries. Our Human Capital can transform others around us and he growth of Capial all over will create a place of wealth and environmental exceptablness throughout the world.

Hayoung Lim, Epilogue, Question 2

The epilogue points out seven questions that are essential to understand what will be done in the future. This part of the book is meant to point out how the issues dealing with economy affects every part of our life. Not just how it is now but how it will be in 4 decades. The economic choices we make now can either drastically improve the lives of other or not. Wheelan points out how we still do not adequately understand monetary policies or how to keep our fiscal house in order. Without change to these we are only increasing the work that must be taken to fix them, that is why Wheelan brings up the importance of answering these questions now so that they can be implemented and change our futures. Not just those of us living in the US but also everyone, as noted by his questions on how we will use markets to improve societies, or better yet will we. There is no "right" answer to these questions but how we choose to respond will greatly change our future. Hopefully we respond in ways that will further benefits to everyone, I know I will be thinking upon these questions further as I do believe how they are answered will affect me.

Zach Newton, Epilogue, Question 6

The part that I found most interesting in this chapter was when Wheelan talks about the time it costs to buy a loaf of bread in several years. I know Marissa already mentioned the quote about time becoming more important than money, but this section reminded me of a movie I watched a while back that I think I have just now begun to fully appreciate. I can't remember what the movie was called, but the premise was that time was literally money. The rich lived forever and the poor died young.  The plot line consisted of a poor man who was the caretaker of his mom who was trying to crawl his way out of poverty by pretending to be rich and essentially stealing time from the wealthy after his mom died before he could transfer extra time to her account. This movie strikes me now as being extremely close to where we are headed. While we will probably never literally live or die by a bank account of time, we already live or die by our work. As we have talked about in class so much recently, work has become a necessity instead of a love for what we do. Without proper balance, we quickly find ourselves working for more leisure time, even though work takes up a massive portion of our lives.

Kate Brown Epilogue Question 6

Each of these questions was something that was discussed more in depth earlier in the chapter. However, the way that Wheelman answers the second question in the epilogue is what I found the most interesting. Even though the idea of the "pie-slicing" question had been addressed previously in a previous chapter the way that he phrased this answer emphasized the choice that we as humans have. It is up to us whether it is better for us to be a harsher and more unequal society as we are today or to transform into a more European way of life that appeals to those who value personal happiness over productivity. Both options have their benefits and their consequences but is our job to decide what will be the best for our society in the long run.

Catherine Dustrude. Epilogue. Question 2

Well, I was just about to post what would have been the longest, perhaps most emotional journal post ever, but technology is unreliable and so I switched out of the app to look up a word and now it's all gone. Great. I was really proud of that... Gah. 

I'll try not to show my real emotions in this post. 

So, does this affect our lives? Well, I plan to be alive in 2050. Essentially, If we want 2050 to be better than 2015, then we have to REgress, not PROgress. Maybe that technology glitch I just had was an example from God, that we can't be technology dependent. It will make us go crazy, turn into horribly violent people. At least, that was MY reaction just now. 

We are losing social connections. We are losing worth and meaning and fun in our lives. We work too much and worry even more. We want money not love. We want fame not happiness. We know the expression "money doesn't buy happiness" but no one truly believes that. I used to add on to that and say, 'but it can buy ballet classes and that's basically the same thing'. But it can't buy me the friends I make there. It can't buy me the feelings of dancing, or the sound of the live pianist making us laugh, playing Queen as we do pliés and randejambes. 

We have to regress to where money wasn't the focus. We have to raise our kids plaging outside with sticks and dirt, not with iPads and iPhones in their hands. They can't know what Netflix is until they're at least 10, and they can't get whatever they want, whenever they want it. 

These 7 questions to think about for 2050, further emphasize how quickly we, as a country, as a world, have been growing, but in the wrong direction. We've really been getting dumber and more monotonous. It's so easy to do bad things, to lie, to cheat, and then to convince someone that we haven't, yet everyday we do, and we don't know that it's wrong anymore. If I keep living like I am, around the people that I am around, I won't make it to 2050, I'll have worked my butt off, and I'll be lying in some grave; my family will be watching my funeral on hologram devices in their living rooms, so they can 'work' while munching on the newest fad of a healthy chip and telling their robot through their brain-reading helmets which part of the house to polish next. 

Basically, the future can't look bright to blind people. 

Marisa White Epilogue

The statement that I found interesting was in the section about productivity and Wheelan says "Time becomes more important than money. Economists just aren't quite sure where that curve starts to bend backward, or how sharply it bends." I think this is interesting because it seems like everything in our world right now involves around money and becoming more wealthy. And I also think if that is to come true it won't be for a long time since people are so driven to get as wealthy as possible. But I also think that people who already do have a lot of money may start to work less and spend their money doing things they enjoy doing.

