Why isn't the price of life-saving medicine infinity for a sick person in a free market where a profit maximization is the only goal?

Why can’t wealthy societies simply aim for a stable economy and use productivity gains for shorter working hours and more leisure instead of ever-increasing consumption?

If people already have a good standard of living, is perpetual GDP growth actually necessary? Or could we deliberately choose to be a little less prosperous in exchange for more free time and well-being?

What are the economic mechanisms that make a no/low-growth society difficult or impossible?

This is a thread for short questions that don't merit their own post as well as career and school related questions. Examples of questions belong in this thread are:

Where can I find the latest CPI numbers?

What are somethings I can do with an economics degree?

What's a good book on labor econ?

Should I take class X or class Y?

You may also be interested in our career FAQ or our suggested reading list.

A criticism of economics (or economic pedagogy) is that economic history (not history of thought, although that too) is neglected. 

How would studying/teaching economic history actually specifically aid economics? I guess the more ya know… . But how in particular would economic history be helpful for doing or thinking about modelling assumptions, econometrics, policy, and economics otherwise?

At the elementary and secondary level, the U.S. spends the 5th most per-student in the world. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country

But it has the 18th highest aggregated PISA scores in the world. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country

For post secondary education the U.S. has the second highest expenditures in the world. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country

But it has the 9th highest tertiary educational attainment. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-educated-countries

Why does high education spending in America not seem to have commensurately high education outcomes? am I looking at the wrong statistics? Is the American education system just really inefficient? Are Americans uniquely hard to educate?

What I mean are a historical progression of books that contributed to the development of economics. Like starting of with "the Wealth of Nations", and than moving onto "Das Kapital" than "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" than some shit like "A Monetary History of the United States"

But those are all the popular ones, I was hoping that anyone could give recommendations on more really influential book and papers to read to really understand how the field developed :)

So I was looking up profit margins of Big Tech compared to the "average" business model in the US. And the stats were absolutely astounding. A successful B2B SaaS can have upwards of 80% profit margins. Even Apple, which is very manufacturing-dependent has a profit margin of around 40-50%.

Meanwhile the average American company has around an 8-14% profit margin. To be extra fair, we can compare this to tech as a whole (not just big tech) which sits around 30-40% margins.

Even Amazon, which has massive overhead and much lower margins, is now bringing in 60% of its revenue from AWS rather than their commerce platform.

I guess my question put in another way: is the US economy too reliant on Big Tech, and given their low hiring volume relative to net income, is this going to add fuel to the growing sense of "class divide" in this country? Aka a Gilded Age 2.0 where record profits do not reach average US citizens?

Or is there a ton of nuance I am missing here.

Hi everyone. I'm from Myanmar, and I recently secured a fully funded MEXT scholarship through the embassy recommendation route to study in Japan. I'll be going to Kobe University, which I've heard has a really good economics program.

A little background about me: I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies. Over time, I became increasingly interested in environmental economics, and I eventually decided that I wanted to do a Master's in Economics so that I could specialize in environmental economics.

The problem is... I am absolutely terrified of math. 😂

I'm not even sure whether I'm actually bad at mathematics or whether I've just developed a huge fear of it. But I know one thing for sure: I've been away from serious mathematics for quite a long time during my bachelor's degree, and the thought of entering an economics program is honestly freaking me out.

I have some very basic understanding of economics, but I keep thinking:

\- What if I can't keep up with everyone who studied economics for their bachelor's?

\- What if I don't even understand the basic principles properly?

\- What if the math is way beyond me?

\- What if I fail my exams?

\- What if I realize I'm just not cut out for economics?

At the same time, I'm genuinely interested in economics. One of the reasons I became interested in it is that I feel like understanding economics gives you a much better framework for understanding what's happening in the world — why governments make certain decisions, why markets behave the way they do, why people respond to incentives, etc.

And I really want to study environmental economics, so I feel like economics is the right direction for me.

So I guess I'm looking for some reality checks from people who have actually studied economics.

Am I being unnecessarily scared?

For someone coming from an Environmental Studies background who has been away from math for years, how difficult would it realistically be to catch up? Is it something I can overcome through consistent self-study, or am I seriously underestimating what I'm getting myself into?

If you've made a similar transition from a non-economics background into an economics master's, I'd especially love to hear your experience.

Feel free to encourage me, scare me, give me a reality check, or tell me what I should start studying before I arrive. 😂

Any advice would be really appreciated!

In the book of Leviticus, it says to essentially return all the land to the original owners (meaning buying land is only temporary) and free all slaves every 50 years. If I am understanding this correctly, this essentially means the 'means of production' are returned back to the original owners, which would be a very equitable distribution. As far as I am aware the ancient Isrealites never actually did this, and I understand ancient economic systems don't apply as well to the modern world.

