Journal Topic 12: Pizza for Pesos?

In the video “Pizza for Pesos”, it talked about Pizza Patron accepting both pesos and US dollars. It raised some controversies. For example some said that this benefit the illegal immigration from Mexico because people believe by doing that it is catering to the illegal immigrant market and weakening American culture. This video eventually deals with utility, because when people buy things, they need to concern the benefit of buying it, whether buying pizza in pesos or American dollars increase their utility. This concept therefore deals with consumer preference. Consumers choose what benefit them the most. For illegal immigrants, they might think that buying using pesos is better because they don’t need to exchange money. As for Americans, they might choose to use US dollars. A change in the exchange rate between Mexican Pesos and US Dollars would definitely have affect on Pizza Patron’s business, because people prefer the cheaper money. Moreover, when the value of the money decreases and the other remain the same, people buy less. Therefore their budget line shifts inward. However, when the value of the money increases it goes the other way around. I believe that using pesos might increase the chance of illegal immigrant, because they can cross the border and buy food without even changing the money. 

Journal Topic 11: Brand Names and Utility

After watching the video on “No Frills Grocery Shopping,” I was quite shocked. I never know that there were actually grocery stores that sell products that have no big name brans. Moreover, customer’s annual household income is $65,000. For me, I believe that big brand names have a higher utility or sense of satisfaction. Even though it might be more expensive, I believe that those big brands taste better that’s why they became famous. Another issue I really considered is the quality and how those products were made. I believe that those private brand names are more likely to have problems in their process of making the products. In addition, their raw materials might not be as good as those in the big brand. I feel that it’s safer to buy things from big brands. However, some times, I actually choose the ones that cheaper. Those are the things I just buy once in a while. If I have to use one specific thing a lot of time, I probably will buy products from big brands, because I wouldn’t want to risk my health since in news, it often says that private brand has some sanitation problems. For example, I wouldn’t want to buy a random brand chocolate from a store, because most of the time it’s not delicious at all. I would prefer M&M, which gives the most utility for me. 

Journal Topic 10: Consumer Preference and Utility - Skechers

Skechers is an athletic shoe company that started in 1992 and is one of the well-recognized shoe companies. They target on customer needs, choose the right style, and are used limited resources to provide customer good qualities of shoes. The company do market research to evaluate consumer needs by analyzes the process of customers. It promotes through personal selling, sales promotion (short term), public relations, and advertising, which contains all form of media. For example, their products are in magazines, TV shows, internet, and all other media. Skechers uses target market, which target people between ages of 12 and 24. In identifying market segments to target the right customers, it uses geographical, demographic, psychographic, and product needs. It also differentiates itself from other shoe companies by investing time that builds the brand that carries lifestyle and cool footwear. It also assures maximum distribution potential without overreaching its market.

There are a lot of products that have high utility and there are those that have really low utility for me. For example, I spent a lot of money on chocolate, because they are just way too delicious. Chocolate just makes my day happy. However, diamonds for me has a low utility. I don’t get the point of diamonds. They are shiny, but you can’t do anything with it. 

Journal Topic 9: The Myth of Outsourcing's Effect

In economy, globalization refers to increasing economic interdependence of and national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, service, technology, and capital. When countries have comparative advantage, which refers to the ability to produce a particular good or service at a lower opportunity cost, other countries buy the goods and service from those countries. This leads to outsourcing. People often argue about the practice outsourcing. Some companies believe that by outsourcing, it can create cheap labor. They let those countries that have comparative advantages to create the materials and other goods in order to save time and energy. With cheap labors, the companies won’t lose that much money by giving high salaries. In addition, the production and efficiency will most likely increase. However, others believe this will destroy middle class jobs. Actually, experts found out that outsource companies has a faster growing employment rate than those that do not. Moreover, it creates twice as many jobs in the home countries. Even though there were 391 millions jobs that were lost because of outsourcing, it actually created 411 million jobs. Those who lost their original jobs even found better jobs. Therefore, outsourcing can be a great opportunities for the countries. 

Journal topic 8: Debate on Globalization

Convergence, which is also known as the catch up effect, states that poorer economies per capita incomes will grow faster than the richer economies. Therefore developing countries such as China and India have the potential to grow at developed countries because dimishing returns aren’t as strong as in capital rich countries. Because of globalization, China and India economies have increased rapidly.

Globalization is the independent of world economy, in which countries interact with each other. There are some critiques about globalization. Definitely some people will lose and some people will gain from globalization. More specifically, some experts believe that it might diminish sovereignty, change and dilute national cultural, and fewer ways to monitor companies by government. However, people from the developed countries believe that globalization brings more choices, promotes economic growth, provides more jobs, and increase living standard faster.

Globalization has influenced my life a lot. Without it, I probably still live in a really shabby house with no technology, because globalization allows countries to trade and interact from one place to another. For example, in Taiwan, not all the things are made in Taiwan. There are many other things that are made in China. Therefore without globalization, we might not be able to have some resources that we are having right now. 

Journal Topic 7: Government Farm Subsidies

After watching the video, I feel that the government subsidies are useless, because there are some loopholes. For example, farm subsidies rarely go to poor people, instead the farm subsidies go to those wealthy farmers and large agribusinesses. Moreover, people can even get paid without farming. Some people said that they have no idea why the government is doing that. Moreover, most crops don’t have farm subsidies. I believe that the government isn’t tackling the problem in the right way. In New Zealand, it doesn’t have farm subsidies, and their framers’ productivity increased five-fold. The video wants the viewers to think that farm subsidies are unnecessary and that it doesn’t have the productivity. Therefore, I’m a bit influenced by the video and agree with it.

Instead of farm subsidies, there are also other subsidies such as gasoline, car, and even education. Most colleges and universities have subsidies. I believe that those supports should continue, because education is really important. Well, as for elementary and high school, I believe that their subsidies should be fewer than those of colleges and universities, because students are actually learning and contributing to the societies in college and university years. I also think that people who don’t have school-aged children have to pay taxes to support schools, because education is way too important than anything else. 

Topic 6: Opportunity Cost of a College Education

In economics, people use marginal analysis to make good decisions to find out the marginal costs and marginal benefits. For example, when some people are deciding whether to have a one more year of higher education, they might look at both the marginal costs and marginal benefits. The marginal costs might be another year of tuition, the loss of having a full time job, study all day long, and not enough free time to do their own things. However, there must have some marginal benefits too. For example, people might get more knowledge, make new friends, and getting a better job in the future by having one more year of higher education.

Is it true that college graduates earn one million dollars more in their working lives than non-graduates? It might not be true, because there are some minorities who earn a lot of money, which eventually ruin the average of the data.

Some students leave college after one year, because they might think it’s not going to benefit them that much in college as going to work. However, leaving college after one year might not actually let people to get good jobs. It’s risky by doing that.

My parents always tell me that in order for me to succeed in the future, I have to work hard and get into a good college. However, what is contradicting is that my parents didn’t have a high education, but they still succeed.