Erik Dahlman, Epilogue

I found it very interesting how Wheelan chose to end the book as it takes a very different stance from what most economists would tell us is the end goal. Wheelan suggests using caution when considering how to move forward with economics at the wheel. As a tool, economics can help entire nations solve huge issues that had been around for as long as anyone can remember, but as a leader, economics can begin to have complete disregard for what it was initially designed to help with. If everything becomes about the market, wealth may very well grow, but the losers of the situation will fall farther and farther behind those who have money to invest. Wheelan made a comment about how Italy was ahead of the world in that they had seen a world that was not all about economics, but that economics could be used in when chosen. This is a much healthier relationship with economics and I feel that this is what the standard economic model should become.

Elyse Melling, Epilogue, Question 6

One thing about the epilogue that was interesting was the exercise that Wheelan proposed. He said, "Find a young child... and try to explain to him or her why much of the world lives comfortably... while millions of people elsewhere on the planet are starving to death and billions more are barely getting by. At some point, the explanation just starts to feel inadequate" (Wheelan 323). With time, we've learned that not everything has an explanation or answer. We've also found that with time, we can find answers for some things. It was interesting to me how unpredictable the economy in the future can be and how many different scenarios there are to predict what it will be like. Wheelan said that one scenario could lift billions of people out of poverty and another won't.

Maggie Chamberlain, Epilogue, Question 6

The part that I found most interesting in this chapter was the problem of how to combat poverty. In countries that are more protective of their workers, like France and Sweden, the working class gets generous benefits mandated by law and health care by birthright. Overall, this makes income inequality lower, but this systems also has downsides. It leads to higher unemployment and a slower rate of innovation and job creation. If you spend so much money supporting your workers, businesses are going to have to start laying certain workers off because it will get to expensive to support so many employees. It's a hard trade-off choosing between lower income inequality and higher employment. There really is no single correct way to go about solving this tricky problem.

Gracia Gilreath, Epilogue, Question 6

I thought the example that was used to describe the benefit of incentives in the future market was very interesting. It consisted of an act, the Orphan Drug Act, that was passed in 1983 in order to encourage researchers and scientists to find drugs that will either cure or minimize the effect of these many rare diseases of the time. The incentives included research grants, tax credits and rights to sell and price the new-found drugs. Many more drugs for these diseases were discovered and as a result many more rare diseases were able to be fought off. Incentives ultimately encourage increased productivity and can lead to a beneficial result, which can help the market grow in the future.

Derik Graham, Epilouge, Q 6

The passage that I found the most interesting was the one of how Productivity creates choices.  Greater productivity gives us the choice to work less or more depending on how rich in material things. I dont know if I agree with Wheelan's associate though. I feel as if Americans will continue to work and become more productive until working less becomes a need rather than a want. I think that a potentially exponential growth of productivity may burn out the will power of a generation. I hope that soon people will be able to see the value of leasure before retirement.

CatherineDustrude • Chapter 12 • question 6

Just like Betsy and Bert essentially traded tasks,or divied up the workload, we trade with other countries, and divie up the work load. This chapter further clarified how trading can help so much in an economy, because it effectively answers each of the three main thoughts of economics: what do we make, how do we make it, who gets it. We make what will benefit us with the least opportunity cost, we make it with what we have easy access to, and those who get it, are those who have something we want and then we trade. It seems absurd to me now, after knowing this, how any person could think that trading is not beneficial. It seems like a no-brainer. 

I also was grasped by the statement, "the antiglobalization coalition ought to be known as 'The Coalition to Keep the Worlds Poor People Poor'", because if we don't trade with the poor they will never be able to grow, and they will always be poor. 

Griffin Snow ~ Chapter 12

The importance of globalization was stressed in the chapter, as well as the importance of countries opening up to one another. It is interesting to hear and read about how many people disagree with global trade, or dislike the idea of any kind of globalization. When Wheelan wrote about trade creating losers, I can definitely understand why people would be upset or disagree with outsourcing jobs or trading with third world countries. It could be cheaper to have someone in Vietnam do the same job as someone in the US (like making clothes, $14 an hour vs. $1 an hour), but then there is one more unemployed person in America. No politician is ever going to have a slogan anything like "Minus one for America, but plus 14 for the world!"

Elizabeth Chun chapter 12 question 6

The section I found most interesting in the chapter was the one discussing how trade creates losers. It causes many people to get laid off and be out of work when people in developing countries are the ones making our clothes and shoes. There seems to be a culture here of people wanting to mainly buy things in made in America so that people here can have jobs, even though when the jobs are being done in other countries products sold in the United States become cheaper making consumers richer and resulting in growth of the economy. But this makes me wonder if these developing countries that can pay workers just a few dollars for a whole days worth of hard labor will stay under developed. If in the future the countries further develope  and begin to pay their workers more money, will that harm the U.S. by making prices of imported goods increase and in result more expensive for us  slowing the growth of the economy?