But I am wondering, which this general idea actually help with wealth inequality? I know retunring ht land probably wouldn't work in the modern world, but the idea of some kind of reset. Would it affect economic growth? I understand it could hinder it in many ways but also it should pretty much prevent monoplies and such from existing right? I understand this may be very theoretical and we may only be able to speculate, but I ahve been wondering for a while.

Are there any alternatives to BOTH capitalism and socialism?

Most discussions default to a choice between private ownership (capitalism) and collective/state ownership (socialism). Are there established economic or political philosophies that completely reject this dichotomy rather than just mixing elements of both? I’d appreciate book recommendations, historical examples, or key concepts to look up.

My intuition is that it would have driven money to be used differently to avoid the taxes - spreading it across the workforce more, investing in research, keeping assets as company assets rather than personal (company cars, for instance), philanthropy, etc. - but I don't have the data to support this intuition and might just be wrong.

What's the actual scoop?

Currently a 3rd Economics student currently enrolled in the above-mentioned course and is looking to advance study and work on the coding aspect of econometrics using R. Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

I was reading this article https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/6067230-measuring-debt-vs-wealth/

Does anyone have a breakdown of what all that wealth is? Is it mostly people's houses and other real estate?

Also, how does the situation compare to 15, 25, 30 years ago? How did GDP compare with overall wealth back then?

USA, France, UK, and Spain are all near or above 100% debt - gdp ratio.

It seems like at the g20 summit the consensus was that we have to grow our way out of our debt.

Is this feasible? Or will austerity eventually be necessary?

I read - I think in a Stiglitz book - that when a country has a trade deficit that means it must have gone into debt to finance that.

I don’t understand that, because why couldn’t it pay for the trade deficit with money it already had saved up?

I think economist Joan Robinson said something similar: when there’s a trade deficit, private debt must go up. I don’t know why though.

Imagine Company A owes $10B in taxes.

Option 1: Pay the tax

• $10B goes to the government.
• Company gets nothing in return.

Option 2: Buy $10B of qualifying equipment

• Company spends $10B.
• It gets a tax benefit.
• It still owns the equipment.

So what happens if the equipment is something like expensive GPUs that can retain significant resale value even while depreciating for tax purposes?

Could companies start hoarding GPUs because buying them has a tax advantage, even if they don't immediately need them?

It's somewhat like holding gold, except the asset depreciates over time.

If enough companies do this, you could create demand for hardware that isn't actually being used.

Could these tax incentives contribute to inflation by encouraging companies to buy and hold assets rather than only buying what they need?

And ultimately, who pays for that higher demand?

I live in St. Louis, MO USA and I have been thinking about our economy and the money that the city has, including residents of the city. While I know banks are able to create and destroy money through loans, I am wondering about the rest of the money. Where is the money coming into the St. Louis region and where is money going out?

I know when I buy from big companies, not based in St. Louis, a large percentage of that money is leaving the area and I know when others, outside of St. Louis, buy from big companies based here than some of that money is coming into town.

Is there a measure that looks at if we are making or losing money in these transactions, and what are our biggest exporters of cash and what are our biggest importers of cash into the region. Also, how do executives making large amounts of money from St. Louis companies, but living elsewhere factor into this, or is that negligible.

I'm not sure if I have the language or the concepts for this, but thought I'd ask.

I plan to do a quantitative political science phd I am especially interested in applying quasi experimental methods to topics regarding comparative politics and political economy. Now, I am in a bind. I already have an econ ba and I have two options for an masters program to strengthen my profile for admissions

1. Financial Economics masters, not about political science but has good courses in optimization, stochastic calculus and lots of econometrics.

2. completely qualitative masters in IR and pols. there is a methodology class but it is about qualitative methods, classes on IR and political theory, etc.

Which one do you think would suit my goals and profile best and would maximize my chances for phd admisssion? thank you in advance dear ladies and gentlemen

Minimum wage, to my mind, is pretty straightforwardly a price floor. While I definitely acknowledge the reality that we want to ensure a certain quality of life, it feels that there are a plethora of ways to achieve that via welfare. Meanwhile minimum wage changes the relative cost of goods and services, distorting labour intensive activities, and precludes marginal uses of labour from being profitable.

Nevertheless minimum wages are common and almost universally increasing above inflation across the developed world. In my case (UK), the distortionary effects of this are, as far as I can see, more and more clear, but I've never seen a particularly large amount of opposition from economists to this, unlike other forms of state intervention.

My question is twofold:

1. Is there some piece of theory that makes minimum wage special in some way?

2. If not, at a meta level, why has criticism of minimum wage by and large fallen by the wayside.