Essay on the topic: Why do I need economics?
I have never had to face this question before, and in order to answer it for myself, I first think I need to understand what the word economics means and where it came from.
Word economy came from Greek oikos - house and nomos - law, literally - the rules of housekeeping.
Each person has his own needs: mainly spiritual, material and social. Now a person tries to satisfy these needs no matter what type of activity he is engaged in or in what part of the world he lives. A person is already accustomed to living in comfort and coziness in what he needed the benefits that he provides for himself. It turns out that each person is engaged in “running his own household” and each in his own way... Starting from primitive tools to factories, various equipment, etc. man began to achieve his self-realization, his own good for his own sake. Cooperation with each other led man to economic activities like trade, business, money, etc. That is, what we do in everyday life is an integral part of the economy with which we are closely connected.
Economics plays an important role in my profession. because very closely related to trade. For example: in order to do a certain job I will need paints. But for this, someone needs to produce paints and build a building where there will be a store in which they will be sold. And the more different colors and different stores there are, the more choices I have about where I can buy them so that I can also save money. Thus, I can satisfy my needs and bring myself benefit in the form of the money I saved. Getting used to such forms of economic relations between people in everyday life, you don’t think about the fact that you are part of the process.
1. Think and write down why you need knowledge about economics.
I need economics in order to be able to spend my money correctly. Then, when I grow up and live on my own, this will be very useful to me.
2. Make a list of your needs. Highlight those that you consider the most important.
Clothes, shoes, food, water, summer holidays, school supplies, bed, table, wardrobe, ball, skates, etc.
Compare your notes with the notes of other guys.
3. Seryozha and Nadya’s mother found a poem by V. Orlov in one of the books, which she really liked. Read it on p. 23-24. Explain why it fits the topic of today's lesson.
Write what else you can’t buy.
You cannot buy friendship, love, the beauty of the ocean, pine air in the forest, sunset, talent and much more.
4. Using the textbook, complete the definitions.
Goods - These are things, objects with the help of which people satisfy their needs for food, clothing, shoes.
Services - This is the work that people do to satisfy certain needs of other people, for example, cutting a haircut at a hairdresser, repairing household appliances.
5. Give examples of various goods and services (fill in the table).
6. And this task was invented by Seryozha and Nadya’s dad. Look at the pictures. Mark (fill in the circle) the goods with a red pencil, and the services with a green pencil. Make pairs by connecting the product and service with a line.
Ask a student sitting next to you to check your work.
7. As instructed in the textbook, write down what goods you purchased during the day and what services you used.
Goods: bread, milk, yogurt, mineral water, cheese, bus ticket, envelope, stamp
Services: seller, post office, bus driver
Good question, isn't it? Why study something that I don't need and that I will never use? Why waste your time on this? Why occupy myself with something that has nothing to do with my life? This is what most people think about the economy! This majority thinks that economics, like physics and algebra, are studied only at school or in institutes, only to get a grade and then a diploma. Having received a diploma, they forget about what they studied as soon as they get a job. And they actually make sure that 80% of what they went through in school and college is absolutely not useful to them. And this knowledge is transferred to other sciences and disciplines.
And ECONOMY was no exception. No, even worse. In general, many consider it an abstract science, and even worse, a pseudoscience. Why do they think so? It's simple. Man, i.e. Homo Sapiens has the habit of having his own opinion about everything that surrounds him, but the most amazing thing is that Homo Sapiens manages to have his own opinion about something that he didn’t even try, didn’t delve into, much less study, let alone check. in practice there is no question. That is how we live.
Meanwhile, economics is one of the few disciplines that gives a person additional leverage to improve his life, through the knowledge gleaned from it. But the most interesting thing that ECONOMICS gives when studied in depth is the disappearance of the illusion that soon everything will be fine in the country, city, village, that everything will get better, that new jobs, new factories, new sources of income will appear. That everything will suddenly happen by itself, they just worked poorly up there, now they will work well and my life without my intervention will get better and improve in all economic parameters: work, finances, savings, pension, subsidies, taxes, benefits, cheap loans, interest rates, etc.
There is a joke that every person, regardless of specialty and education, believes that he understands three areas: pedagogy, medicine and economics. Everyone knows how to teach, everyone knows how to heal, and everyone knows how to run the economy correctly. But in other areas, people don’t say anything, they don’t even have their own opinions. At least not as bright.