Maggie Chamberlain, Chapter 12, Question 4

Climate change and air pollution are major problems, but they are also rich country problems. Rich countries can care more about pollution because they have enough wealth and resources that they don't have to be cutting down trees merely to survive. Richer countries, however, are also the primary culprits for air pollution because trade makes countries richer, and as a country gets richer, it uses more energy, and as more energy is used, CO2 emissions rise, adding to air pollution. The solution to this environmental problem is not in banning the education of those potential workers of these energy-sucking operations. The solution lies in discouraging the use of dirty fuels by placing a tax on fuels such as carbon. The key is not in discouraging the economic growth of a nation, but in changing people's lenient mindsets toward what they are fueling their businesses with and, consequently, what they are putting in the air.

Kate Brown Ch 12 Q6

The section of this chapter that I found to be the most interesting was the very first section of the chapter. Wheelan discusses how even if a country isn't better at something than every other country they should specialize in what they are the least bad at. I understand this and how the trade market that is created out of this is beneficial all around. Some people do the smaller and easier jobs so that others can do what they are best at such as inventing things. For me this brought up the question of whether or not this makes smaller third world countries stuck in the poverty they are in. Does this encourage them to remain in the cycle of specializing in simple tasks in order to have something to trade? They don't have any of the time that the U.S. has in order to specialize in more technologically advanced fields and therefore have no way of creating a more valuable/unique good.

Hayoung Lim, Chapter 12, Question 6

What I found most interesting from this Chapter was, as Charles Wheelan states it, that the antiglobalization coalitions are basically a Coalition to Keep the World's Poor People Poor. Although unwittingly it is still true that without globalization a developing country could not increase its GDP and bring their citizens out of poverty and into the middle class. I loved the statement he adds on how ones inability to understand environmental differences is what leads to coalitions like the anti-globalization ones that in a whole are actually detrimental to those being told what is best for them. Making this another proponent to the concept that people will act in rational self interest and that when people are given independence it works in everyones favor. Though the sweat shops of Bangladesh look inhumane, when viewed through "rich goggles", we realize that they are actually not only usually the best options but will also increase productivity and human capital that in turn actually solve the problem of sweat shops in the first place.

Chapter 12

The part that I found interesting was the example that related trading globally to trading across the Mississippi River. It put into perspective how without global trade everyone would suffer majorly. It shows that geography really plays a major part in what natural resources you have, even though that is not what matters most in a place's economic standing (which was stated in chapter 13). I think it's confusing that people would poor countries would suffer from all the trading since wealthier countries are getting richer, since everyone would be growing through the trading if they are included.

Chapter 12

Question 6. I found pages 285-287 quite interesting. The topic Wheelan brought up was about Trade and voluntary exchange throughout the country. He made it very clean that when he visits other country's and sees U.S. restraunts he's in some ways appauled, but knows that many people need the extra work to survive in unstable living counditions. Look, all of these fast food restraunts cause negative externalities, but many countries need them to survive. They create new jobs plus Wheelan says "It's better then any other option they have". The restraunts are not just american food they are integrated to there own culture. The big threat of Cultural Homogenization is creating a stir against Globilization. The idea of creating a concept as negative as Mcdonalds is not just a bad wrap against us but for many people around the world. Wheelan brought up a point about minimum wage and how much people would earn over there rather than the states. It's almost against our nature to have somone work over there for $2 then for someone to make $8 over in the U.S.

Gracia Gilreath, Chapter 12, Question 6

The passage that I found most interesting was the passage that used the analogy of trade across the Mississippi River to compare with trade across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The idea of the analogy consists of cutting off trade between the east and west side of the Mississippi in order to see if it would be beneficial or have a negative impact. Consequently, both sides would be lacking the resources that the other side previously provided, so they would be forced to now produce these resources themselves. This does create new jobs, which stimulates the economy, however, the skills of the workers do not match these need found jobs, resulting in less productivity. This example was proposed in order to make the claim that "cutting off trade leaves a country poorer and less productive."

Derik Graham Chapter 12 Question 6

The section of chapter 12 that I found the most interesting was the sections of voluntary exchange and comparative advantage for workers. Wheelan starts the section with stating that trade is a voluntary exchange of goods and services and one of those services is labor. This tied into the next section that talked about sweatshop workers. A common cause for equal rights activists or a concerned person would be to abolish sweatshops. The point that I found most interesting is that they voluntarily work for that 2$ a day. Wheelan makes the assertion that it is because it's the best deal around and used an example of a woman who wanted her job and didn't want her factory to close. I don't know if I would say that sweatshops are good for the world but they certainly make goods cheaper for the world.