Monopolies and Love

I am going to compare monopolies and love.

A monopoly, one seller, is a firm that reduces output so that buyers have to compete and bid the price up.  This is bad, because say there are 15 parking spaces and 15 people who would like a spot.  A monopoly might raise the price so high that some of those 15 spots sit empty!  We call this a dead weight loss, where society is clearly losing something.

Perhaps unintentionally, we sometimes act monopolistic with our love.  We reduce the number of people that we are willing to give our love to, or we pick favorites, so that people have to compete for our love; they have to compete to be our favorites.  Society would be better off if we were to follow Christ's example, who "inviteth . . . all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God." - 2 Nephi 26:33, The Book of Mormon 

If we give of our love freely then people won't need to pay or give up things like their moral standards to have the love they desire.

Econ valentine jokes

Immigration

Is it good when immigrants come into our country?

If they want to, I think it is.  Let's think about what might motivate them to come.

Probably they want to make more money than they are making in their current location.  Since wages usually represent what a person's work is worth to their employer, it must be that their work is worth more to employers here in the United States than in their original country.

Quick side note: It isn't minimum wage that causes them to make more here, if it was they would only be making minimum wage but almost all men, immigrant or not, make more than minimum wage in the U.S., because their work is worth more than minimum wage.

Think of it this way: if there are 2 snow cone machines in my front yard and 4 in my back yard and I have 12 people who love making snow cones, would it make sense to keep 11 people in my front yard?  We could produce more snow cones and better employ people if we let more people from the front yard go to the back yard to use the machines.  In economic language, there is capital (snow cone machines) in the U.S. that could use more labor, especially the manual labor that most wants to come to the U.S.

Some employees that have the jobs that entering immigrants are suited for may temporarily lose their jobs, but as new opportunities arise in the more efficient economy they will find suitable jobs.  Also, when things are produced more efficiently, costs/prices go down which is beneficial to everybody that buys things.

I would be fascinated to know from a historical perspective about when large immigration has worked well and when it hasn't.  I imagine that in part the American Dream and some of our ideals come from immigrants that wanted to have a new start and worked hard to have it.  Let me know what you think!

Christmas Music

I love Christmas music.  Today at church a group sang "We Three Kings."

 That song has an almost mystical sound to it.  It sort of made me think of how we don't completely understand how wonderful Christ's birth and atoning sacrifice were, but they give us hope and draw us onward.
The fact that we don't completely understand Christ's birth and Atonement (his sacrifice that redeems and strengthens us) doesn't mean they aren't real.

  Similar to how I don't always understand why certain math equations give correct results, I can't completely understand why Christ's life gives me such strength, but it does and I believe I will come to understand if I'm diligent.

The Book of Mormon:  Another Testament of Jesus Christ, talking about when the Lord would bring forth the Book of Mormon says, "Therefore, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, yea, a marvelous work and a wonder, for the wisdom of their wise and learned shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent shall be hid." -2 Nephi 27:26
I know that God will give us hope and truth as we pray and press forward!  Merry Christmas!


See "We Three Kings"  or a great video about Christ being the first Christmas gift #ShareTheGift

Hometeaching

I'm really grateful for a program that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has to look out for the members of the Church.  It's called home teaching, where everyone in the congregation is visited by some pair of two men at least once a month.  My home teachers, the guys who visit me, had me over for dinner last night and checked up on how my roommate and I were doing.  It's a wonderful blessing to feel God's love through other people.  I also am grateful for the opportunity that I have to home teach and visit a couple girls and guys.  I can feel the Holy Spirit as I sit with other people talking about God's love for us.

Sharing Earnings

I'm going to briefly explain an econ principle and then try to connect it to something spiritual.

One reason that we like competition between companies is that it gives companies an incentive to lower their costs.  When they lower their costs (perhaps by developing a technology that produces goods with less expensive equipment), they get more customers by charging lower prices.  This makes consumers (buyers) happier because they pay less and it makes the company happy because if it doesn't lower its price all the way down to its new costs then it makes a profit.


This might be a stretch, but I think that this idea of win-win situations is applicable spiritually.  When we serve, people receiving and giving the service are happy.  When one classmate helps another to understand a concept, the one teaching ends up learning a lot too.  When we share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others, we feel joy like the recipients do.  Sometimes we don't understand why God is so gracious,

 17 Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;

 18 And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.[Doctrine and Covenants 78:17-18]

Who are we?

Since on facebook we sometimes only post quick cheerful statements, I thought I'd post something that shows that life also has difficulties.
 "Each of us is intimately aware of our own struggles with temptation, pain, and sadness."-Elder Richard G. Scott.
I recognize that we are in a "carnal and fallen state" -Mosiah 27:25Something that helps me when I feel down is to remember who I am. So I compiled some quotes about who we are, sometimes dependent on what we choose:"We are the offspring of God" Acts 17:29"Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High" Psalms 82:6"Begotten sons and daughters unto God" D&C 76:24"The people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand" Psalms 95:7"I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten" Moses 1:13Sometimes who we are depends on our choices.  These quotes are by President Uchtdorf, a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He talks a lot about people's potential."You are my hands""A VIP to our Heavenly Father""Disciple of Jesus Christ""Healer of Souls""Heir of Eternal Life"Click here for a super inspiring video!

Helping Obesity with Government

A couple weeks ago I went to a presentation by Jessica Berg, a law professor from Case Western Reserve University, who talked about legislating obesity, meaning how government policies can help reduce obesity.  Some of the ideas they talked about were having kids run at school more, healthy lunch programs, suggestions of downsizing meals, printing the number of calories bigger, making stairs look more attractive and such.  I think it's a good intention, but I do think you're assuming that some central authority knows what each individual needs better than the individual knows.  A term that I learned in American Heritage, a class I TA for, is spontaneous order.  The idea of 'spontaneous order' was used a lot by the free market economist F. Hayek.  That is the idea that having many individuals make their own decisions is best since the individuals know their own circumstances.  It's hard for me to believe that possibly expensive government regulations will know how to help people better than people know for themselves how to plan according to their own needs.  But let me know what you think!  I'd love to see your comments : )

First Blog

Hello very small number of people who happen to click on the link I posted on Facebook!
So I have been inspired to create a blog since for my church calling, and for just being a disciple of Christ, I have been invited to share the gospel online.  But these posts will just be my own thoughts and feelings and hopefully won't confuse anybody that reads them.  I got a twitter and pinterest but nobody follows me, so I figure if nobody will follow me anyway I might as well create a blog that lets me format just how I want to and blab more : )
Since I currently am an economics major and I love economics, I will probably post about economics in addition to sharing my testimony about the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is so important to me.  I have been inspired to blog by my friends Brett, Gary, and Jason who also have blogs.
I'm going to use pictures from pixabay.com (shutterstock) and from lds.org in hopes that I don't violate copyright laws.  If I do anything illegal, offensive, or unbearably boring on my blog, please let me know and I'll try to improve : )
The econ graph shows increasing willingness to supply when the price is high or decreasing willingness to pay when the price is high, depending on which side of the graph we're looking from.  The First Vision picture by Del Parson is just my favorite Church picture, depicting Joseph Smith receiving an answer to his question about which church to join from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.