To receive full credit for each question, your answers must be at minimum 15 sen

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To receive full credit for each question, your answers must be at minimum 15 sentences long, it must answer every part of the question, it must include economic concepts that were taught in class and where necessary provide real world examples and empirical data.  You must also explain your conclusions.

Question----The Economic Possibilities of Today

According to the alternative approach (heterodox) towards economic production the only real scarce factor is time.  Money, being a credit/debit relationship, cannot, by definition, be scarce.  Nor are capital or resources scarce but reproducible.  This conception is dramatically different from the conventional approach and thus its conclusions are also dramatically different.  What are these conclusions?

What does it imply about increasing the wellbeing of all US citizens?  What can these conclusions tell us about the economic possibilities of today?  What do knowledge, technology and positive feedbacks have to do with our current economic possibilities?  If money, capital and resources are not obstacles what kinds of obstacles do we face in improving the material wellbeing for all citizens from this perspective?

When you pose the answer please pose the question together, and put the answer right after that question, Thank you very much!

Explanation / Answer

Individual well being is the personal individual satisfaction. Satisfaction is a state of being that can be subjective to the individual based on several factors including, but not limited to, age, nationality, gender, culture, health, etc. So when speaking of individual well being, there is not universal set of requirements to meet the standard of what is good or what isn't. Community well being is something that can be very different. Community well being is a collective idea that is not dependent of individual well being, but they do reference each other notably. The well being of a community depends on not only the individuals within it, but the community perpetuating as a whole. Are their natural and economic resources? Are the citizens needs being met? Etc. These things are, again, culturally relative. Some things that are necessary for well being in one country or community may not be in another, so community well being is not something that can be understood easily across the board.

To stray away from the Western perspective, which can also be divided into several other subgroups, I'll look at Latin America. Latin American countries have a much different perspective then we have here in the states, so subjectively and holistically speaking, the Latino culture feels differently about political figures, the economy, family dynamics, education, etc. Because Latin America may have countries with political strife, community members within it may not see what Americans find to be determinant of personal or communal well being as concluding. A country with a lower socio-economic status is not going to base its community well being on how many 2013 car models are on the road like community in "western" states may, but instead on the quality of the harvest for that year, or the rain fall. This makes determining international and cross-cultural standards increasingly difficult, because an individual cannot be understood outside of its context.

I believe the clearest example of two countries illustrating these differences is Mexico and The United States. Mexico is a very poor country where opportunities are not as readily available to its citizens as the United States. In 1999, approximately 26 million Mexicans residing in the rural areas in Mexico had an annual income of about $1,300, or $3.50 per day. (Migration, 1999). Those 26 million have basic daily needs that are not being met. While we assume they have close ties towards their community, they must always focus on meeting these daily needs.

Compare this to lower, middle and upper income class brackets within the United States and undoubtedly you'll see a dynamic shift in mindsets. As stated above, those in the higher tier of income focus on their individual gain and feel that they are also assisting the communities well being by paying large portions of taxes, making donations and simply prospering the community economy. But I believe that even in some of the lowest of income brackets in the United States we would discover the strong commitment to communities because they have an element that does not exist in Mexico, and that is hope. While those in this bottom tier struggle for survival for themselves and their family, the ideology that their children might have the opportunity to have a better life as they grow older, becomes the fuel to want to make sure the well being of the community is also important.

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