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Economics

To survive, a man must eat -- the first rule of continued existence.

'On a decent diet, man can produce just about one horsepower hour of work daily, and with that he must replenish his exhausted body. With what is left over, he is free to build a civilization.' (R.L. Heilbroner, The Economic Problem, p. 8).
An economic system is what society relies upon to provide for the material well-being of its members.

Every society must in some way determine what material goods and services its members will produce, (the question of production) and to what extent each person can claim a portion of this flow of output (the question of distribution). There are no divinely correct answers to these unavoidable questions. Each society seeks its own social arrangements. Our Canadian society relies primarily, although not completely, upon a system of variable money prices, a market economy, to resolve the questions of production and distribution.

Much of the study of economics consists of examining the operation of market economies to discover regularities of behaviour, ultimately in the expectation that through better understanding society will be able to remedy undesirable results and achieve better ones. Such a study logically includes looking at the historical evolution of modern economies (economic history), the evolution of man's thinking about economic systems (economic thought), the operation of markets (microeconomics), the aggregate flows of output (macroeonomics), the operation of the money system (money and banking), economic relationships with other societies (international economics) and so on. Instruction on such topics emphasizes understanding.

To achieve understanding means moving into the seemingly abstract realm of theory, analysis and technical terms. Little attention is paid to description or factual memorization. Courses in economics are not designed for social chitchat about current economic problems. The courses do provide a foundation for a better understanding of such problems. Students planning to concentrate on economics will find mathematics a valuable complementary study. Those who dislike mathematics or who do poorly in it usually encounter difficulties in economics.


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