Topic 5: Ripple Effects and Elasticity

Topic 5: Ripple Effects and Elasticity
Oil is used throughout the world in many things, its not only limited to oil for cars and trucks and planes, but is also used in things like asphalt and plastic. This causes many other industries to increase their prices which will cause a ripple effect and spread out to the rest. It may not have originally have had a direct correlation with oil, that industry or product will also become involved with this change. My family used to own a car and the price would make us use less gasoline which meant going out less and less. Another good that is like this is corn. Elasticity is that when prices increase, the quantity will change, however for many of our basic everyday items that we use, these products are a necessity to our every day life and are inelastic. No matter how high the prices rise, we will still continue to purchase them. Some goods that I consider elastic are biendawns, because I can just go to another place to get it, or eat another kind of food. I consider sugar to be inelastic, I consume it everyday and it only increases by very minor amounts, but no matter how much it increases for the most part, I will still buy products that contain sugar.

Topic 4: Where Choices Lead

Topic 4: Where Choices Lead

The opportunity costs for get me into this class from my perspective have been the chance to take MUN class. In terms of my mom, she could have used the money to buy a car or a lot of really nice meals. When I go to PAS, I give up the chance of going to another high school, for example my school in Georgia. I think that the decisions that were made were rational, assuming that coming to Taiwan was out of my control. The benefits outweigh the costs. There are very few american schools and only 2 that I know of in Hsinchu, which is where I live. I consider PAS to be the better of the two, and I chose this school in order to get a better learning environment. If everything had been in my control, I would have moved to California, because the people there speak English and are friendly. Also, the weather is really nice and I want to attend a college in California, so it would benefit me greatly to be a resident of that state. 

Journal #3

Incentives to Attend School

The most common incentives that most school use are grades, these grades reflect your overall performance. Your parents deduce from these grades the kind of punishments or benefits that you may get. Some disincentives that they use are the threat of kicking you out, holding you back a grade, and making you retake a course. Rewards are a much better incentive. Think about it this way, if you are the student and you aren't coming to school, you obviously don't care about it, or don't value it highly enough to come. But with a reward, it suddenly pops up on your radar, and now you have a reason to go. If you just give a punishment, it doesn't matter to the student, if they are already missing school, they don't care if you hold them back, or fail them, or kick them out, it would be of no consequence to them. All of the incentives for me to attend school are implemented in the home environment; for example, if I get a bad grade, my mom will cut me off until I make some sort of amends. They are ridiculously effective, when everything that you would be doing instead of studying become taken away, you are forced to study. I feel like the incentives given at PAS don't affect me, because I don't really care about what the school has to offer beyond the basics, and whatever that I strive for, as far as the school giving out free stuff, that doesn't matter to me. The goal of the schools is to get money from the government. PAS has a different school because they don't receive funding from the government, they are trying to please the parent by getting their child into a good college. 

Journal Assignment # 2

Joseph Wei

Journal Assignment # 2

Some examples of scarcity at PAS are: time, money, and materials. Teachers have to give up time in order to earn wages. Students must give time, money, and materials in order to receive education, and possibly parent approval. Personally, I would like to have more time and money to do the things that I like. However, the reality only allows me 24 hours a day and the fact that I can't be in two places at one time, on top of the pressure from my parents; each of these stop me from achieving my wants. I've had to trade time to do homework and go to school. In the time that I used doing homework and school, I could have been playing games or traveling or earning money. I have had to trade one class for another because of the restrictions on the class times as well as the restrictions on my class schedule, which only allows for certain classes on certain days during certain periods, and there are only 4 periods in a day (on average). However, the most important trade off would have to be the tradeoff among people. These tradeoffs can be grouped into 2 categories, appearance and friends. In the past, I have made trade offs to become the person that I am today. For example, I traded sports for playing an instrument. The friends that you choose to associate yourself with also define who you are. Each social circle involves a certain set of tradeoffs. For example, you must invest time, you won't be able to be in other circles as well, or get a job to earn money. You also tradeoff who you are; for example, not everyone fits into a social circle perfectly, so they have to compromise and possibly hide some aspects of themselves and pretend to be something that their not, either by just faking it or emphasizing another part of them that's not so prominent.