“There's no such thing as a free lunch. » When someone offers me a free lunch, I now understand that the lunch may not cost me money but that someone else produced the ingredients, transported them to the store and paid. Economics is the study of how goods and services are produced, distributed and used. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote that man's only motivation is self-interest. My personal interest is active when I buy shoes, develop my talents and participate in our economy. Last week I bought a pair of shoes at Short Hills Mall. The production, distribution and sale of shoes is a great example of division of labor. Companies make these shoes. These companies use division of labor. In these companies, there is a specific job for a person or a group of people. Division of labor is defined as the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of people. It is most often applied to mass production systems and is one of the basic organizing principles of the assembly line. Dividing work into simple, repetitive tasks eliminates unnecessary movements and limits the handling of different tools and parts. This is related to the example above; where the production, distribution and sale of shoes are distinct tasks in the separation of a work process. Another example of division of labor is this: two people are responsible for washing the dishes. A person has his own task for himself. One person does the dishes while the other dries them. As you can see, these two people have their own task assigned to them, just like businesses. A final example of scarcity is the following: if we all grow our own wheat, and then everything...... middle of paper ......f alternatives for spending my Friday evening: I can go At the movies, I can stay home and watch “The Big Bang Theory” on TV, or go out for hot chocolate with friends. If I choose to go to the cinema, the opportunity cost of doing so is what I would have chosen if I had not gone to the cinema - either watching "The Big Bang Theory" or going out for chocolate hot with friends. As you can see, the concept of opportunity cost is part of our daily lives. The economy is linked to everyone's life. It is (as previously stated) the study of how goods and services are produced, distributed and used. We make economic choices every day in our everyday lives; we may not realize it. In this essay, I explained to you how these economic concepts, opportunity cost and scarcity, relate to our daily lives.