produce. Suppose you buy a hamburger for your lunch. What does this
have to do with markets and prices? You chose the cafe because it was
fast, convenient and cheap.
Given your desire to eat, and your limited
resources, the low hamburger price told you that this was a good way to
satisfy your appetite. You probably prefer steak but that is more expensive.
The price of steak is high enough to ensure that society answers the “for
whom” question about lunchtime steaks in favor of someone else.
Now think about the seller’s viewpoint. The cafe owner is in the
business because, given the price of hamburger meat, the rent and the
wages that must be paid, it is still possible to sell hamburgers at a profit. If
rents
were higher, it might be more profitable to sell hamburgers in a
cheaper area or to switch to luxury lunches for rich executives on expense
accounts. The student behind the counter is working there because it is a
suitable part-time job which pays a bit of money. If the wage were much
lower it would hardly be worth working at all. Conversely, the job is
unskilled and there are plenty of students looking for such work, so owner
of cafes do not have to offer very high wagers.
Prices are guiding your
decision to buy a
hamburger, the owner’s
decision to sell hamburgers, and the student’s decision to take the job.
Society is allocating resources- meat,
building, and labor- into hamburger
production through the price system. If nobody liked hamburgers, the
owner could not sell enough at a price that covered the cost of running the
cafe and society would devote no resources to hamburger production.
People’s desire to eat hamburgers guides resources into hamburger
production. However, if cattle contracted a disease,
thereby reducing the
economy’ s ability to produce meat products, competition to purchase
more scarce supplies of beef would bid up the price of beef, hamburger
producers would be forced to raise prices, and consumers
would buy more
cheese sandwiches for lunch. Adjustments in prices would encourage
society to reallocate resources to reflect the increased scarcity of cattle.
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