Incompetent people do not talk about launching a nuclear reactor, chemical technology or oil production, but everyone has their own opinions about the economy, they easily give advice to the government, which, of course, “rules the country poorly,” make economic forecasts for the next year, etc.
p. Therefore, students, and just people sometimes don’t understand why they need to study economics? After all, everything is clear here.
Or, on the contrary, they believe that this is such a complex and sophisticated science that “simple” electricians, car mechanics or chemists, and especially physicists, do not need to study it.
Is it so?
Igor Lipsits, a Russian economist, answered this question like this: “You can live your life illiterate. But you must admit, this is very inconvenient. For example, you may not read a sign "Caution! Entry is prohibited! Danger to life!" and... It’s the same with the science of economics - you can live without it, but it’s more convenient, more comfortable to live if you know at least its basics.” Great answer!!! Is not it?
And Bernard Shaw gave this comic definition: "Economics is the science of how to get more pleasure from life"
Having gotten rid of this illusion, ECONOMY allows us to make all decisions with a cool head, which will increase our chances of a better existence, and maybe even replace existence with a joyful and successful life. Not a bad prospect, isn't it? But if you still doubt the reality of ECONOMY, then here is another argument for you... There are many arguments in favor of ECONOMY, but I will give you the most convincing and striking one.
Tell me, do you often hear on the news discussing the laws of physics and their manifestations in life? Or the chemical interaction of substances and their transformations? Or the influence and manifestations of literature in people's lives? I'm sure not! If we take the percentage of news, it is less than 1%. But, if we open any news channel, we will see and hear a lot of news related to economics and politics. Sometimes both together. What is this? Why would journalists suddenly spend so much time creating economic news? Moreover, it takes away most of the television airtime, and not only television, but also newspapers, magazines and even radio airtime. The answer is very simple: what has the greatest meaning and most importantly the greatest impact on a person’s life is illuminated!
It is precisely the fact that ECONOMY and its laws are important in human life that explains its reflection in news broadcasts, and this is not counting numerous television programs, political talk shows, intellectual discussions of ECONOMY and its laws and manifestations in human life. And in the life of every person! With no exceptions. This fact is the best indicator that ECONOMY has the most direct impact on a person’s life, especially on his well-being. And if so, then it will be better to know its basic principles, laws, manifestations.
Believe me, no one would ever devote so much time to something that is not important for a person’s life and well-being, especially to what is supposedly a boring science. This means that we have grasped its importance in our lives. And if your interest has become sincere and genuine, then begin to gradually get acquainted with this amazing, bright and practical science of ECONOMICS.
Conclusion: the economy is part of our life, and we are part of the economic system. We buy goods and services, produce them, pay taxes, keep money in banks, take out loans. That is, we take part in economic life.
We are familiar with the words used by economists: price, taxes, rent, wages. We know that economists talk and write about money, about prices, inflation and unemployment, wage levels, taxes... Every day they discuss economic problems on the Internet, in newspapers, on radio and television.
Although the British writer and philosopher Thomas Carlyle once called economics a “dull science,” we have the opportunity to discover it from the other side. And believe me, there is little that is sad there. No more than a serving of ice cream on a hot summer day.
Jalalov Remzi, especially for the Golden MSN Club® Millionaires Club
Many people already know the concept of “human capital”. These are the knowledge and skills that a professional possesses and that a non-professional does not possess. People with high human capital achieve better results, are more successful in their careers, and ultimately (as recent research shows) are happier. But for some reason, not everyone understands that time and money need to be invested in human capital. Therefore you need to study.
You should always learn, and not only in the form of higher education. What distinguishes a successful person from an unsuccessful one? The most important thing is the ability to work with information. A successful person can quickly distinguish fact from opinion, important information from noise, pay attention to the necessary information and ignore redundant information. To distinguish the opinion of a scientist from the opinion of a charlatan, you also need to study.
Almost everyone understands economics now. From the pages of newspapers and TV screens, a stream of economic information pours out at you every day. At best, these are the opinions of journalists, not economists. At worst, these are the opinions of charlatans. The shelves in bookstores are lined with economic literature and textbooks. Most of these textbooks, unfortunately, have nothing to do with economics. To distinguish them, you also need to learn.
