Economy is an ancient topic, which can be traced back to Aristotle in the west and Confucius in China. However, if the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776 is regarded as the symbol of the birth of economics, it is only 200 years old.
What is economics? There are various answers to the definition of this concept. For example, economics discusses what goods to produce, how to produce them and for whom. Samuelson wrote in his famous book Economics: "Economics studies how society uses scarce resources to produce valuable goods and distribute them among different people." In the book Management Economics, I pointed out from the perspectives of fairness and efficiency, production and distribution, etc., "Economics is a social science that studies how to allocate economic resources effectively and how to distribute national wealth fairly to meet personal or social goals." To sum up, all kinds of arguments are inseparable from the thinking that economics is to make limited resources use in the most reasonable way, so as to increase the total wealth of society and make society more and more affluent.
This understanding of economics has three meanings: first, the purpose or desire of individuals or society is endless, while economic resources are limited and scarce in absolute sense. Due to the rapid increase of population, the adjustment and development of industry and agriculture, and the increasingly serious pollution, renewable resources such as forests and groundwater and non-renewable resources such as minerals are increasingly scarce, and even air and river water that were once considered inexhaustible have become scarce due to pollution. Second, although scarce resources have various uses, once they are used for one purpose, they cannot be used for other purposes. Therefore, people's economic activities all involve the question of choice. Here, efficiency means that a country's economy should organize its production and consumption units, so that society can obtain the largest number of needed goods and services, and make full use of economic resources within the scope of existing customs, laws and systems. Third, under the goal of maximizing social welfare, we can seek a fair distribution scheme through systems such as "equal opportunity" or "equal result". Under the condition of market economy, the prosperity brought by competition will be realized through the rules of fair game with equal opportunities.
In just over 200 years, economics has established its own logical system of language and writing according to scientific norms. A set of initial concepts, a set of axioms, precise definitions and strict logic, so that people without professional training can rarely understand economic papers, especially those without a certain mathematical foundation, let alone expect to understand papers in authoritative economic academic journals. Economics has become the "Chun Xue" of human society, and it is difficult to popularize it to ordinary people.
At the turn of the century, economic reform has become a global popular trend of thought. With the transformation of the original planned economy country to the market economy system, this trend of thought has increasingly become a universal social action. Learning, researching, imparting and applying economics has become an important aspect of this social action. Economists study economics seriously, practice economics boldly, spare no effort to spread economics, and provide a large number of economic management talents for economic construction. They have become or are becoming the main body of the cross-century market economy. Nearly 100 colleges and universities in China offer economic management majors, which provide a large number of talents for the construction of market economy. The painstaking research and in-depth discussion of economic theory by various research institutions at all levels has greatly enriched the treasure house of economic theory, pointed out the direction and provided theoretical basis for China's economic construction.
However, bookstores, large and small, wandering in the streets and whose shelves are full of books, readers and series named after the economy, are in danger of flooding. However, even the author himself is not sure about all these publications. In the busy schedule, people choose several books to read to improve their quality of life. After reading it, they are often disappointed. Explaining simple facts with abstract theory often means that the author adds weight to the evaluation of professional titles. Such books and articles are usually written for scholars and students on campus, not for the general public. Even if you have read it patiently, it will not help your actual work and life. You will get almost nothing except spending time. The development of economics needs academic research, but it also needs enlightenment education and application to the public. Throughout the world, people's economic literacy has become an important symbol to measure a country's economic vitality. It is the call of the times and the urgent need of social development to uncover the mystery of economics and let economics go out of economists' research.
Professor Chen Daisun, a famous economist in China, once said, "Economics is a practical knowledge to help people". But how to spread economics widely and make chorus become a popular note? This is a problem that I often think of when I am engaged in economics teaching and research. After I was awarded the title of professor, this problem bothered me more and affected me. Especially after the course of Western Economics, which I presided over, was rated as a first-class excellent course in Jiangsu Province, I had the impulse to write an inspiring book on popular economics. As an economic theorist, he has no time to revel in the gilded certificate and breathe more leisurely air, so he is ready to devote himself to the intense "amateur" creative work.
Under this background, I started the planning and design of this project, trying to popularize the basic knowledge of modern economic thoughts, theories and methods to readers with examples around me and in popular language. From the perspective of economics, we should observe and think about the little things in life in the way of economic thinking, instead of instilling them systematically like textbooks. In order to enable my graduate students to apply what they have come into contact with and learned to practice, instead of being shelved and enjoying themselves and becoming the spiritual aristocrat of economics, I arranged for them to discuss the writing content and write the first draft after making a detailed work plan and writing outline. On the basis of the first draft, I revised, unified and finalized it and named it Economics in Life. This book is edited by Xu Changxin and Song Min, Lin Hao, Xu Xing, Wang Jia, Zhuang Huijuan,,, Jin, Zhang Zibin and Zhang Mengshuo. Their specific work is clearly signed by the author at the back of the relevant chapters.
My good friend Zhang Jun called and invited me to publish this book in China Knowledge Economy Publishing House. Considering that popularizing economic knowledge is also an important aspect of knowledge economy, I readily agree.
