Real Estate Market Making a Recovery?

In this article, it talks about how much it costs to buy houses for the same amount of money in different cities. The market for real estate has been increasing showing that we should be in recovery, but prices are still down for what the houses should sell for. In Atlanta, Dallas, and Anthem, Arizona, inventory has increased and the demand for houses have increased, which is good for the economy. Right now would be the perfect time to buy a house because prices are still low, but show that they will increase a little as time goes on. All of the houses and apartments shown in this article are being sold around 200,000 dollars, but depending on where you want to live is how big of a home or house you are going to get. Right now in Detroit you can get a house that has seven bedrooms and six bathrooms for only 200,000 dollars. Detroit and Seattle have the best deals for home buyers right now. Location also matters when thinking about buying a home right now. The closer you get towards the bigger cities like Washington D.C. and New York, the more it costs for smaller houses. These houses are also getting closer to their true values compared to other cities. Hopefully people looking to buy homes right now will increase causing more money to go back into the economy, which will cause more recovery from the recession.

The Need For More People

In this article, they are saying that if we add more people into the United States that it will help boost the economy above other countries like China. If the United States wants to retain economic power, Charles Kenny said that we must make or import more people into the United States. If we import these people, not only do we gain people, but other countries lose these people making our gain even better. Importing people not only helps our economy, but it saves money because we won't have to raise a child. Children cost a lot of money, so the less the children, the more money we will have in the economy. Kenny believes that we need to quicken our per capita gross domestic product over China's if we want to have any economic power. When first reading this article, I was confused because I thought that the more people, the less jobs there are. Which I thought would weaken our economy even more than it is now. The more people there are in the country, would mean that there is more money circulating in the economy. This would definitely help ourselves get out of the recession and into recovery.

Why Are We Stealing Jobs?

In this article, they are talking about how a department store moved from Iowa City to the one next to it, Coralville. Moving this department store doesn't change much for the good. The location might change, but not many new jobs are created. Mostly jobs are just switched from one person to the next because of the change in location. Also more money is being spent on moving the department store, then the department store seemed to be making at that point in time. The Sycamore Mall is losing one of the department stores that makes money in their area. This devastates not only the mall, but the people working at the mall. Von Maur was bringing in some type of business into the mall, but now that is taken away causing less people to shop there, which causes more people to lose their jobs. Cities stealing from one another does not help the economy right now. We need to be creating new jobs, not stealing old jobs from other people who live in our area. This competition between cities to see who gets what store just causes more money to be spent and no one getting any new jobs. Also the stores won't make as much money as they are hoping for because they have to shut down business, so they can move the store front. It is predicted that not all of the money lost will be recovered from moving the department store.

Valentine's Day: Good or Bad?

Have you ever just stopped and thought about how much money is spent on holidays? Days like Valentine's Day, where it seems like tradition to buy your loved one candy or flowers. Valentine's Day is one of the most expensive days of the year, especially this year as said in this article. Valentine's Day is the day where you show your loved one how much they really mean to you by buying them cheap candy and flowers. This holiday should be more than just buying gifts. In this article, it shows how much money is spent on candy, balloons, and flowers. The only good thing about Valentine's Day is that more people become employed towards this time of year because of the demand for flowers and candy. This Valentine's Day has been the most expensive Valentine's Day is the past decade. This is good for the income of these businesses like the florists who deliver flowers and the restaurants that house the dates. Valentine's Day can seem like it's a pointless holiday because all people do is buy candy and flowers, but really this is helping the economy not only buy bringing in money, but also causing employment to rise.

Are Super Bowl Commercials Worth the Money?

