Saturday Night Live – Check to Check Business News

In this Saturday Night Live sketch, Jon Hamm and Ego Nwodim play anchors on a business news channel that shifts its focus to “regular folks” living paycheck to paycheck. As they report on economic trends, the news ticker at the bottom highlights relatable, everyday financial decisions—like switching to store-brand cereal or cutting back on name-brand toothpaste.

This sketch is a humorous way to introduce the concept of inferior goods—products whose demand increases when income falls. It’s a great clip for helping students connect abstract economic terms to real-world behavior, especially when discussing how different income groups respond to economic downturns.

Thanks to Brian Lynch for the submission!

Saturday Night Live — Chance The Rapper’s 2nd Favorite Things

Chance the Rapper is grew up in Chicago, which is nicknamed “The Second City.” In honor of his hometown, Chance the Rapper (along with Kyle Mooney) shares some of his other favorite second-best items, which he considers better than the first. This is a fun introduction to substitutes, or even monopolistic competition and product differentiation. This could be used in an upper-level class to discuss ordinal preferences or transitivity.

Thanks to Kim Holder and Darshak Patel for tweeting this video!

Saturday Night Life — Toys ‘R Us

When teaching students about the different types of firm structures, we always discuss monopolistic competition and how firms try to differentiate their products to get positive economic profits. This short clip shows how Toys R Us is staying open for 87 hours straight to differentiate itself from other toy stores around the holiday season.

Thanks to James Tierney for the clip and description.

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.

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