Is It?

After watching a video clip on pearson.com, I started to wander if the so-called “foreign aid” is really doing what it supposed to do. The clip is called The Trade Trap, which addresses the trading market between Ghana and other foreign countries. Being one of the poorest countries, Ghana keeps receiving foreign aids. Yet, those “aids” didn't help any of the local industries at all. Local products are not able to compete with foreign imports. Even if there are international trading opportunities for made-in-Ghana products, there are other trading barriers. For example, the high tariff would make the Ghana exports unable to survive from the local low price. Another trading barrier is import restriction. Sometimes foreign countries would lay some limits for import. For instance, if Ghana wants to export bananas to Europe, Europe might set certain restriction on the weight, the color, the length…etc. of the bananas. Even if the bananas have a great quality but only ugly outside, they cannot be imported.

People said free trade is good, but, really, is it?

Taiwan's economy

I did a bit research on Taiwan’s economy. According to Wikipedia, Taiwan was ranked 19^th in the world by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and 18^th by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is pretty surprising. Well, at least it’s surprising to me. I used to think that Taiwan would rank no more than 25^th. Another point that draws my attention is the first step of Taiwan’s economic foundation. Wikipedia said, “The first step towards industrialization was land reforms, a crucial step in modernizing the economy, as it created a class of landowners with capital they can invest in future economic endeavors.” At the beginning when KKK came to Taiwan, it’s a mass. Corruptions were everywhere. Farmers couldn't feed themselves because the landowners took all the lands. Then the government decided to start the land reforms. Lands were distributed to the farmers so they could grow enough plants for themselves and exporting. It paved the way for further economic development. Now the Taiwanese economy is solid and growing steadily. Hope this can continue.

supply and demand

I used to think that economics is merely about supply and demand. After taking the economics course in the Junior years, I found that indeed it is. However,one difference is that economics is not only "merely" about supply and demand, but it's based on supply and demand. They are the essential elements of economics and are everywhere. This afternoon I just read a news about the rabies problem in Taiwan. With the widespread of rabies, many people took their pets and themselves to inject vaccine. Then here comes the problem --soon there is a shortage in vaccine. What's even worse is that there are only 3 bottles of human rabies immunoglobulin (HRIG, the treatment for rabies) left in Taiwan. The soonest time to import more bottles HRIG will be on 7/29. With the increasing demand, the supply rises sharply. This is only one tiny example of supply and demand in our life. I wish taking the AP Economics course can help me to develop more economic topic and knowledge. 

"Poverty's new address"

Poverty's new address in America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly718xGmeBk
When I was searching The Economist to find something to write about, this news instantly raised my interest. It talks about there are more and more poor people moving to suburbs.  Suburbs suppose to be the place which rich people live, those who can afford bigger house, longer traveling distance to city, and higher quality living environment. In the middle of the clip, it said the main reason causing this problem is that as city grows, the cost for living becomes more and more expensive. Many who can't afford the living price can only flee to the suburbs for survival. It ironically illustrates inequality. While someone can drive a car traveling to city everyday, his neighbor are having problems on living. This problem of income distribution  is not only an economic-social problem in America but all over the world. With the more and more competitive society, the distance between the wealthy and the poor will just be larger. A post on our AP Economic blogger also tries to address the similar issue. People tend to believe as long as they work hard, they will break the income barrier. But the problem is as long as the resources are all taken by those who can afford it, those who can't afford it will be hard to jump to the top.