What is economics? It's not like a schoolchild - it's rare that an adult can answer this question. Usually in response you can hear something about “housekeeping”, “money relations” and so on. But economics is a science, first of all, about you and me, about people who make decisions in conditions of limited resources. Therefore, the study of economics provides the broadest human capital. Moreover, this capital has been in demand for a long time. For example, if you study organic chemistry or early Arabic literature for a long time, then the list of professions that you could potentially have is not very wide. You realize that the knowledge you have gained is very exciting, but at the same time it is quite specialized. Knowledge in the field of economics is more widely applicable, if only because each of us encounters economic phenomena every day.
It is known that Russia has a high level of wage inequality. It is as high as in the US and continues to rise. Today it is obvious that educated workers earn not just more than uneducated ones, but tens of times more. In Russia, the opposite stereotype is still true: many believe that you don’t need to study to achieve success and point to the examples of many entrepreneurs. Or vice versa - on poor holders of scientific degrees. However, the time of capitalism without rules remained in the 90s. And the more successful people are not just those with higher education, but those with high-quality higher education. Unfortunately, there are many universities in Russia, after graduating from which you will not be able to compete in the labor market - neither in the Russian, nor especially in the international. Perhaps this is why in Russia there is still a stereotype that obtaining a higher education does not lead to further success. Note that the connection between an education at a GOOD university (not just a university) and later success is not just significant - it is very significant. But there are few good universities in Russia. Here we can recall the words of Sergei Guriev, the former rector of the Russian School of Economics: “the modern education system in Russia is built in such a way that the best people spend the best years of their lives on who knows what.”
Let's try to figure out how things stand with economic education in Russia. The best thing you can do is look at the positions of Russian economics faculties in world rankings. University-wide rankings (taking into account the criteria of university size, university age, number of studies, number of professors) of the world's best 200 faculties, such as QS ( www.topuniversities.com) or Times Higher Education (), contain only Moscow State University. The Shanghai ranking of economic faculties (www.shanghairanking.com) does not contain Russian universities. But these rankings take into account the age and size of the university, so the Higher School of Economics or NES were not included in it, although they have the best economics departments in the country. You need to understand that in terms of the quality of research and teaching staff (meaning only economics), these universities in Russia have no equal. In terms of the quality of research, these universities are among the top100 economics faculties in the world (according to the SSRN rating, for example).
Now let's take school education. Economics is not a general education subject and is not included in the Unified State Exam. In Moscow there are international colleges and schools where children are prepared for admission to foreign colleges and are taught economics under the A-level program. This is a fairly simple economics course, at the level of basic concepts, with virtually no mathematics. This course is very similar to Gregory Mankiw's textbooks (microeconomics and macroeconomics) for high school students. In principle, they can be read and understood independently. What is important for Russian schoolchildren is that neither the A-level program nor Menkiw’s textbooks are sufficient to prepare for economics Olympiads. And these Olympiads allow you to enter the best economic universities in the country, bypassing the Unified State Exam procedure. Economics is also taught in some secondary schools. Schools where economics is taught with references to the works of the best economists, with the inclusion of game theory, with an analysis of Russian problems, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In other schools, teaching is conducted at the level of “intersection of supply and demand.” Only one school - number 57 - was taught by a truly prominent economist, Konstantin Sonin. But he doesn't teach there anymore.
Economics is also taught in pre-university courses, but the quality of many of these courses is also questionable. If the courses are as good as they say they are, then why don't they publish annual rankings of their graduates - winners of economics Olympiads? Further, if you look at the program of these courses in economics and at the level of the Olympiad tasks, a clear discrepancy is obvious.
It turns out that the education system has not yet created working ways to prepare a student to study at the economics department of a good university. There is a fantastic gap between the first-year joint HSE-NES undergraduate program and the level of the school (or preparatory courses). It seems that the initially noble goal of the Unified State Examination - to put everyone on an equal footing when applying for admission to a university - has transformed into the fact that schoolchildren develop a “short memory” necessary for the correct answer to the test. But ask yourself, where else is this skill needed in the real world? Universities are recording a decline in the level of freshmen coming to them; teaching them according to the university program is becoming increasingly difficult. Therefore, NES created its own rule for admitting students - only based on the results of the All-Russian Olympiad in Economics. And the Higher School of Economics created its own lyceum.