Every year during the Super Bowl, I would watch the commercials to see which one's were my favorites. This year just happened to be the Oikos yogurt commercial featuring John Stamos. In this article, they ranked the top 5 and the worst 5 commercial on this year's Super Bowl. This year, it cost about $3.5 million for 30 seconds of commercial time. This seems like a large amount of money for thirty seconds of air time, but to the companies, the money is worth it, if their commercial is memorable and makes people want to go and buy their product. This year though, there wasn't any truely memorable commercial like the classic Coke commercial with Mean Joe Green, so why did these companies spend so much money on a commercial that will flop? In this graph, it shows how much these commercials cost since 1967. The prices for the commercials are getting more expensive meaning that the companies need original ideas that will last a life time. To start this they need to figure out what product they are going to try to sell, who their targeted audience is, and how they are going to get the attention of this audience during the Super Bowl. This year's GoDaddy's commercials were focusing on exploiting sex to get the attention of males, which is a good idea, but not everyone who watches the Super Bowl will want to buy that product based on the commercial. Some companies go for the humor aspect like in the Doritoes commercials. Humor is more likely to affect a wider audience and they're product will most likely sell better than the GoDaddy's will. The decisions these companies make are based on what they feel is the best choice to get their product to sell and how to get the money back for buying the air time.

Jobs During the Recession

The demand for jobs have been increasing because of the number of jobs lost during the recession. In this article, it shows 5 American cities that have been devastated by recession. These five cities have had barely any job recoveries if any. In cities like Flint, Minnesota, where their economy is primarily based on the automobile industry, the products are scarce, but the demand for the products are scarce. Not many people are looking to buy new cars right now because of the recession, which is hurting Flint, Minnesota because of this the number of jobs recovered are little and the poverty rate has increased. The increasing of the poverty rate put them at one of the worst rates in poverty in America. In Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, most of the jobs lost were government jobs in education because of the budget cuts. If we can't even recover the government jobs, how are we going to recover jobs in private businesses when they aren't given money by the government? People aren't buying as many products as they used to, so small businesses have had to close down and the people who worked there lost their jobs. The demand for jobs is high, but the amount of jobs are low, so we need to create more jobs like bring the factories to America like we said in class. This increase of jobs will help the economy even though the cost of the products produced might increase a little bit. The more jobs created, the better chance the economy will get out of the recession.

Economics in Castaway

Have you ever thought about how movies and television shows incorporate economics into the story plot? Well I found a blog post that talks about how economic aspects are incorporated into the movie Castaway starring Tom Hanks. Castaway is about a Fed Ex employee (Tom Hanks) who is stranded on a deserted island for four years. On this island he is forced to live without specialization, where the most valued jobs get paid the best. This is ironic because his job before landing on the island was delivering special packages around the globe so that people could specialize in their comparative advantage. Also Castaway showed how scarcity of resources effected his goal of survival. In the video found on the blog post, it shows how resources like seeds or communication tools mean more to the person stranded on an island than a person who has those resources around them every day. To a person like the women on the video, bottled water and matches are not as valuable than a thousand dollar necklace. To Tom Hanks in Castaway, water and matches are scarce resources and are probably the most valuable things that could be in their posession. Value is all based on the situtation that a person is in at the moment and the resources that are scarce at the moment.

The "What If?" Moment

Have you ever thought of the "What if's" in life? What if I had studied for my test instead of going to the movies? Would I have gotten a better grade? These "What if" moments are the opportunity cost of your choices. I have decided that I want to go into graphic design as my major and the major influence of this was taking the yearbook course at school. What if I hadn't taken yearbook? Would I still want to go into graphic design? This was my first thought when learning about opportunity cost.

In middle school, I had always taken choir and had decided that I was also going to take choir in high school, but one day I decided to look at my choices and I realized that I wanted to try out yearbook. At that point in time, choir was my opportunity cost. I had no clue if I was going to like yearbook and I was constantly wondering if I made the right decision, but that is the whole point of choices. Choosing which is the best option at the time is a big part in economics. When people are trying to decide what to produce, they are choosing to take one idea over another. What if their opportunity cost would have made them millions of dollars? This is the whole point of choices, you won't know if you made the right decision until you put your all into the choice you made to make it work.