Jessica Lee

Whether it is due to the absence of required high school courses or the lack of personal interest in how the world works, a large majority of UA students do not understand basic economic principles. And out of all the academic programs at this university that should require lower-level economic courses, the political science department does not.

This is particularly worrisome because many of these students will leave with bachelor of arts degrees in their pockets and enter our civics, law, business and information-based arenas. Graduates in political science may at some point make a decision that will affect you, and that choice might not reflect a proficient understanding of economics.

Political science students attempt to understand the theory and practice of government and politics, and learn to think critically about public policies and their consequences. Shouldn't it be significant to study the marriage between American public policy and economics?

Professor Gerald Swanson, who teaches Economics 200, simply defines economics as, "the study of predicting people's behavior based on incentives." Contrary to popular belief, economics falls into the academia of social sciences and not business.

And as a program within the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, it is surprising that curriculum designers in the political science department do not realize the relevancy and importance of intertwining a solid economics knowledge base into their majors.

The United States celebrates its free-market capitalism. Free markets are based on millions of voluntary exchanges in which both parties perceive that they are being made better off.

But one cannot trade something they do not own. Thus, before markets can exist for particular goods and services, clearly defined private property rights must be established and enforced. Many political science students do not understand that without private property, the entire free-market system would collapse.

Scarcity is what describes the unlimited wants, needs and desires people have of a resource when only limited amounts can be supplied. Four factors of production affect resource scarcity: land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship. Respectively, in order to obtain a product, we need the crude resource, the human power, the manmade or financial resources and innovation to produce an efficient product.

The demand that people have for a product will provide mercenary incentive for someone to supply that product. The equilibrium between people's willingness to pay and a businesses' willingness to sell defines the price at which the product will be voluntarily traded for.

With a basic understanding of the American economics system, it is clear why political science majors especially need to take an earnest interest in the subject.

The problem is that the American economic system is plagued with flaws. And the flaws that cause market inefficiencies are a result of policy decisions made by our representatives in local, state and national governments (positions that may be filled or staffed by UA graduates in the future). In order to fix these market inefficiencies, our politicians and policymakers are going to need to not only understand American politics and how it affects our economic system, but to utilize that relationship in market remedies.

Here is a common problem. The boss of Pollution Inc. decides that he can reduce his costs of production (private costs) if he discharges the by-products of production into the nearby river and air, rather than pay to treat the waste. Due to campaign contributions, the local governing body allows Pollution Inc. to be exempted from reducing its pollution to EPA standards. The boss saves money by shifting the cost of pollution control onto the local society (social costs) in the form of increased ecosystem and human health risks. While the boss says that pollution regulation impedes the free market, he is actually a beneficiary of it; society is paying a large part of the business's costs. Subsides are one of the true monsters of the free-market and need policy modifications.

According to political science professor Paulette Kurzer, who recently headed the department's career fair, political scientists end up "virtually everywhere" after they graduate.

If these students do indeed land "everywhere," shouldn't they at least have had one economics class? Department head and professor Bill Mishler agrees. "If it were up to me, all our students would have to take an economics and a statistics class."

We as a society need to demand that our future policymakers and political leaders have a basic understanding of not only the American political process, but the economic one as well. And it is up to the political science department to supply those course requirements.

If not, society will continue to bear the costs.