Economics Homework Help

Santa Monica College Jokes on Social Media by Young Individuals Discussion Responses

 

I need you to write about a pragraph each. I just need you to have a the post sound like youre having a conversation with the peers. they are both talking about this video for reference

peer 1

This film was extremely helpful in understanding the foundations of the global economy today. I have heard many jokes on social media by younger individuals who do not understand why we, as nations, cannot simply print more money to pay off national debt. It’s difficult to understand where our economy is today and how to move forward without knowing how it happened. If I could point to any single factor that changed economics globally, it would be the concept that “the world got a lot smaller” with the invention and innovation of modern transportation, including railroads and aviation. Now that people could travel all over the country or the globe, countries were no longer isolated with their economies, a shift to a global orientation begun. Since this film, the world has only become more interconnected and business is conducted faster and more efficiently than ever before. We have seen up and down turns in the economy, even unique cases such as the COVID-19 pandemic which basically stopped the world.

The film was helpful because it showed how the events occurring in each country at the same time affected their own economies and their relationship with the rest of the world. When an economic idea failed in a nation, others around the world became fearful of the theory instead of looking at where that nation could’ve gone wrong. As was the case with Black Thursday in 1929, when the stock market crashed in the U.S and signaled the first downturn of the spiral that would become the Great Depression. I also did not realize the long-term effects of wartime economies and how they had such drastic effects on post-war planning. The bigger picture is that there has always been a central debate in economics and politics between planning and leaving market forces to nature. Keynes was an economist who played a large role during the war, because he believed in government planning and intervention in the economy to provide stability. Hayek believed that “socialism promised a more fair economy” and was in favor of letting the market correct and balance itself. I was very unfamiliar with stagflation prior to this film, and it did a good job of explaining the dilemma that high inflation and unemployment creates.

peer 2

Commanding Economies describes the battle between the economists Keynes and Hayek and how it relates to the globalization of free markets or socialistic governments. No one would argue both sides have important aspects that make them popular within societies, so determining the right fit at the right time is where the debate lies. The film starts with Clinton asking whether globalization is positive or negative but what it does do is make every society interdependent. The start of globalization with the invention of the telegraph, the telephone, and the radio are todays’ internet, which brought a revolution of bringing people together. Keynes & Hayek pitted against each other through WWI, Great Depression, and WWII. Both Britain and the United States teetered back and forth to various degrees the theories of the two economists. Which power will have control, governments or markets? The debate has been ongoing throughout history as people struggle to improve their quality of life. We see global terrorism and capitalism implanted as ideas are formed with a hope to have one ultimate model win—the famous air warden duty between friends of Keynes and Hayek at Kings College. Keynes, the more dominant economist of the times, felt governments needed to intercede when times were difficult and the opposite of Hayek. Who would have contrived the murder of an archduke would trigger WWI? The damage of the war stopped the progress of globalization for almost a century, but it started the belief socialism, and communism promised a better world. The Russian revolution and Lennon were then given a foothold to deliver Karl Marx theories. Commerce and private property were actually criminal acts against society. Government is the problem theories started here if prices and wages were controlled because there was a lack of signals to know what aspects of consumerism were working versus not. Lennon’s Marxist economy drawback was famine and scarcities, and the commanding heights or main industries would continue to be controlled if land ownership and trade were again allowed. Then under Stalin’s central planning was the order. Hyperinflation, printing money caused Europe to move to depression, and fascism grew to defeat poverty; with it Hitler’s success. Keynes wrote macroeconomics principles explaining that an economy should be considered as a whole to improve its function to prevent totalitarianism. Restore and maintain full employment were Keynes’s models of a productive society. In hard times a government should step up to put money in the hands of individuals, rescue and accumulate debt with a modest amount of inflation. In the US, Roosevelt enacted the New Deal to improve unemployment with improved infrastructure but regulating capitalism. As an example, the aviation industry regulations increased the size of the government to oversee new guidelines. WWII brought economies out of the depression, making Keynes’s theories stick in the US and Europe. Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’ contradicted Keynes’s philosophies, thereby stressing freedom should be a centralized idea without government involvement, stating markets will adjust when left without interference, however hard. This put Keynes planned against Hayek’s free economies.
After the 1st world war in England pulling resources for the common good to rebuild the economy “ the welfare state provided care; free of charge. From womb to tomb. No one rich or poor would need to fear poverty ignorance, unemployment, ill health, or old age” ideally is all well and good in an improving economy. However, I believe that giving to one takes away from someone else. Or, as we see today in the US, the employed are paying the unemployed to stay unemployed. England brought about the nationalization of industries to the world. Thatcher also introduced tackling to return a supply and demand fee market using coal miners as the prime target. 75% were losing money, so needed government intervention and subsidies kept miners working. Union strikes became an epic clash of free market versus state ownership; and socialism against Christianity. Power was the ultimate question as both sides fought to win. When the unions failed, which closed most mines, the hard part came when unemployment rose. The turnaround of Thatcher inventing privatization selling off control of government-owned industries to the private sector. These principles were imitated then throughout many other governments. Regan and Thatcher simultaneously embraced Hayek’s monetary policy and used these ideologies to attain the same objectives. The 20th century saw lessening government as we are turning full circle back to the beginning of the cycle of larger governmental control in the 21st century. Socialism today is on the rise as we have experienced another recession, a pandemic not seen since the Spanish flu, and a heightening mindset towards embracing technology as an answer to knowledge and connectivity. Big business has become an influencer of governments, each with special interests, so it may be necessary to prevent those with too much power from causing instability. At his point, history is telling us there has to be a balance between both sides, leaning more to biting the bullet. I often wonder what is going to happen when interest rates are no longer artificially held down. The government itself would be the hardest hit, and we would have a snowball effect.