Taking the economic class at the Salt lake community college has expanded my knowledge,

developed my critical thinking skills as well as opened my mind and level of thinking to a new

perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the assigned article provided and based on what I

heard and saw, together with my experiences on what took place during the past U.S.

presidential election; and equally, reflecting on the topics covered in class during the semester.

Business dictionary.com defined lobbying as the act of attempting to influence business and

government leaders to create legislation or conduct an activity that will help a particular

organization. People who do lobbying are called lobbyist. From the article provided, we can

see that lobby groups include corporations, labor unions, industry group, single-issue

organizations, political action committees (PAC) and the likes. Together, these groups spend

billions of dollars to finance election campaign for their candidate and party for future benefits

from winning candidate or party. The primary goal of much of the money that flows through

U.S. politics, is an attempt to gain access to decision makers in government to influence their

thinking (www.opensecrets.org).Politics in the united states is characterized by these groups,

and their influence in the government decision making process as it affects the economy.

Reflecting on the 2016 electioneering campaign and debate between President Donald Trump

and Hillary Clinton, both candidates had different views on how to run the economy if voted

into power.

On economic issues, Hillary Clinton based her plans on growing the economy by giving middle

class families more opportunities, creating new jobs, fight for climate change and clean energy,

help small businesses where 2/3rd of new jobs would be created, raise national minimum wage,

make college debt free for those making less than $25,000 as well as, help women get equal

pay. All these she planned to be achieve by going where the money is through corporations
making contribution and the wealthy paying their fair share. Donald Trump on the other hand,

planned to grow the economy by having more free trade, negotiating trade deals, bringing GDP

from 1% to 4.5% which conservative economist say is unrealistic, growing the energy sector,

reducing taxes to 25% and 30% for small businesses to thrive and exist and repatriate money

back into the country, bringing jobs back as well as start hiring people.

Referencing the article, the differences and similarities between the British system of election

and the American system of election can be enumerated and summarized as follows:

DIFFERENCES:

British prime minister can call for an election anytime in his 5years term, while US
president cannot call for an election at any time as it has a set date.
Election for Britain is every 5years while election for America is every 4 years.
Prime minister in Britain can serve any number of years while US president is limited to
two four-year terms and a maximum of 8years.
In Britain, money spent on general election is in terms of tens of millions while in
America, money spent is in terms of hundreds of million dollars.
Britain requires one month of election campaign while America requires ten months of
election campaign.
In Britain, voters vote for party rather than candidate while in America, voters vote for
party and candidate.
In Britain, there is plenty of opportunities for protest vote while in America, opportunity
for protest vote barely exist.
In Britain, manifesto is binding while in America, manifesto is not binding, but what
would be done given the perfect opportunity to do so.

SIMILARITIES:

Both Britain and America, experience poor turnout in national/general election; and winning

party needs majority vote to win.

Reflecting on the topics covered during this economic class, which includes the challenge of
economics, the US economy, the laws of supply and demand, competition, monopoly, labor

market, fiscal and monetary policies, money and banks, economic growth, to mention but a

few. The purpose is to determine how these learning has influenced me in my daily decision

making.

Pearson defined economics as the study of how people allocate their limited resources in an

attempt to satisfy their unlimited wants. As such, economics is the study of how people make

choices to satisfy their wants. He goes further to differentiate microeconomics, which is the

study of decision making by individual households and firms from macroeconomics, which is

the study of the nationwide phenomena such as inflation, unemployment and yearly growth in

the output of goods and services that affect the economy of a nation.

When an individual, business or a nation is face with an alternative, a choice has to be made

whose outcome is an incentive whether good or bad. Taking this class changed my level of

thinking in allocating my scarce resources by making a budget and prioritizing my unlimited

wants which is different from my needs.

The law of demand states that individuals will purchase fewer units of goods at higher price and

will purchase more units at lower price; while the law of supply state that sellers will only

produce and offer for sale more units of goods at a higher price and will produce and offer for

sale fewer units of goods at a lower price. Reflecting on this can be attributed to individuals

rational behavior when waiting for season of sales in various stores when prices would be

reduced to make purchases and make huge savings, coupled with the determinants of demand

which includes income, taste and preferences, prices of related goods, expectations and market

size as well as supply determinants such as input prices, technology and productivity, taxes and

subsidies, price expectation and the number of sellers together with how it affects our decision

making.
Unemployment, inflation, taxes, recessions, are major matrices to be considered when making

decisions as well as the type of monetary and fiscal policies put in place to monitor and

determine economic growth of a nation. Unemployment as defined, is the number of

adults (aged 16years or older) who are willing and able to work and who are actively looking for

work but have not found a job. Unemployment is costly in terms of lost output for the entire

economy and on a personal level, it results in hardship and failed opportunities as well as lack

of self- respect. On the other hand, inflation is termed to be an upward movement in the

average level of prices while deflation, which is the opposite of inflation is a downward

movement in the average level of prices. When we have too much money in circulation chasing

too few goods, it becomes a problem and will have major impact in the growth of a nations

economy. Recession is a period of time during which the rate of growth of business activity is

consistently less than its long-term trend or is negative. Where business activity is negative and

no contribution is made towards the economic growth of a nation, people lose their jobs

because salaries cannot be paid, investments are taken somewhere else, and people lose their

investments and savings with less money in circulation. All affects the nations gross domestic

product (GDP) which is the final output of goods and services produced within a given year

using factors of production located within the nations borders.

Taxes, is one of the major source of revenue for the U.S government. It is use to plan the

nations budget depending on how much revenue is collected. Other sources are through

borrowing. A nation experiences budget deficit, if revenue collected is less than government

spending on the budget while the opposite is budget surplus where government spending is

less than revenue collected.

Money is any medium universally accepted in an economy by both sellers of goods and

services, as payment for those goods and services. Traditionally, money has four functions
which include serving as a medium of exchange, a unit of accounting a measure by which prices

are expressed; a store of value that is the ability to hold value over time and as a standard of

deferred payment which is a means of settling future debts.

The Federal Reserve System serves as the nations central bank and is one of the key banking

institution in the United States. The system is the most important regulatory agency and

considered as the monetary authority.

In conclusion, I learnt economics is all about incentives, which is a reward or penalty for

engaging in a particular activity and the nature of self-interested responses to incentives is the

starting point of economics.

Sources cited:

Essentials of Economics by Bradley R. Schiller

Article provided in canvass

http://www.opensecrets.org

www.businessdictionary.com

Debate broadcast on NBC Television

Economics Today by ROGER LeROY MILLER (Pearson)