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In your own words, explain the farmer's optimal solution in the free market using marginal cost analysis. How might this solution be suboptimal from society's perspective? Explain who benefits and is harmed under the free market solution. Explain who benefits and is harmed under the government subsidy solution? Using economic analysis and the guiding principles of sustainability, justify which solution is best.

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Chika Ilonah
Chika IlonahLv10
28 Sep 2019

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Related questions

Using economic analysis and the guiding principles of sustainability, between the farmer subsidy solution and the principles of sustainability solution, justify which solution is best? Why?

In this assignment, you will integrate your knowledge from all three weekly outcomes. After reviewing the “From the Expert” video this week, consider the problem of the apple farmer. In your own words, explain the farmer’s optimal solution in the free market using marginal cost analysis. How might this solution be suboptimal from society’s perspective? Explain who benefits and is harmed under the free market solution. Explain who benefits and is harmed under the government subsidy solution? Using economic analysis and the guiding principles of sustainability, justify which solution is best.

SPEAKER 1: Jan owns an apple orchard and it's harvesting season. She has a bumper crop and needs to calculate how many apples she should pick in order to maximize her profits. For thepurposes of this example, she will sell all of her apples to the local cider mill for $0.50 each.

Jan knows that to maximize her profits, she should continue to harvest apples until she reaches the point that the marginal revenue equals the marginal cost. Jan calculates her marginal cost usingthe cost of ladder rentals and the wages of the apple pickers.

The apples on the bottom third of the tree are the cheapest to harvest at a marginal cost of $0.30 per apple. This is because her workers can pluck apples off the bottom of the tree without a ladder.To harvest from the middle of the tree, employees will take more time to pick the apples, which increases the cost of labor. Also, a small ladder is needed. This increases the marginal cost to $0.45.Harvesting from the top of the tree would increase her labor costs per hour, and also requires renting a bigger ladder. This results in $0.55 cents marginal cost.

Since Jan can only get $0.50 for an apple, she will stop picking apples when the marginal cost is greater than the marginal revenue she receives. Thus, she will harvest the apples at the bottom of thetree, and she will make $0.20 per apple. She will also harvest those apples in the middle and make $0.05 per apple. However, she won't harvest the apples at the top, because she would lose $0.05on each one.

With this example, the market economy would theoretically deem it most efficient to just leave the apples high up on the trees to rot. Some people believe that the government should providesubsidies to industries that would leave food and other essential goods to waste. Subsidies, however, cost other resources and create an unfair market.

Should the apples at the top of the tree be left to rot? Or should someone step in and get involved? What do you think should be done?

. Vouchers to Pay Private School
Tuition
Two conditions that justify government intervention in a market are the presence of external benefits and equity concerns. Both of these issues are present in the case of primary and secondary education in the United States. Think about what education without government education would look like. In the absence of government intervention, all primary and secondary education in the US would be private. Public school districts would not exist. Parents would need to pay private firms (schools) to educate their children.

External benefits

If all education were private, it’s likely that people would buy too little education, from society’s point of view. External benefits are one reason. When a child is educated, he or she benefits and we expect his or her parents to take those benefits into account when they purchase education. But there are additional benefits to society which parents may ignore. As people become more educated, they are less likely to be unemployed or be criminals and are more likely to volunteer and vote. The presence of these external benefits is an example in support for the government getting involved in education.

Equity

Many families in the United States have low incomes. Among all children in first through twelfth grades in 2001, 46% were from families with incomes below $40,000. Since the cost of private education would be an important share of these families’ incomes, most Americans would be concerned about the fairness of relying on markets to decide how much education children receive. Current spending by these families on private education provides some support for this concern. Of all children in private school in 2001, only 25% were from families with incomes below $40,000. Therefore, equity concerns are another example in support for government getting involved in education.

Providing vs. producing education

Most economists think external benefits and equity concerns justify government intervention in education. But it is important to distinguish between government production of education and other forms of government intervention. At the level of elementary and secondary education, K- 12 education, government intervention today mostly means production of education by local school districts. To benefit, children must attend public schools. But this is not the only form intervention could take.
There are other markets where government intervention takes the form of subsidizing people’s access to products—think of financial aid to college students, for example. Many people in the US think that government should move from producing education to subsidizing access.

One form that subsidy could take is government providing vouchers to parents. Parents would use the voucher to help pay for their child’s education in a private school. After it receives the voucher, the school would turn it in and be paid by a local or state government.

Today there is a lively debate between people who think K-12 education should be delivered publicly and people who think quality and efficiency would be higher if government provided vouchers and the education was delivered by private schools. Some of these quality and efficiency arguments can be based on material we covered this week. Price competition between private schools will pressure each one to produce efficiently. Competition for students will lead private schools to offer programs of interest to parents and their children.

Answer the questions below and make use of the sources supplied. Be sure to cite you sources in your answers.

1. Explain whether a potential exit by students with vouchers will lead to the improvement of public schools. 2. Discuss whether the implementation of vouchers will lead the best students to leave public school, which could lead to a decline in education for the students left behind in the public schools. 3. Consider what might happen to the students who use vouchers to leave public schools in order to attend private schools. How might their academic performance change as a result of switching? 4. Finally, think about the impact of a voucher system on the students in an urban setting. Describe whether all families would have an equal opportunity to access education.

Your final product will be a paper that: ? Addresses each of the four questions above in total. ? Is APA formatted. ? The body is to be 2 pages minimum.

The requirements for your assignment are: 1. Answer each question fully 2. Define the overall subject of each question. 3. Cite at least three (3) resources from this week’s materials.

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