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look ma, school was useful today!
Nov. 29th, 2005 10:10 pmI learned something interesting at tonight's Microeconomics review. The labor demand curve bends backward, the only one to do so. It happens where the Substitution Effect, which is that people become more and more likely to give up free time to work more as their wages increase, ceases, and the Income Effect takes over, which dictates that above a certain income, people begin working less because they want to reclaim more free time as opposed to just continuing to make more money.
Economics treats free time as a normal good, which is defined as something that everyone wants the most of. The higher your income, the less you demand inferior goods (i.e. Kias) and the higher you want your normal-good levels to be. At some point, economics acknowledges, your free time becomes more important than working. Which is so cool, because it's true. And of course everyone is different, depending on how much money you want or how important your free time is or how much your definition of a normal good changes with your income, but it's real. That's the part that got me, that something I learned in a classroom (OK, a hotel conference room, because who has time for classes?) exists wholly in real life.
On that note, Mike came up to me later that night as I was putting together briefs, leaned his elbows on my cubicle's partition and said, "I want alcohol." I stopped typing, looked away from the screen and up at him, and said, "Yes." Like a little revelation. Working across the street from a liquor store comes in handy, and we returned with two cases of beer for the office.
I don't remember much of the rest of it, but fun is an adequate term. I'm gonna miss this place so hard.
Economics treats free time as a normal good, which is defined as something that everyone wants the most of. The higher your income, the less you demand inferior goods (i.e. Kias) and the higher you want your normal-good levels to be. At some point, economics acknowledges, your free time becomes more important than working. Which is so cool, because it's true. And of course everyone is different, depending on how much money you want or how important your free time is or how much your definition of a normal good changes with your income, but it's real. That's the part that got me, that something I learned in a classroom (OK, a hotel conference room, because who has time for classes?) exists wholly in real life.
On that note, Mike came up to me later that night as I was putting together briefs, leaned his elbows on my cubicle's partition and said, "I want alcohol." I stopped typing, looked away from the screen and up at him, and said, "Yes." Like a little revelation. Working across the street from a liquor store comes in handy, and we returned with two cases of beer for the office.
I don't remember much of the rest of it, but fun is an adequate term. I'm gonna miss this place so hard.
