Watch Nixon address the nation during a period of high inflation. Nixon’s decision to implement price freezes across the United States sounds like a great policy, but the inefficiency of price manipulation typically outweighs the benefits that some consumers receive. Here’s a nice summary from the Cato Institute.
John Stossel — Rent Control in New York City
John Stossel explores New York City’s decision to implement rent control throughout the city. He covers many of the predictable outcomes associated with inefficient policy controls. Ask students to identify issues as he progresses through the video. While the references are a bit dated, there aren’t many videos that hit the outcomes as closely as this one does.
NYC Debate — Rent is Too Damn High
Many have seen Jimmy McMillan as a meme, but so few have gotten to see him in the NYC debates. McMillan argues that rent in New York City is too high and should be regulated by the government. This is a good clip to use before a discussion on price ceilings and the normative argument of prices being ‘too high’.
Bloomberg — The Value of a Medallion
Bloomberg corresponds provide some background on the taxi medallion industry and shows an interesting perspective before the big surge of Uber in the city. The original article can be found here.
John Stossel — Spontaneous Order
In this Stossel in the Classroom segment, John Stossel analyzes political promises and looks at how government intervention actually can harm business. A good portion of the video focuses on how the invisible hand dictates much of what we see occurring in our lives and how centrally planned economies like the Soviet Union break down.
John Stossel — Farm Subsidies
John Stossel analyzes the impact of farm subsidies. While the intentions are good, the results of these subsidies have predictable impacts.
South Park — Uber and Handicar
The characters are complaining about Handicar, a service provided by Timmy and how it is stealing all of the transportation business. Mimsy, another driver, adds his two sense by talking about competition. He includes an economist’s take on incentives and how a certain producer can gain economic advantages in a competitive market. This is important to economics because it includes the topics of a competitive marketplace as well as the concepts of advantage in that marketplace.
Thank you for the clip and the summary Taylor Campbell.
John Stossel — Price Gouging
Is price gouging evil or is it the sensible economic decision when shortages arise? In this series, John Stossel explores price gouging around natural disasters. This topic is really good for discussing the tradeoff between equity and efficiency.
Ted: Jonas Eliasson: How to solve traffic jams
Traffic jams are often provided as an example of a market failure. Drivers are focused on their own driving and don’t consider how it may impact others. As a result, too many people use road systems and congestion occurs. This Ted Talk highlights how Pigouvian taxes could be used to correct the market failure by instituting congestion taxes. While it’s not presented by an economist, he uses a lot of economics concepts throughout the talk.
Saturday Night Live — Chris Rock on Minimum Wage
Chris Rock explains on Weekend Update how a minimum wage (a price floor) is above equilibrium wage. Firms may want to pay lower wages, but an effective price floor is one that is set above the equilibrium such that firms aren’t able to pay the lower wages. Thanks to Jodie Beggs for finding the Jeopardy reference that led me to finding this video.