Economics Homework Help

What are the limits to the U.S. long-term economic growth? Is there anything that our government can do to address these limits, or would it be a bad idea to try? 250+ words 

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Hello Class,

Economic growth is an increase in the real level of national output of a country, as measured by GDP (Wiki, 2016). Basically the more revenue a country is able to produce, the more the national economy grows. In regards to long-term growth, a huge limit to this idea is the concept of economic development. This is the measure of the “quality” of a nation as a whole versus the produced “quantity” of revenue. Economic growth and development are directly proportional to each other and have vital influences on the outcome of an economy. A few other limitations I researched are natural, human, technological, and institutional factors. Natural limitations are normally in the form of the agricultural businesses considering a vast majority of the nation’s GDP is all made up of raw materials. When the arable land is affected by natural disasters, unfavorable weather conditions, or even uncontrolled wildlife management, it ultimately affects the output of an economy. Human factors are simple in nature, but are sometimes unavoidable. The amount of poverty and quality of living conditions affect the manpower utilized for labor to actually produce the goods/services. This ties into the institutional structures responsible for health care, local infrastructure and most importantly the educational system. These institutions have the potential to provide a positive or extremely negative affect to the labor force; thus delaying economic growth in the long-run. Last is the technological limitations in the form of roads, sanitation services, and industrial utility support (electrical, natural gas, etc.).

After previously taking a critical thinking class, I am confident to say that our government has viable options out there to assist the economy in the long-term aspect. The problem is, every action that the government could take has a consequence in the short run. For instance, I think most people would agree that extending the unemployment benefits was a bad call. When citizens can get paid more for simply staying at home in comfort versus getting paid less at a job they don’t care for, they will have no desire to go back to work. The concern here is that the global pandemic kept a numerous amount of people out of work in fear of catching the contagious “COVID” virus. Once employers were able to let their guard down, it was already too late. People were taking advantage of a system that pays better. You can’t blame the citizens for thinking that way. It’s almost common sense to make that decision. Overall, I think it would be a bad idea for the government to incorporate more policies to help boost the economic growth. The fact of the matter is our economy started with a small amount of people that all were willing to put in work to provide for the common good. As the economy grew, you got people with the mindset of “someone else will do it,” and that mindset spread to other individuals. Now, you have working class citizens and unemployed citizens living off of the government. I understand not all of the circumstances are the same and I am definitely not trying to attack anyone for being on welfare or being on unemployment.

-Terry

Wiki (2016) https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/IB_Economics/Development_Economics/Sources_of_Economic_Growth_and/or_Development

Hello Class,

This weeks topic to discuss is the limits of the United States Economic growth and whether or not the government can do anything about it. At first glance one might ask themselves, “Why would we want to limit long term economic growth”? The content in this weeks topic brought up some good points that might sway someone into believing that the government might want to step in. I think its ironic that a few of them were caused by the government intervention but that opinion is up to the reader. One of the limits to our long term economic growth is we have wage requirements set forth by the government. This makes other countries more desirable to produce goods and turn a higher profit. One of the ways we could make this turn into our advantage is to innovate to make the things we need and desire cheaper to produce and in turn produce growth here. Climate change was also brought up. Some argue that if we don’t take action soon then we might not have a future to worry about. The government has tax incentives to purchase “green” energy but there’s an issue with that. We still use fossil fuels to develop that technology and most of the technology used comes from natural resources. Instead of incentivizing trading one fossil fuel burner for the other, maybe the government should look into what is destroying the climate. The gases that are released into the air is what is destabilizing the natural state of air composition. Maybe a filter for fossil burning tools should be incentivized. Another theory is that a more educated population can sustain growth. The government is trying to step in and make free college for everyone. At first glance this sounds like a great idea because it would make our population more educated. The problem I see with that, is if everyone can get a college education for free, then where is the incentive to compete for scholarships? I also have never seen someone care about something as much as when they earn it. When I was a recruiter and I had to interact with hundreds of thousands of today’s youth, if they didn’t care enough to get into college when they were in high school, they didn’t all the sudden figure it out and care in college. Make it free and you will not get the outcome you are looking for. Keep the competition in schools and you will see the competitive people do as they always do. The top 10 percent will always do 90 percent of the work. The rest of the people will follow and be employees and continue to make our country great.

The answer is never as simple as should the government intervene or not. We should continue to push for good policies to keep our country at a moderate gain and allow people to innovate and compete with the least amount of regulations possible so that no one destroys our planet or our way of life.

Tony