As a result, what should a Russian schoolchild who wants to study economics qualitatively do? The answer is to take part in Olympiads: All-Russian, Higher Test, and others. First of all, to gain experience, and then to enter a university. Find and read sites with high-quality materials on economics, blogs of leading economists, for example the blog of Konstantin Sonin or Paul Krugman. Take part in economic competitions and competitions, for example, the NES correspondence competition or the Moscow State University school championship. Study with a tutor, but you just need to be sure that he teaches economics and does not teach you how to “cross supply and demand.” Study from the best textbooks. For example, one of the world's best textbooks on economics by Ben Bernanke has been translated into Russian, but in Russia practically no one knows about it.
Every year, at the beginning of the school year, discussions erupt about the practicality and appropriateness of school education programs. For example, is it compulsory for schoolchildren to study economics? Or should it be transferred to the category of elective courses, which are chosen consciously only by those who plan to connect their lives with work in business and finance? We decided to look into this issue in more detail.
What is economics?
Economics is a science primarily about relationships between people who need to make decisions in conditions of limited resources. The concept of “resources” includes not only money, but also time spent on certain tasks, intellectual capital (human knowledge and its value). Every Russian schoolchild encounters economic relations every day: buying juice in the school canteen is already an economic transaction, and is subject to basic economic laws.
How do Russian schoolchildren study economics?
In Russia, economics is not a compulsory general education subject, and it is not included in the Unified State Exam. At its discretion, it is included in the curriculum of individual colleges, lyceums and even regular schools in specialized classes in which students are prepared for admission to financial and economic specialties at universities. As a rule, schools do not open separate vacancies for economics teachers, and this subject is taught by teachers of related courses.
The course of economic knowledge taught in secondary schools is as simplified as possible; it gives an idea of basic concepts and practically does not concern deep mathematical calculations. At the same time, it is clear and simple, allowing the student to become interested in this science and get an idea of how economic laws work in real life.
Why study economics?
Economics allows you to get a clear picture of how the world around you works. Why have food prices risen? How will a jump in the national currency affect the family budget? Why did Katya and Masha get the same grades at school, but Katya’s salary is barely enough to live on, and Masha vacations abroad three times a year? People who have no idea about the market will say: “Lucky.” But in fact, this is an elementary economic law: Masha, as a specialist, sold herself and her knowledge at a higher price. Someone looks with envy at Unicredit vacancies and thinks that they will never be able to receive that kind of money. But the reason is that the person himself refused to invest money in his education. After all, acquiring knowledge is also an investment in oneself, that is, an economic relationship.
Unfortunately, we have to admit that the majority of the Russian population is economically illiterate. And this leads to big problems: people simply do not know how to plan their budget, they take out loans from banks, cannot pay them back and become bankrupt.
Practical application of economic knowledge
Learning to consciously use economic knowledge is very important. Moreover, in practice it is easier to understand theoretical material. For example, the concept of “passive income” is not so easy for schoolchildren. But if you invite your child to save his pocket money not in a piggy bank, but on a deposit (you can agree with your parents to pay “interest”, that is, involve them in an exciting economic game), he will see that passive income is profitable, and money works itself themselves, and the child receives financial benefits. In the future, this will motivate an adult to look for opportunities for passive income and investment - and both he and the country’s economy will benefit from this.
Or start a financial diary and write down all expenses, and then cross out items that you can refuse and instead buy something really necessary and useful. For example, if you give up soda for a week, you can buy a T-shirt with a fashionable print that you really wanted, but your parents refused. Teenagers, and most adults, simply do not understand how much they “eat up” on various useless purchases of goods that cost, it would seem, little, but when they are consumed daily, they add up to a huge amount. There are many such examples.
A year after graduating from school, yesterday's schoolchildren, by law, become fully adults - they receive full legal capacity and already independently manage their finances. They will earn money and spend it - so it is very important to teach them how to do it correctly.
And instead of a conclusion
You need to study economics at school. But this should be a course for high school students who are already old enough and think logically. And the course itself should not be a boring presentation of theoretical material, but practical - with financial games, tasks and trainings. Then schoolchildren will not only love economics, but also understand it and apply knowledge in real life.
