Amen

Mike Moffat chanelling William Polley:

I loved William J. Polley's comments on a silly passage in a CNN/Money article, particularly where he states:

As I try to tell my students, a good or service is not elastic or inelastic--the demand for or the supply of it is. Second, inelastic demand doesn't mean that people will buy it no matter what the cost--budget constraints ensure that eventually the curve slopes back to the left as you go up higher in price. Third, if you want to get really pedantic, it's not a drop in demand, but a drop in the quantity demanded as this is a change induced by higher prices (caused by increased input costs which reduced the supply). Fourth, one should consider short-run vs. long run demand for gasoline since it takes a while for habits to change.

This sounds a great deal like me discussing economics with my non-economist business school colleagues. Particularly the point about demand vs. quantity demanded. They often fail to see the distinction, probably because they did not have EclectEcon teaching them undergraduate microeconomics.

Yeah, I stole the whole post.