Most people who grow up in a market economy seem to have an intuitive sense of what the concepts mean. In an effort to help remedy the situation, each upcoming issue of The Ledger will carry a short piece on one of the concepts from A Framework for Teaching Basic Economic Concepts . This issue looks at Concept 1, Scarcity. In fact it's so simple that there's a tendency to forget how central it is to the canon of economic thought. Leonard Silk, author of Economics in Plain English , gets to the heart of the matter with an admirable economy of words.
Scarcity is really what economics is all about.
Scarcity and choice. There's a gap between what people want and the level of resources available to satisfy those wants. That's all there is to it. Yet such a simple concept is at the heart of many complex economic questions. For example, tickets to a hit show are scarce.