When the book was finalized, the calendar had quietly pointed to the New Year's Day of 1999, and I felt a sense of relief. From writing to publishing, this book has been assisted and supported in many ways, and the gratitude is beyond words. Because it is the first time for me to set foot in the writing of economics enlightenment books, there must be many defects in the books, but we hope to give readers more aftertaste and less regret. When readers calm down in their busy schedules and finish reading this book, they will look back and reflect, hoping to be suddenly enlightened:
"Oh, this is economics."
The second article
Family is a complex of microeconomic activities, which has both consumption function and storage function.
The functions of saving, investing and obtaining income. As consumers, the basic purpose of family behavior is to maximize coffee and get the greatest enjoyment and satisfaction at the least cost. As a laborer, the family pursues the maximization of income, that is, the maximum return in the least time. As investors, families must consider how to use the surplus income after deducting consumption in places where they can earn more money. Family value-added income is determined by the previous income level. The formation of total family income, in addition to labor remuneration and asset income, there is also a source, that is, transfer income, including gifts from relatives and friends and inheritance left by parents.
With the improvement of people's living standards, the share of this part of income in the total household income is gradually increasing. There are two main behaviors to maximize family income. One is to make full use of the time resources of family labor and exchange labor for income. The more labor expenditure, the greater the family income. The second is to invest the surplus after consumption to realize the appreciation of family assets. This refers to working families. If the family is also an enterprise, such as individual industrial and commercial households in cities or farmers contracted to manage land, then family income also has an important source of profit. But at this time, the family is already a collection of production and consumption. If it becomes a family business, there will be a problem of maximizing profits in economics. People always try their best to earn money and strive for more income for their families' better living standards. This is the conscious application of the principle of maximizing income in economics. For the normal operation of the family, money is not everything, but no money is absolutely impossible.
Yes How many people are there in a family? Everything depends on money. You want to buy a beautiful car, you want to train your children to go to college, you want to make friends, you want to travel, and it is unthinkable to have no money. The first measure to maximize family income is that both husband and wife can find jobs with relatively high wages, that is to say, we must first strive to maximize labor remuneration. Under the current circumstances, there are great differences in labor remuneration among different ownership departments, industries and enterprises. The income of the same year of hard work is quite different. Comparing and choosing post income is of great significance to family income. Another important source that affects the maximization of family income is asset income. Including housing rent, interest on bank deposits, dividends from the purchase of securities, etc. The return of assets depends on the size of assets. Under the condition of modern market economy, people apply economic principles almost every day in their daily lives, including food, clothing, housing and transportation, studying and working, being parents, making friends and traveling. If used properly, people's happiness index will be greatly improved. People often shop around and compare quality and price when shopping, which is the conscious application of the law of value in economics. Let's compare and see which item is more suitable and cost-effective. Housewives go to the vegetable market to buy food every day. In addition to paying attention to variety collocation and diversified nutritional structure, the first thing they asked was how much a catty was, and the bargaining was minimized. Then, they looked at the scale carefully to see if there were two kilograms missing. Of course, they will never let go of quality problems. They certainly won't buy food with problems. When bird flu happened, they didn't buy chickens, ducks and geese. Smart housewives often wait until the afternoon to buy food and wait until the season changes to buy clothes. If so
People will be more cautious when buying more expensive items, such as cars, televisions, computers and even commercial houses. They often ask experts for advice, conduct cost accounting, pay more attention to quality and minimize risks.
When people invest, they always consider the return on investment and the safety factor, which is the conscious application of the investor's output principle in economics. Some people are not good at stocks, are not investors, or are not good at financial management, or are not familiar with the stock market, or think that stock trading is risky, so it is safer and more reliable to deposit money in the bank. When some people run a business in partnership, the first thing to consider is how much interest returns, and the same thing to consider is whether the investment project has market prospects and whether the partners have integrity. Many people are fooled or confused by high returns when investing, and they don't recognize the books of the scam. People use the extra money on hand to buy treasury bonds and insurance because they think it is more cost-effective to buy treasury bonds and insurance than to deposit interest in the bank. Some people use their extra money to buy lottery tickets, such as welfare lottery tickets and sports lottery tickets, in order to win the prize, knowing that the return is high and the risk is high. some
People even illegally participate in gambling and want to bet on swallows. People often attach great importance to their children's education and are willing to invest in education, which is the conscious application of competition law in economics. In countries that attach importance to education, people with high academic qualifications earn more than those with low academic qualifications. According to American scholars' research on America,
The investigation on the relationship between education and income in Britain, Mexico and India has drawn two important conclusions. One is that the higher the educational background, the faster the salary increase in the early years, usually the higher the salary at the beginning. The other is that the higher the education level, the later the age of reaching the highest salary and the higher the retirement income. In China, not only is the private rate of return on education investment relatively low, but there is also the phenomenon of "brain upside down". In some places and industries, the income of college students and middle school graduates is not much different. Why do so many people still want to go to university for graduate study? In addition to the traditional cultural influence that China families want their children to get ahead, the main reason is that people have high expectations for the future return on education investment. It is believed that in the future, the income difference among workers in China will first come from the difference in education level. What China is picking now is the market economy, in the final analysis, the competitive economy, and competition is the competition of talents. People want their children to have a good future, so they must increase investment in education, which is of great benefit to the family and the country. The country puts forward "rejuvenating the country through science and education" and Hunan puts forward "strengthening the province through education", which shows the essential significance of education.