Shadowing Practice: Eco 155: Principles of Macroeconomics Class 1 - Learn English Speaking with Video

you -

Thank you.

Okay, diddly doddly, neighborinos.

So let's go ahead and get started.

Like I said, they're going to be taping all semester long.

So if you come in late it's probably best if you come in through the back door And so if

You two or three guys right there would probably generally try to keep those seats open so maybe move I don't know.

That way if people come in late, would that be a huge issue if people are walking in or not really?

all over.

Alright, so basically try to fill up this side first rather than

leave kind of these couple of slots over here for students that come in late.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

All right.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- The President and the President of the United States.

Thank you.

So let's kind of start off here with our discussion What?

Thank you.

So, the father of economics is generally considered a guy by the name of Adam Smith.

And he wrote a book in 1776 called The Wealth of Nations.

Thank you.

By the way, I have really bad handwriting.

I'm going to try to do my best to make it

good for you but I generally say everything that I write and basically almost write everything that I say.

So Adam Smith was a Scottish economist,

and legend has it and I'm going to draw this picture of Here's Lower England and here's Scotland.

So we have Scotland up here.

All right, we've got Lower England here.

And the Thank you history is, the myth, the rumor, whatever, as he's going from Scotland to England,

he notices that basically as soon as he crosses the border, Everything in England is better.

People are richer.

They're better educated.

They're wealthier.

the kids live longer, infant mortality rates are lower,

basically every single metric that you could think of to say and compare life in one country to another, it's better in England than it is in Scotland.

Okay, and this gets into thinking about why is this, right?

I mean we have the same language,

similar culture, similar religion What is it that makes nations wealthy.

Right?

Because up until this point you have a system called mercantilism Thank you.

Thank you.

and mercantilism says well what makes a country rich as gold and silver right?

So under mercantilism you have this idea that you want gold and silver coming into the country, In other words, you want lots of exports.

So we're going to export goods and services, we're going to have gold and silver coming in.

That's what makes the country wealthy if we have lots of gold and silver.

What kind of goods and services can we make and sell to other people and then there's gold and silver coming in.

That's what makes the country wealthy.

right?

That was the system of mercantilism.

Adam Smith says, "No, I don't think that's right.

He says what makes the countries wealthy is something different than that.

This is a completely different way of thinking about the world.

Now what other significant event happens in 1776.

Declaration of Independence, right?

It is not coincidence that the Declaration of Independence on the Wealth of Nations Both come out in the same year.

That's not coincidence.

right?

Because people over here in America are saying to themselves look We have this king over here who's saying, do this, do that.

We don't think that's the way the world works.

We think people are smart enough to figure things out on their own.

We think people have Political freedom.

Adam Smith comes along and says essentially the exact same thing except under the

kind of guise of economics and here in essence he's saying look, in essence what you can do is you can have

Thank you an invisible hand Thank you can solve a lot of these economic problems.

All right.

because in essence what you have at this time you've got countries like France that will have 13 ,000 different regulations

Thank you.

on how to build a chair.

Thank you.

Not 13 ,000 different regulations total, 13 ,000 different regulations on how to build a chair.

All right?

If you have 13 ,000 different rules on how to build a chair, Thank you.

Is making a chair easy or is it hard?

That's going to be pretty hard, right?

And you know some of these regulations counteract each other, right?

This regulation says the chair must be no higher than 32 inches

and there's another regulation that says the chair must be no lower than 32 inches. or whatever.

And Adam Smith says, "Look, you don't need all this." If you're a company building chairs, and your chairs collapse when people sit in them,

you're going to go out of business.

if you're a company that makes chairs and

when you sit in your chairs people are comfortable and the chair doesn't collapse you're going to stay in business

The invisible hand is going to say, these people that are making products well are going to stay in business.

These people that don't make products well are not going to stay in business.

you don't need the government coming in and saying we have all these different regulations on how you're going to build things.

In essence, he's saying, just like you have over here in the U .S.,

In Philadelphia in 1776 people saying look we don't need a government coming in and saying all this stuff.

People are smart enough to figure things out for themselves.

It's the exact same thing over here.

All right.

It's an entirely different new way of thinking about the world.

Clock.

So, let's look at the economic problem. in detail, all right?

Thank you.

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There it is.

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That's what we do.

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How are we going to turn resources into goods and services?

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This is what economists deal with.

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Right?

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And what we have here is that these resources are limited and scarce.

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meaning that there's not an infinite amount of them.

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and since we're not God we cannot create goods and services out of thin air

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We have to use these resources to make these goods and services.

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That means these guys.

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are going to be limited and scarce.

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So which goods and services do we produce?

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How are we going to produce them?

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Which sets of resources do we use to make those goods and services?

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That's what economists do.

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Economics is really a decision science.

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Thank you.

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It is not something to deal with stocks and bonds.

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we have stuff to say about that.

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But it's basically a decision science.

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Which sets of resources do we want to turn into goods and services?

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How are we going to turn those resources into goods and services?

