mACROECONOMICS
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If you are finished with your IA or waiting for feedback then you are ready to start looking over some background to our macroeconomics topic.
Any introduction to macroeconomics must start with an understanding of the two terms micro and macro. When we are referring to micro economics we are referring ultimately to single or individual consumers, producers, markets, workers etc. When we are referring to macroeconomics we are referring to the SUM of all individuals, consumers, markets, workers etc. We are often talking about Aggregates, meaning to say the SUM of all parts of the economy, which is of course a significant part of society and the political culture we live under.
As such Macroeconomics is closely related to the areas of politics and philosophy. It might surprise you to know that some of the earliest individuals that were interested in economics were also philosophers. This trend goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek philosophers, who began consideration of areas of economic like the quantity theory of money to Adam Smith during the Enlightenment in the later Eighteenth Century and Karl Marx in the 19th Century, considered arguably the most influential economist between Smith and John Maynard Keynes in the early 20th century.
Beyond Adam Smith, you have read about his ideas in Economix (if you haven't, I would thoroughly recommend you take a copy off of the shelf before proceeding and reading the Chapter on Smith) the next thinker to progress a general view of the economy was Karl Marx, his ideas about the economy can be described as deterministic. His thinking was so focused on the role of the economy in human life that he left little room for much else. The economy was all consuming and so approaches to society were fundamentally economic in nature. Watch the documentary below and take notes as you go, please watch individually (headphones preferable) to allow those that need to complete IA's the ability to concentrate :
If you finish you can create a mind map on the Life and ideas of karl marx
mEASURING ECONOMIC aCTIVITY
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We don’t expect a dentist to be able to forecast the pattern of tooth decay. We expect that she will offer good practical advice on dental health and intervene to fix problems when they occur. We should demand much the same from economists: proven advice about how to keep the economy working well and solutions when the economy malfunctions.
To what extent may this expectation be true? Should economists fix problems when they occur rather than trying to predict the future? Is certainty something that only exists in the present time?