Economics New Investigation
By: Emily Blake
Drug Shortages Causing Hard Decisions
In recent years, there have been many shortages in medication because drugmakers are abandoning low-profit drugs. When people are still using these drugs and it becomes a limited product, it becomes harder to receive, and doctors are left with a hard decision of who should they give it to? I think this is completely scarcity because some medications are being so limited that people are starting to have to chose who gets to take it because there is not enough for everyone. I don't think it is very ethnical to decide between two people who gets the medication and who doesn't. I think this can be avoided if they company doesn't completely abandon a product and just reduce the amount that they are making that would still satisfy the needs of the customers. This is a really scary topic because scarcity is just increasing in medication throughout the years and it is really frightening if you are the one that needs the treatment!
Farmers Planning to Leave Mexico Due to Water Shortage
The ground water in Mexico has been drying up quickly because of the farmers using it all for their crops. So now farmers are having to leave Mexico to find a better reliable place to live, where they don't have to worry about the scarcity of water. I think the water is scarce because there isn't much left and it doesn't meet the demands of the people's needs. I think that they need more water pumps leading to that place in Mexico so they don't need to worry about water scarcity anymore. I think that it is smart to move away because I think that it would be less stressful to find a place where you wouldn't worry about not having enough water to produce your crop. Water scarcity is becoming a bigger and bigger problem, I think that we need to figure out a solution so we don't run out of clean water.
China's Low Resource-to-Population
China's resources are very low compared to the population's needs. China is known for their manpower and brainpower of 1.3 billion people, but people don't tend to think about their scarcity in resources. They have limited food, water and land to provide for their residence and it's just getting worse because their population is always growing. I think that this connects to economics completely because it is a country's scarcity in public goods. Scarcity in public goods means that there is a low supply of resources that society as a whole needs. This is a big problem that needs to be solved because scarcity in public goods can be a big problem throughout the country. Public goods are necessary for a country to be successful because it is the most important resource, it satisfies the entire population. When this is a scarce resource, the government has to have some sort of back up plan because the way they are going now, nothing is going to get fixed.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-07/how-resource-scarcity-constrains-china
Job Scarcity
Job scarcity is a big problem in the united states and we are trying to decrease it by creating more jobs in the economy. The problem is that we aren't creating enough jobs, and the reality is that there will always be a job shortage. Last September, America created 148,000 jobs but we didn't meet the goal of 180,000; that is a huge difference. Just that alone shows that there are 32,000 people left without jobs. McDonald's workers are provided with a McDonald's website on 'how to budget' and they are recommended on taking two jobs. That being said, McDonald's is telling the truth that their wages don't even support one person. So even though there is a lot of unemployment in America that needs to go down, there are still people that work and can't even support themselves with its wages.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/25/jobs-numbers-unemploymenteconomicgrowth.html
Water and Energy Crisis
Energy and water resources are limited as it is and with our population going to go to 7 billion to 9 billion in the next 25 years, it will become more of a problem. There are limitations on resources and they will continue to grow through the year, so we have to start using more efficient ways. Electricity and water basically go hand in hand because water can be used to make energy, and energy is used for water treatment which "can be as much as one-third of a city's electric bill." Electric power producer, China, and gas developers, the US, are looking for alternative ways to preserve natural resources and to create more energy in the mean time. There are risks in creating alternatives as well as expense, carbon dioxide, etc. But we need to find a solution to this problem before water and energy scarcity get even bigger with our even bigger population.