Preface:
As we will learn throughout the course, economics is about allocating scarce resources to its most efficient use, but what affect does scarcity have on the human psyche and society? The attached article details how scarcity decreases IQ, limits people’s self control, and generally stunts our ability to grow intellectually. We live in a time where the United States’ real GDP per capita has never been higher in any time in history, meaning that we as a country have never been as wealthy or prosperous as we are now, as evidenced by the graph below, yet it seems as if we are living in a country that is dominated by scarcity. For example, people’s jobs are increasingly less secure than in the past, the vast majority of workers no longer have secure pensions but are in highly volatile 401(k) plans that are managed and mostly funded by the workers themselves, higher education, which is now one of the only tickets to the middle class, is increasingly becoming out of reach to students due to the high cost of tuition, etc. So we live in a divided age, where we have abundance one side and a scarcity mind-set on the other.

Discussion #1 Instructions:

After reading the attached article on scarcity, write two paragraphs about how scarcity has affected what the author describes as your “bandwidth”.  Specifically write about how scarcity has affected your educational goals. 

As the instructor I should be able to determine that you have read the article and understand the content. In addition, it is required to reply to at least two other students’ posts by offering respectful suggestions, comments, or critiques related to the subject matter and their post.

Freeing up intelligence-1.pdf