Your company makes copper pipes. Over the years, you have collected a large inventory of raw copper. The production process involves melting the copper and shaping it into pipes. You also have a large stockpile of pennies
Suppose the price of copper rises so much that the copper in the penny becomes worth more than one cent. Should you melt down your pennies?
This problem appeared as a puzzle in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter, 1988). It is true (in this problem) that the pennies when melted currently have a value greater than one cent. Yet, the price of copper can fluctuate. If the price of copper stays high, it does not matter if you melt pennies or not. However, if the price of copper falls so that the value of the copper in the penny falls below one cent, your unmelted pennies are still worth one cent. Your melted pennies would be worth less than one cent. Thus, as long as you have some other source of copper, you are better off melting that copper and not the pennies.
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One way to restructure Social Security to meet its future obligations would be to _____
a. lower the retirement age b. reduce Social Security benefits c. increase benefits only on the poor d. eliminating pay-as-you-go
The basics of the welfare state in the United States started as part of:
A. reparations after WWI in the late 1910s. B. the Bretton Woods plan after WWII in the 1940s. C. the New Deal legislation in the 1930s. D. the Great Recession Recovery and Aid Acts in the 2000s.
For a perfectly competitive firm, average revenue is: a. equal to marginal cost at all levels of output
b. equal to marginal revenue at all levels of output. c. equal to price at all levels of output. d. characterized by both (b) and (c).
The supply of labor
a. varies inversely with the price level b. does not vary with the real wage rate c. does not vary with the price level d. varies directly with the price level e. varies inversely with the nominal wage rate