GENERAL CURRICULUM TEST OBJECTIVE : 0007 Understand the founding documents and governmental systems of the United States; the principles, ideals, rights, and responsiblities of U.S. Citizenship; and the fundamental principles and concepts of economics
- Recognize the responsibilities of U.S. citizens (e.g., paying taxes, jury duty, voting)
- Apply basic economic terms (e.g., scarcity, opportunity cost) to analyze contemporary economic issues.
- Examine the fundamental concepts and principles of capitalism (e.g., private property, profit, supply and demand).
The economic system in the United States is built upon a theory of capitalism. A capitalist system encourages competition, innovation, and entrepreneurialism to increase productivity and profit. An entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business or project by organizing labor, capital, and resources. Only the entrepreneurs with the best ideas, inventions, and businesses survive in this competitive system and increase their resources. This means that every project is risky to some degree. Americans have the right to own, maintain, and sell property. The right to have private property plays an important role in the allocation of resources in our economy. Since the person who owns a resource must be paid for its use private ownership results in prices being assigned based on how scarce or plentiful the commodity is and also whether or not it is renewable. The government does provide some controls in this system, but basically a market economy operates based upon supply and demand. Economics can be described as series of choices. Opportunity cost is the value of what was not chosen because every economic choice rejects an alternative choice including those that involve time and energy. In a market economy there are producers (those that make or produce the product) and consumers (those that buy or consume the product). Currently most markets (interactions between producers and consumers) are international. This creates a global economy. No nation is totally independent of others. This also means that what happens in one nation’s economy affects other nations because their economies are connected through international trade, commerce and finance. The importance of trade is based on what percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is sold to other countries. The GDP is the monetary value of products made in the country during a specific period of time. In the United States that percentage is very low. A country’s GDP is considered an important indicator of its economic health.
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3u4EFTwprM
http://www.vrml.k12.la.us/cc/economics/economics.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h4DkpFP_aw
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