What is economics? What's it good for and how do you learn it?

Question

What is economics? What's it good for and how do you learn it?

Answer 1

The study of how limited resources are allocated.

It is necessary not only for economic affairs such as how to deal with rising oil prices, recessions, etc, but also for personal affairs such as saving money, etc.

The best way to learn it is to try to apply it to the real world.

Answer 2

Economics is the study of how people with unlimited wants (which we all have) will allocate scarce resources to satisfy these wants.

In economics courses you will learn how such scarce resources drive people into making choices for consumption based on their limited incomes and how they must distribute this income among different goods to achieve a certain desired level of satisfaction.  You will also learn how producers are faced with the choice of what goods and services to produce based on limited resources, what costs are, and how profitable a good is.  Consumers' goals are to maximize satisfaction while producers want to maximize profits.  At least this is from the neoclassical view.

I love economics and I recommend anyone to take at least one course in their life time.  Trust me, it will help you understand many concepts in the real world such as why things cost so much and such.  More things will make sense, especially you will realize how politicians' plans are not always economically best but just what people want to hear.  (Politics and economics  clash frequently).You can even apply it to your normal life and you won't go around saying how companies are just price gouging and stuff.  It's all just supply and demand (and the government sometimes unfortunately) of which you will learn in economics.  At least try to buy a book!

Oh, and the government's role isn't pure evil but I'm personally more of a laissez faire guy.

Answer 3

I define economics as study of nature, composition, properties, laws and classification of wealth. In simple words it is chemistry of wealth. I prefer to study wealth on the lines chemists study matter. You may disagree but I found this method easier and accurate.

Answer 4

I kind of disagree with the 1st answerer.  Economics is the study how people deal with scarcity.  It is good for making all decisions in life.  I learned it by memorizing 4 textbooks word for word.  You may not learn as much as me, but an economic textbook is helpful.

Answer 5

Economics is the study of how all of society, it's government's people and business, compete over resources that are scarce or limited. The problem is we all want everything in unlimited quantities but because of scarcity, there's not enough to go around and satisfy our wants, or as economists say, "maximize our utility" (utility kind of equals pleasure). So what we do is we try to use our resources as productively and efficiently as possible and we do whatever we can to allocate our resources and our consumption to maximize our utility. And because there's not enough to go around, we all have to compete. What ends up happening is the market brings us all together to acquire more resources by providing others (like the office that pays you in money for labor, although money isn't exactly a resource). We all eventually kind of wind up in this unexplainable way that gives society what it wants as efficiently as possible.

You can start here for more generic reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics

or for a really concise and easy to read guide, I would suggest the Economics Handbook from the pocket professor's series and I never read economics for dummies.

And as for what it is good for, well just about everything. I am not exaggerating when I say that when I first took microeconomics (the study of ME!) my brain spun around 3 times and in the good way. it's great for decision making and understanding what's going on in our world and your own in particular.

To learn the basics, books will do but if you really enjoy it enough to know  a little more, you should take a course in micro and then macro.