Primary Global Focus: Gain incentive for future success in a competitive market system through the comprehension of economic principles.

1. All students will demonstrate an understanding of fundamental economic concepts and principles

• explore key terms such as, "scarcity," "consumer choice," "needs v. wants," and "opportunity cost"
  
• explore three basic economic problems of - "what to produce," "how much to produce," and "for whom to produce" (how to distribute)
  
• analyze the Malthusian theory of population as it pertains to renewable and non-renewable resources
  
• understand the production possibilities curve
  
• study the choices and rational decisions of consumers and producers within larger economic systems
  
• understand the key aspects of supply, demand, equilibrium and their relationship to the price and quantity of a good
  
• practice extensive graphing of supply and demand curves applying factors which change supply and demand such as substitute and complimentary goods
  
• graph the effect of price ceilings and floors
  
• review fundamental Economic laws such as "the law of supply and demand," the "law of diminishing returns," and "the law of diminishing marginal utility"
  
• practice and understand "marginal analysis" as a process of profit maximization for businesses applying cost/benefit analysis
  
• review the theories of classical and modern day economists including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, John Keynes, Milton Friedman, etc.

2. All students will analyze and evaluate comparative economic systems

• know the elements enabling the free enterprise system; laissez faire, right of ownership (to accumulate capital), profit incentive competition, freedom of choice, that citizens own the means of production (businesses)
  
• know the elements of communism as shared labor, non-ownership, non-profit, collective government owns the means of production
  
• understand alternative economic systems such as: the traditional economy, the command economy and the mixed economy.

3. All students will understand key highlights of U.S. economic history contributing to today's economic system and policies

• review important aspects of U.S. economic history including Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, monopolists, Sherman antitrust act, industrial revolution, gospel of wealth, the robber barons, the great depression, Reaganomics, and the Persian Gulf War
  
• study names in history that have made significant historical contributions such as: Hamilton, Rockefeller, Carnegie, T. Roosevelt, F.D.R., Gates, etc.

4. All students will explore the free market system and apply Micro Economics principles

• know that all business costs are categorized under "the factors of production," which include, "land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship"
  
• know that the key to profit maximization in business is the marginal analysis principle that production should increase to the point where marginal revenue equals marginal costs (MR = MC)
  
• know the role and influences of pricing in the product markets and labor or factor markets
  
• understand the role of wages and the influences of labor unions
  
• define and contrast the four market structures of perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly and monopoly
  
• explore market failures such as the negative externalities of corporate pollution that often require the intervention of government agencies, regulations, fines or taxes, to control. These government interventions, into an otherwise free-enterprise system, create our "mixed economy"
  
• know the role of government in impacting market failures as establishing trade regulations and price controls
  
• study the role of current financial markets through involvement in investment simulations.

5. All students will understand aggregate economic principles related to the national economy (with emphasis on monetary and fiscal policy) in the study of Macroeconomics

• know the difference between budget deficit and national debt
  
• know Keynesian economics v. supply side, trickle down Reaganomics
  
• study and graph GDP (consumption + investment + government spending + (exports - imports) the full employment production line, aggregate supply and demand, the circular flow of money and goods within the mechanisms of the U.S. economy under government control
  
• explore national cycles of unemployment and inflation, observing costs and benefits of government intervention
  
• distinguish between real and nominal data
  
• explore monetary policy administered by the Fed and its basic tools of economic influence which include interest rates, bonds, and reserve rate regulation in its effort to control the supply of money
  
• explore fiscal policy and the tools of government of taxing and spending to impact the economy and control the two conflicting economic evils of inflation vs. unemployment
  
• understand how and where tax dollars are collected and spent.

6. All students will understand and apply logic and cogent reasoning to analyze solutions to current economic issues and exercise critical thinking skills for effective decision making

• apply the tool of the continuum chart for classification of opinions on issues
  
• learn to delineate the pros and cons of each of many current international issues
  
• study and analyze twenty-five of the most common fallacies of reasoning such as over-generalization, ad homonym, and various irrelevancies.

7. All students will explore current global facts and analyze International affairs

• absolute advantages and comparative advantage of international trade
  
• analyze trade policies and restrictions while learning about deficits, surpluses and the effect of inflation on imports and exports
  
• evaluate current, global facts related to economics involving such topics as population statistics, condition of resources, production efficient labor markets, foreign HIV statistics and pollution conditions, etc.
  
• explore the shift in the global labor markets toward developing countries
  
• debate current event issues of international politics such as: China's trade status, Cuba's embargo, nuclear testing, Persian Gulf war in hindsight, immigration, NAFTA, and peacekeeping in Yugoslavia.