Topic 5: Ripple Effects and Elasticity

When the price of the oil increases, there are ripple effects. For example, tires are made from oil, so if the oil’s price increases, the tire is going to increase. People might say that they don’t need to buy new tire. However, when making roads, the ingredients are made up of oil. Therefore, when the price of the oil increases, the government will stop the road projects temporarily. There are many things that are made from oil. At first we might think that increase of the price won’t effect a lot, but it can increase the prices of airline tickets, carpet, crayon, and etc.

The change in oil affects my family, which my family has to change our transportation. Most of the time, my dad drives the car to wherever he wants, but when the price of the oil increases, we try to take the public transportation.

Metal is another goods that has inter-connectedness with others goods and services. A lot of things we see are made up metal such as machines, houses, technologies, and etc. When the price of the metal increases, many things’ prices will also increase.

Elasticity means that no matter what the quantity is, the demand is still the same, but in the case of inelasticity, the change in price will not change the demand. For me, water is an inelastic good, because water is the most important thing in life. Therefore no matter how expensive it is, my demand for water is still the same. 

Topic 4: Where Choices Lead

I first came to Pacific American School when I was in ninth grade, before that I was in Taipei European School only for one semester. I chose Taipei European School because I thought TES could give me more opportunities of being a more diverse student such as more team sports, community service, internships, other extracurricular activities, and better school facilities. Coming to PAS, I lost of those opportunities, which were my opportunity costs. I still believed that TES could actually make me a more well rounded person. Sigh… I always lost my friends from TES by leaving there. Still, the main reason I transferred because I have to go down a grade in TES just because I’m younger. However, there were also some benefits by coming to PAS. The main one is that PAS is a small school so that each student can get attention from the teachers. Another benefit is that people here are more likely to go into better universities. After all, after analyzing the costs and benefits, I will still choose PAS, because I wouldn’t want to waste one more year in middle school. Also I had to attend the ESL class in TES, even though the materials are super easy, like those one taught in third grade. 

Topic 3: Incentives to Attend School

There are both incentives (benefits) and disincentives (costs) that make students go to school and not go to school. For example, the incentives are gaining participation points, not getting yelled by parents or Ms. Pamela, and gaining knowledge. By gaining participation points, the strongest incentive for getting students to attend school, students can get higher grades by just attending the classes, and most teachers give around five to ten percent of participation. This motivates me to go to classes to get free easy points. However, there are also disincentives. For me, the disincentives are not having enough time to hang out with friends outside the school, not having enough free time to fool around or play, having a lot of work to do, and not being able to go outside the school to eat lunch. Moreover, we even get punishments from not attending school. We might be sent to the office or parents have to come to the school.

I believe some people’s behaviors change due to the incentives given at PAS, but some people just don’t care about anything that’s related to school.

In the video of “Incentives for Perfect Attendance,” the school’s goal is to get students to attend classes by giving laptops to perfect attendance students because sometimes half of the students don’t come to school. Moreover, the school needs to meet some requirements to get state funding. PAS, however, doesn’t have the same incentives, because it’s a private school. Therefore most of us are able to afford their own laptops and the school won’t get any funding from the government if no students are left behind the classes or having good attendance. 

Topic: Scarcity at School?

People always want more than we can get with their given resources. This forces us to make trade-offs, in order to get what we want. In every society, there are different types of scarcity. People always want this and that. Nonetheless, no one can get what one wants, even the richest person in the world can’t get all they want. Everything is limited.  For example, in PAS, teachers give students a lot of homework, quizzes, and test. However, students always want more time to do the homework or study for tests. In these situations, students hare having scarcity. In order to gain more time, students have to give up time from playing computer games and chatting with friends. Another example is that some teachers want more resources for the classes. However, there might not be enough budgets to provide these resources. For me, I want to have more break time, because sometimes during the break I have to go to the bathroom. Therefore I don’t have enough time to get my books and be on time for classes. I can’t think about another scarcity I have encountered in school because most of time, I don’t have to have that much of the thing, such as homework and quizzes. 

Topic 1: The Big Question

PAS can be looked as an economy. Everyone at Pas can serve as produce and consumer. So what is what or the goods and services that are produced? The goods and services are the lectures, lessons, and information given in classes. PAS, as a school, provides the environment for the students to learn and for the teachers to lecture. Therefore the producers can be both the teachers and the staffs who run the school. The teachers write lesson plans for the lectures and the office gives the instruction on how the lessons should be lectured. This explained how the goods and services produced. Students receive these goods and services, which is the education and information they get from the teachers. These goods and services allow students to know more about various subjects even though the subjects might not be applied in the real life. Since PAS, unlike other schools in Taiwan, is not governed by a group of people, there is only one person who is in charged of all what, how, and for whom goods and services get produced. This person is the head of the school. Everything even small an action is controlled by her.

I feel like that the choices made in this school are both self-interest and social interest. For example, the school wants more people to come to this school by helping students to get into good universities. The school gains profit by using students. However, students also gain the goods provided from the school in order for them to get into good colleges.