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Economics to the Popularity of Soccer

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     Why is soccer, or football as it is known by the rest of the world become the most popular sport by an overwhelming margin? Simply put, you can attribute the popularity to the economics of playing soccer.      Looking at the map, I can already infer why some sports are the most popular in certain countries. Ice hockey is likely so popular in Canada, Latvia, and Finland because both are very icy countries, and modern ice hockey was invented in Canda. British sports like rugby and cricket are so popular in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh due to their colonial legacies. American sports are popular for likewise reasons in many Latin American countries, Japan and the Philippines. Yet why is soccer so prolific in so many countries that have almost nothing in common? Select two countries at random where soccer is the most popular and unlike other sports, they will more likely than not, have different climates, histories, cultures, and lang
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Tanking to the Top?

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In class, numerous clips described the phenomenon of average NBA teams who, unable to make the playoffs, decided to trade off good players and "tank" to the bottom. Their motive? To gain a high position in the following year's draft and draft a superstar player who could turn their losing record around and make the team a champion. However, Akira Motomura, an economics professor, says tanking to the top and building a team from a draft isn't really helpful for improving the overall trajectory of a team. The reason for this is that even if a team has the worst record in the entire NBA season that year, they still have a chance of not getting the top pick. The draft is set up so each team ranked between the worst 1-4 each have proportionally higher chances of being first pick, but the worst 1 team still has a chance of picking say, fourth. And this is bad because studies have shown that while the number 1 pick of a draft season may be a superstar, the difference in s
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The Opportunity Cost of Writing this at the Very Last Second

It is currently the morning of April 26th, the day the blog posts are due in class. I have completed 7 of the required 8 blog posts, with the 8th being this one right here. I wanted to explore the opportunity cost of writing this blog post at the very last second. Was the procrastination worth it? If not now, when could the blog have been completed? I think back to last week when I came home from school and took a 4-hour nap instead of doing any work. Had I been more on top of things, I could have easily written a blog post and a multitude of comments that afternoon. Instead, I chose to enjoy, might I say, a thoroughly wonderful nap. Conversely, I am currently using my last “late start” of the week to munch on cereal while writing this last blog post. I would’ve liked to use this morning to do something of my choosing like, go to the gym or play some video games. Instead, because I chose not to write the post last week, I’m forced to write it now. It’s difficult to quantify which s
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Increasing Age to 21 For Purchasing Cigarettes

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There has been talk for many years around raising the minimum age requirement for purchasing tobacco products like cigarettes and vaping devices nationwide. However, just recently, Rite Aid and Walgreens both increased the age for purchasing cigarettes from 18 to 21. But why is this? Even though I don't agree with this logic, having a larger consumer base would create more profits, especially for users between the ages of 18-21 who might use cigarettes very frequently. If I were interested in making profits, I would not have made this decision. So why did it happen? Do these drugstores just have bad economists? According to the article, the drugstores have received "more than 1,550 warning letters from the FDA and has been hit with 240 financial penalties since 2010." In addition, Walgreens has been under a lot of pressure ever since the FDA called them the "top violator" among pharmacy chains for selling tobacco products to minors. After knowing thi
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Pharmaceutical Drug Pricing

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We're very fortunate to live in a society where we can simply request any medicines we want, whenever we want. Have a headache? Simply get some over-the-counter painkillers! There's a ton of different over-the-counter drugs. However, what about drugs that treat rare diseases? How do these affect the economy and how are they priced? Oftentimes, large companies that produce these drugs simply stop producing them because they don't feel it's making them any profits, and instead focus on making drugs that benefit the majority of people. The opportunity cost of producing these drugs was too high for the companies. However, in the 1980s, an act was passed by the government because they saw this issue and how it affected people. It was called the Orphan Drug Act, and it did a few things, like providing a 50% tax credit for clinical testing expenses related to drug development, waiving some regulatory fees for drug companies, and providing grants to drug companies for re
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Ecotourism

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How many times have you ever wished you could visit a different place in the world. If you were lucky enough you actually even got to visit this place you hoped to visit, but have you ever really thought about the interconnected network behind tourism itself. The tourism industry is the world's largest and most complicated industry and this complexity is due to the interworkings of social, cultural, political, and environmental issues. The accelerated growth of ecotourism is dependent on many factors. Natural attractions such as oceans, mountains, rivers, etc. are all common commodities to attract people to different parts of the world. Recently life has become more comfortable for many of the developed countries. With the aid of technology, life has become easier, people have lived longer, and therefore it has become an effort to explore more and enjoy life. The accelerate growth has caused many scholars of the 20th century to call it the century of tourism. As the amount of
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Is the Massive US Military Budget

"How US can justify spending even more on defense ‘when we can’t manage to turn the lights on in Puerto Rico’" It's a good question. Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion budget for the 2019 year, more than the next 10 nations combined. This is an absurd amount of money, especially if there are domestic problems that most would consider a better use of tax payer money. Stephen Miles, director of the Washington DC-based Win Without War advocacy group, mentions healthcare and the opioid crisis in particular, stating that, "when we can’t help those suffering from opioid addiction get treatment, and when we can’t ensure education and healthcare to all of our citizens, how is it possible we can justify spending billions more on weapons...?" Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders believes that this is exactly what needs to change. He proposes using the over-inflated military budget for more useful governmental programs such as healthcare, public educa
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