Reflection on Scooter Supply

So this week in Weserville was all about supply. We learned about supply curves and the different factors that might affect supply. Supply is simply the willingness and ability of a producer to offer a good or service for sale. Producers a driven by profit motive so the higher a price is, they more they will want to sell of that item, but the lower the price, the less they will want to sell. This is what makes price and supply have a direct relationship. If any other factor besides price is changed, then the whole supply curve moves. Factors that can shift the supply curve are input costs, labor, producer expectations, technology, government actions, and the number pr producers. Any change in these results in a shift of the graph.
Everyone got into groups this week and developed a scooter that they planned to produce. The scooter needed to have all the features and everyone needed to find a reasonable cost to produce the scooter. Then, we had to decide the amount of profit we wanted to make and the from there we could determine the price by adding the cost and the profit. We could clearly see on a supply curve of our scooter that we developed, that the greater the price the scooter was sold, the more scooters we wanted to sell. The quantity that we wanted to sell was only increased when we were told that new technology made our engines easier to produce. This means that our curve shifted so that we were more willing to sell our product at lower prices than before. The curve shifted down and to the right to show that more was being produced at a lower price.
I personally found the concept of supply very interesting because it answers many of the fundamental questions I have about how the economy works. Once the concepts of supply and demand are understood, one can move on to more complicated features of the subject. Supply and demand are then used to find the equilibrium point. The simple concept of supply becomes something so much more important. I feel that the scooter example that we all did helped greatly to visualize many of the concepts that we were learning. The curves were also easier to understand when the product was my own and I was to one seeking a profit. Supply is so important to understand moving ahead not only in this class, but also in life. In understanding supply, we can understand why it is that companies will charge a certain price. We can also be prepared if we ever go into business by knowing that we need to be conscious of the amount of profit we want to make so we increase the price. The balance of supply and demand is how the economy works with the consumer and producers interacting.