What is Economics?

[0:00]Okay, so what is economics? Economics starts with the word scarcity, but what is scarcity? Scarcity is the idea that we cannot have everything we want. As much as we'd like to have, there are limits that keep us from having everything. What are these limits? Scarce resources. Why are these resources scarce? Because they're hard to find. Money is a great example. Let's say you want a phone and a laptop, but you don't have enough money to buy both. You're forced to choose between the two. Even if you have enough money to buy both, you'll still have to choose between buying those things or buying other stuff. What I'm trying to say is that you can never have enough money, which makes it a scarce resource. Time is another scarce resource. Suppose you need to work, but you also want to play your Xbox. You can go to work or you can play video games, but you can't do both at the same time. Of course, you could do one after the other, but there's only 24 hours in a day. By doing one thing, you'll have to cut another thing from your schedule. So, what is economics? Economics is the study of how people make decisions, given the resources, scarce resources that are provided to them. But it's not just about people. It's also how businesses and governments make decisions as well. Economics is the study of how our society as a whole uses its resources.