Elemental Economics

Preface

Introduction

Preface

This site is intended to aid and assist students enrolled in my classes at the University of Saskatchewan (USASK).  Most of the materials presented should be of use to students of economics anywhere.  Other parts, e.g. Computer Lab, will not.  All rights and responsibility for errors and mistakes are, however, the responsibility of Compiler Press ^©, my nom de guerre within the competitiveness of nations in a  global knowledge-based economy.   

It is hoped that other citizens interested in 'the philosophy of the age' may also benefit from the 'organized information' or knowledge compiled  in this site.  As 'moral philosophy' economics provides the contemporary  'calculus of human happiness' employed around the globe by virtually every business, citizen, community and nation-state.  It has even become embodied, at the global level , as the World Trade Organization - centerpiece of an emerging Post-Cold War global knowledge-based economy - One Planet, One Biosphere, One Humanity.  

In today's world, economics - not accounting, not business and not commerce - tells us that human happiness can only be obtained only  if two stringent conditions can be satisfied: 

(i)   all opportunity costs are internalized by the individual, business enterprise, community (geographic and community of interest), country, culture or humanity itself, as appropriate, and,

(ii)  all collective, as opposed to private, benefits are 'equitably' shared - horizontally as in 'like treatment of like', and, vertically as in 'unlike treatment of unlike'.

Harry Hillman Chartrand, Ph.D.
Cultural Economist & Publisher
h-chartrand@shaw.ca

Compiler Press ^©  

Introduction

The word 'economy' derives from the ancient Greek oikos meaning 'house' and nemo meaning 'manage', i.e. managing the house.  In this sense, economics shares a common root with 'ecology' which derives from oikogie or modes of life and relations within the house.  Another connection is Ekistics - the science of human settlement.  This term also derives form oikos but in the sense of the founder of an ancient Greek colony like Syracuse in Sicily or the numerous city states established by Alexander the Great in India at the end of  the 4^th century before the common era.

These three terms are increasingly linked through our growing understanding of the unintended effects of economic activity (called 'externalities') on the house of humanity  - Planet Earth.  

To over-stretch the metaphor, this global house (World at Night) is inhabited by a diverse collection of consumers and producers and has:

•  front and backyards including composite heaps and septic tanks (farms, fishing grounds, forests and mines of all kinds as well as recycling facilities and dumping grounds);

• many living rooms (nation states, their provinces, cities, towns and villages); 

•  many 'working spaces' such as kitchens, laundry and bathrooms and workshops (profit and non-profit firms and governments);

• a foundation (the geology of the planet itself including its lakes, rivers, oceans and seas);

•  an attic and roof (the atmosphere); and,

• beyond the roof soars the infinity of 'outer space' into which humankind has just begun to extend a tentative presence with TV antennae and satellite dishes reaching out to the stars.  

In contemporary terms, however, 'economics' generally means either:

• the study of the principles governing the allocation of scarce means among unlimited and competing ends (analytic definition); or,

• the study of humanity's activities in satisfying its wants and desires (descriptive definition).

To paraphrase one of the 20th century's great economists, Paul Samuelson:

• Economics is the study of how individuals and societies choose, with or without the use of money, to employ scarce resources to produce various commodities overtime and distribute them for consumption, now and in the future, among various people and groups in society.

What distinguishes an economist from the average person who is also concerned and talks about economic topics is a command of technique.  Another of the great economists of the 20th century, Joseph Schumpeter, summed up economic techniques under four general categories: history, statistics, theory and economic sociology.  Put another way, economics involves the use of three distinct yet mutually dependent and consistent languages: words, numbers and pictures (graphics).

Application of economic technique generally takes place on two distinct levels:

• Microeconomics: the study of individual consumers, producers and their interaction in markets; and,

• Macroeconomics: the study of the economy as a whole including broad aggregates such as economic growth, employment, foreign trade, the money supply (including inflation and interest rates) and technological change.

This site now splits at these two elemental levels of analysis to introduce economics in an introductory and non-mathematical way.  

Microeconomics

Macroeconomics

 Comments and suggestions to improve the site are warmly welcomed.  They should be addressed to:

Harry Hillman Chartrand

Cultural Economist & Publisher
E-Mail
h-chartrand@shaw.ca

(306) 244-6945