Headlines

1. Complementary Demand: "Lady Gaga wears dress made of sandwiches. Bread and lunch meat prices skyrocket!"

2. Substitute Demand: "Meteor strikes Coka-cola factory. Coke productions halted. Pepsi sales increase dramatically."

3. Elastic Demand: "Prices for new iPhone triple! Only 7 sold in the past month."

4. Inelastic Demand: "Sudden rise in portable oxygen prices takes users breath away."

The full story here:

The prices for portable oxygen have been dramatically increasing and people who are reliant on them must pay for these ridiculous prices. With oxygen being a must have for every person these people don’t have a choice, they must buy the oxygen. There are no alternatives to it, and they can’t just stop using it either.  “I have had to cut back on many of my other, non-essential, items. I don’t need any of them as much as I need access to a portable oxygen supply.” says Guy McPerson, who had smoked for years before he quit and now relies on his portable oxygen to help him breath. Guy is not the only one who has had to cut back on their more luxurious items to fill their need of this necessity. We hope that soon the price for the portable oxygen tanks that these people need will go down so that they can enjoy their luxuries once again.   

Demand Chart

http://s3.freefoto.com/images/09/09/09_09_5_web.jpg

Blog #2 Opportunity Cost

Every decision that we make has a large effect on our life, you cannot do everything and there is always something that you could not do because of your choice. That is called an Opportunity cost. An example of an opportunity cost in my life is when I decided to volunteer at an animal shelter rather than go out and try to get a job at Fred Meyer's, Haggen, etc. Because of this choice there are things that I will gain but also miss out on.

One opportunity cost for this is that instead of getting a job that pays I will be doing volunteer work. So I will not be able to make any money for my work. However I will be getting experience that I can put on a resume or a college application. If I were to decided to get a job rather than volunteer than I could spend a lot of time searching and getting turned down due to lack of experience.

But since I am not getting any money I will not be able to do many things that I would like to do, or I'd have to ask for money which doesn't always pay out. 

One thing that I'd like to know more of is how do companies determine what the best decision for their business is without losing to much from the opportunity cost of it?

Scarcity

URL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Stacks_of_money.jpg

Money is very scarce for me, I have been unable to find a job in order to make my own money so I rely on getting paid very little for jobs my parents think up for me to do. I often am unable to do/get things that I want or need because I do not have enough money.