Economics

Thanks for visiting the Economics Page. Here you will find information, links, activities, tools, handouts, and objectives for each unit in Economics.

This site will continue to grow as I add new things, discover new links, and create items that will be useful for learning Economics.

What Is Economics?

Economics is quite possibly the most important course you will learn in high school; it deals with more than money. It studies how people make decisions. The original idea goes back to the Enlightenment in Europe. The great thinkers of the age attempted understand the world around them by applying reason to what they observed. They even attempted to try understanding human behavior in this way, as if humans behave logically. What they discovered was, for the most part, we do.

Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories.

- Ludwig Elder von Mises

Economics impacts us in more ways than we are aware. Technically, every time we make a decision we are thinking economically. When we make a decision, we are forced to choose because at that moment we cannot have or do both. We must choose to give up something in order to have something else. Overtime our opinions will be formed based on what we value. These opinions help shape our decisions.

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

- Edmund Burke

More and more we are entering an age of economics. For the past few years all that we hear on the news are stories relating to the economy: the causes, the impacts, the politics. To be able to compete in today's world we must be savvy to the ideas of economics. To agree or disagree is not important, but to understand the economic world is. One of the biggest goals of this course is to expand your economic literacy. Understanding economics, the role it plays in everyday life, the implications of decisions big and small, is an invaluable advantage.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood . . . Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

- John Maynard Keynes

Knowledge is power. And when so much policy is determined by economics, the advantage goes to those who know how economics works. Therefore, those with a clear knowledge of economics are the ones who have the power.



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Honors Economics




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