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Welcome to our classroom blog!  I sincerely hope you find this a valuable resource for information and sharing ideas.  Please remember to observe classroom guidelines on the blog but also understand blogs are often informal rather than formal writing assignments.

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Tesla and the Struggle to Make a Profit

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Tesla and Elon Musk's Twitter* are both pretty big deals, but the deals that are being made aren't good. Tesla recently came out with a $35000 car -- their cheapest yet. While they keep trying to make cars more affordable, the company itself is losing money. Despite being a little over 10 years since its first car (the Tesla Roadster) was sold, Tesla still does not have a viable profit model. Just this week, Musk announced that they still wouldn't be able to make a profit in this first quarter of the year. Tesla had two consecutive quarters of profit in 2018. The company had its first profit with a net profit of $139.5 million in the 4th quarter and $311.5 in the third. In the same period last year, Tesla had lost $675 million. Evidentally, the company is moving in the right direction. During this time, Elon Musk also tweeted "Model 3 was the best-selling car in the US in terms of revenue and the 5th best-selling car in terms of volume". However, this success may...
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Is Fast Food Monopolistic Competition or an Oligopoly?

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     Monopolistic competition acts as a sort of middle-ground between perfect competition and pure monopoly markets. Many companies exist with highly differentiated products by possessing different brands, versions, qualities, prices (market power), etc. To gain an edge over competitors, a firm in a monopolistic competitive market will utilize a lot of advertising and branding of its products (nonprice competition).      Oligopoly can be pretty similar to the monopolistic competition but also very different in other respects. The main point of difference is that there are relatively few firms in a true oligopoly and hence entry/exit is incredibly difficult. Depending on the number of firms an oligopoly, it can either be "tight" with 2-3 firms controlling the whole market or "loose" whereas 6-7 firms control around 70-80% of the market. Firms in an oligopoly can have differentiated products and be price makers as is the case in monopolistic competition, how...
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Economics Behind Recycling

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Recycling is a much-needed thing with the current way our environment is headed. As CO2 emissions rise, and the amount of trash and plastic in places they don't belong, recycling can help some of our environmental issues. Not only does recycling benefit our environment in a positive way, but it also has a large impact on our economy. Each year, recycling companies generate $200 billion for the U.S. economy, although this number fluctuates up and down this is still quite a large number in of itself. Although it might seem as if the U.S. was profiting off of recycling due to crushing cans and selling them to recycling plants, that is not true. First of all the recycling industry bring in many jobs. According to the EPA, recycling accounts for 757,000 jobs and $36.6 billion in wages across America. Think of every single green garbage can waiting outside of a house to be picked up by trash collectors. Then think of all the facilities this recycled material needs to be brought to a...
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