Jim’s Guide Unit 6: Our Future Economic System
In this unit we finish our exploration of what I and others have said. We’ll focus in particular on future economic governance. The last two units, 7 and 8, will be about what you think. In the previous unit we focused on institutional arrangements necessary for trade and production such as money and banking. Now we broaden our look at several different trends that may prove significant in determining our future economic system. This page describes the activities and graded work you need to complete for Unit 6.
What you need to do:
- Readings:
- Read this Jim’s Guide Unit 6: Future Economic Systems – all pages:
- Read this Jim’s Guide Unit 6: Future Economic Systems – all pages:
- Video: There are five short videos (3 to 15 minutes). In this unit each video is embedded into one of the above sub-pages of the Jim’s Guide. You will see them when you read the Jim’s Guide Pages.
- Post a comment to one of the Critical Thinking Discussion posts for Unit 6.
Points are awarded – this is a required assignment. - Take the Unit 6 quiz in Desire2Learn. Remember, you get two attempts. The last page of this Unit 6 Jim’s Guide lists some study tips and topics for the quiz. This is a graded, required assignment.
Quiz 6 is worth 10 points. Questions are drawn from all of the reading and viewing assignments for this unit. Some questions ask you to repeat some essential ideas and some questions require application of the concepts and ideas you learned. Topics and a study guide for the quiz is provided on the last page of this Unit’s Jim’s Guide. You are allowed 2 attempts at quiz 7. Your highest score of the two attempts will count toward your grade. As soon as you open and view the quiz it counts as an “attempt”. Attempts are not timed and you may save your work and continue it later. - Finish and Post Your Book Review #2. More information on this assignment, which is worth 10% of your overall grade, is located on several pages under the Resources tab. Specifically, you should look at:
- The Book Reviews Assignment Step-by-Step
- The Book List (Which you should already have visited and selected! If you haven’t by now, hurry up!)
- How to Create Your Book Review Page in WordPress
- What to Say in Your Book Review (a Rubric)
- Book Review Multiple Choice Question Form
Terms and Concepts
- While reading, look to understand the meaning of the following terms and concepts to prepare for the quiz:
- What are the central arguments that Joseph Stiglitz makes about GDP as a measure of economic welfare?
- What key arguments and points does Richard Wilkinson make about the effects of income inequality?
- Why does Dan Barber love a fish?
- What has the concept of scarcity had to do with economic theory and economic systems in the past? How might a change in scarcity change things?
- What are some examples of open-sourced and open-production goods or services?
- What has recent research shown about the relationship between income and happiness?
- What have economic systems and theories assumed in the past was the goal of the economic system?
Key Concepts:
Workers and businesses should benefit from co-opps. I think it gives the workers a sense of pride and willingness to work harder, since they would have some stake in the company. I believe co-opps will become a key factor in the future.
The culture is moving away from the Unions and there is a shift to new development and other ways of doing business. Unions were very popular in the past but not anymore. Co-opps would be desirable because there needs to be an alternative to the Unions that have been under performing for the employees and are quickly disappearing.