Understanding the present economic situation
What you will learn
Understand Economic structures and pressures, including macroeconomic forces
Comprehend supply chains, scarcity, and the effects on price and inflation
Investigate petroleum production, including sources of petroleum and “fuel liquids,” wellheads, fracking, input to output ratios, pipelines and refining
Research emerging technologies in both energy and goods productions and transitional timelines
Consider the costs of pollution and natural disasters on the overall political economy
Examine the political landscape in the United States and its effects on growth and development, of resources and the workforce
Create a final project drawing all of these disparate elements together into a coherent explanation for present stresses in people’s personal lives and budgets.
Description
Inflation is skyrocketing and gasoline prices are at the highest levels in years. This course focuses on providing students with a clear understanding of scarcity, supply and demand, and other economic pressures, both natural and artificial, and how they are interacting with international industrial production and petroleum drilling both domestically, and within the global economy.
Making sense of inflation that is the highest in decades is difficult. Different people offer different explanations, often for partisan or even religious reasons. A real understanding of how economics works in regard to inflation and an understanding of the law of scarcity is delivered in this course so that students completing it will have an understanding of what they are seeing, and unfortunately experiencing and, hopefully, will be better able to negotiate the coming ripples in the economic stream.
Not only will economic forces be discussed, but also petroleum production, supply chains, and international trade.
Ultimately the student will complete several quizzes and will also do a final project on a topic related to inflation and the global economy, which will be submitted at the end of the course. These quizzes and the project will demonstrate mastery of the subject matter. Hopefully, that mastery of subject matter will help the student long after they complete this course.
Content