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how we're going to distribute those resources, those goods and services, etc. That's what economics is all about, right?

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If economics was about picking stocks and bonds, And people ask me that all the time, what stock should I buy?

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Dude, I don't know.

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If I knew what stock to buy, I wouldn't be working.

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If your broker knew what stock to buy, he would not be working.

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This is what economists deal with.

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We turn with these resources and these goods and services.

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So let's kind of define some terms here.

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We kind of have an idea of what scarcity is.

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Scarcity is the fact Thank you.

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that there are insufficient resources Thank you.

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to produce all the goods and services that people want.

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Okay.

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Right?

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So you're gonna have to make a choice.

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Basically that's what that says.

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which should be obvious.

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So we know that these guys are limited and scarce We know we can't create these guys out of thin air, therefore these guys are going to be limited and scarce.

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How are we going to distribute them?

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That's economics in a nutshell.

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What we study is how do we get from here to here.

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That's what we study.

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Thank you.

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Okay.

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So when we're looking at these goods and services, let's look at these different types.

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We've got goods, Thank you.

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All right?

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things that are scarce and desirable, Thank you.

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beyond what is freely available, Thank you.

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All right, so here's our goods, stuff that basically all the goods and services are is just stuff that we want.

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All right but it doesn't have to be tangible things.

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Leisure time is a good.

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stuff that we want.

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All right, so we have these economic goods.

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Thank you.

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and we've got these economic bats.

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So, our economic bads are things that we don't want.

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Things that are undesirable.

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Pollution, crime.

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et cetera.

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Right?

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So economists are interested in, well, okay, What sets of goods and services do we want?

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What sets of goods and services and things do we don't want, economic bads we don't want?

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and how we're going to achieve that.

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And that this definition might not be the same for everything.

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Right?

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So, for example, Here's a pizza.

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So when it was just my wife and I, we could get by by just ordering one pizza because there was just two of us.

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Now we have three kids and we have to get like four or five, but That's another story.

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So here's our pizza here, right?

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So she hates pepperoni pizza.

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She hates it.

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So I love it, right?

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So I'm getting half pepperoni and we're getting half cheese.

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and invariably, Thank you.

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You're going to get a little bitty piece of pepperoni on that little slice of pizza, and that whole piece of pizza is now infected.

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Right?

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It's not a matter of I'm going to pull the pepperoni off and eat this cheese pizza.

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It's the whole slice is infected.

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And so, when it comes to eating, she's eating this part right here.

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Right?

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So here's her, and then here's me eating all this part, right?

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Yay me, right?

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That's why my cholesterol is at 712 and hers is at 110.

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I don't know what my cholesterol is.

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But the point is that to me pepperoni pizza is an economic good, I like it.

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To her, it's an economic bet.

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right?

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So it's not that there's a universal definition for goods and bads.

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Goods are just stuff that you desire, the bads are things that you don't desire.

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All right.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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- Thank you.

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- Thank you.

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Bless you.

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Poo.

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A couple of other ideas we want to keep before we start looking at these resources in more detail.

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That's the idea of positive economics and normative economics.

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Positive basically looks at what is.

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Thank you.

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Normative looks at what should be.

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or what ought to be.

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All right.

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So these guys right here are testable.

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These guys right here are value judgments.

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Okay.

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So let's look at an example.

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The federal budget deficit.

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Thank you. should be smaller.

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Okay.

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The federal budget deficit Thank you.

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is $300 billion.

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minimum wage, should be increased.

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increasing the minimum wage, Increases, arrow going up, increases, arrow going down, decreases.

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Increases.

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the unemployment rate Thank you.

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among black males.

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I've got four statements here.

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One, two, three, four.

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Which guy's positive, which guy's normative?

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The federal budget deficit should be smaller, positive and normative.

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Normative, right?

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This guy is normative.

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Thank you.

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Federal budget deficit is $300 billion, positive or normative?

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Positive.

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Is it true?

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Maybe.

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Maybe.

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but it's still a positive statement.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Minimum wage should be increased, positive or normative.

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Normative.

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Increase in minimum wage, increases in unemployment among black males, positive or normative.

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positive.

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Is it true?

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Maybe.

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The idea here is that it's testable.

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Thank you.

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maybe increasing the unemployment the minimum wage makes unemployment among black males goes Damn.

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Maybe it has no effect.

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The point is that it's a testable hypothesis.

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You can go out and you can collect data and you can see whether it's true or not.

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These guys are untestable hypotheses.

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They're value judgments right?

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the minimum wage should be increased.

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Somebody else says, "Oh I think it should go down." We're done.

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All right.

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There's nothing left to say.

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So generally speaking, what type of economics do you think we want to do?

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Positive or normative?

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Positive.

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Right?

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Because this right here is like we're done.

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And what else can you say?

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All right, we'll pick it up from here. On Friday.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Eco 155: Principles of Macroeconomics Class 1 - Learn English Speaking with Video

Why Practice Speaking with This Video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

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What is the Shadowing Technique?