Chapter Two-Supply and Demand

 According to an article written by the CNN Staff, US gas prices have lately been going up excessively. The most recent survey conducted last Friday reveals the exact increase in prices; 5.3 cents more. As many people ponder the reason behind this dramatic increase in gasoline prices, this article clearly uncovers the answer. The reason  retailers decided to raise their gasoline prices was simply because of the extreme price of ethanol. Since ethanol is primarily a source of gasoline, it's no wonder why the prices have had to go up.

 The textbook, Working With Economics, provides a lot of insight in terms of analyzing the reason behind this gasoline incident. Since the rise in gasoline prices was not a factor of consumer behaviour, it must therefore be a supply concept. In consonance with the textbook, the increase in production costs (ethanol) led to the sudden increase in supply which resulted in increased prices and decreased quantity exchanged. As well, 'our demand remains very weak and our supply very strong' (paragraph 10) in the article also states the same thing.

 Although paying up to $3.16 in the United States for gas is ridiculous, keep in mind that the companies are only trying to accommodate their prices with that of ethanol. Rather than judging the gasoline companies for their extreme prices and cringing at the thought of paying that much per litre, save the complaining for something else. As stated in the article, 'bad employment numbers and expectations' (paragraph 5) is only proof that we are all just trying to get by. Doesn't matter if it's surviving as a company or as a person. Additionally, I personally think that the increase of prices of gasoline because of the expensive ethanol will have an overall positive impact on our planet. If the demand of gasoline continues to drop, people will travel around no longer promoting global warming.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/10/24/gas.prices/index.html

Lorena Laurencelle

Chapter One-Opportunity Cost

   Recently, Marisa Peacock-an author with both experience as a marketing consultant as well as a social media strategist wrote an article mainly focusing on the misuse of a large sum of money within a few corporate computer companies. The way in which the money was used within these computer companies was for security purposes in terms of corporate secrets.  This article explains the idea that "executives seem to underestimate the value of their information" (paragraph 5). Since the companies are focusing on using all their time and money protecting their secrets, all the data stored within computers is being lost whenever they are stolen. The article states that "the cost of losing data is even greater" (paragraph 14) causing the companies a minimum of “US$ 363,000 per incident" (paragraph 16).
  The text book, Working with Economics a Canadian Framework, explains the idea of resources becoming scarce continuously while still enduring the topic of opportunity cost.  After reading Peacock's article, it is clear that the scarce resource within this article is money. The computer companies spend their money directly on systems used to help keep their corporate secrets, causing there to be a rather large lack of money to spend on protecting the information data stored on every single one of the computers. The opportunity that they could have had is to either evenly spend their money on both the corporate secrets as well as the data information or perhaps spend all of the money entirely on keeping the data information safe seeing as it's more important.
  After reading chapter one in the text book, Working with Economics a Canadian Framework, and specifically focusing my attention towards opportunity cost and the way in which this idea works, it's hard for me to believe that corporate leaders of a computer company could use their money in such an un-wisely way. In my opinion, I think that after seeing how much computers are getting stolen away from them, they should consider the fact that maybe the data information within those computers are slightly more important than some of their secrets-no matter how scandalous.




-Lorena Laurencelle

Link: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/study-corp-compliance-a-huge-waste-of-money--007201.php