Discussion Questions on Aplia

In my opinion, the families which use the service must earn more money per unit of time than those families that don’t use it. The family should be able to earn more than the high-quality laundry service cost in the period time that it cost to do the laundry themselves. Say, if members of one family only have part time jobs, they have enough time to do the laundry themselves. The opportunity cost for them to do so is the time it cost to walk to the laundry place and load and unload wash. It may take some of their time of watching TV and having fun. On the other hand, for those families that have full time jobs and make more money per hour, the opportunity cost for them are much higher. If they walk to the laundry place inside of asking the service to pick their clothes up and wash for them, it will cost their time of relaxing after the whole day working, and the scarce of relaxing time will lead a bad work next day; if it affects their salaries, that will be a big problem in a long term run. Therefore, spending some money and use the high-quality laundry service is worth for them.
The key differences between these two types of families should be the money they can earn in the unit of time. It is the opportunity cost for those tow types of families to do the laundry.


For the second discussion question, my answer is: the value of the particular item and the cost of washing it are the factors that might influence my decision.
According to the article, American washing machines are not good for clothes, of course I will send the expensive clothes to the service. For example, there is a $1,000 dollar value dress, and it is cost $10 to make the service wash it for me, and I can wear it 100 times before it is wore out.
If I wash it at home, say, it cost $2 to wash it every single time, but I can only wear it 10 times before it is wore out or broken by the washing machine. That is, if I send the dress to the service to wash after every time I wore it, it costs $20 for each time I wear it [($10*100+$1,000)/100=$20], but it cost $102 for each time if I wash it at home. If $1,000 is not a big deal for you, then think about it in this way: if you wash the dress at home, after 10 times wash, you through it away, but you still need another dress which likes it and also cost for $1,000 because you need this kind of dress for 100 times. Therefore, you need 10 dresses for 100 times, and that is $1,000*10 = $10,000, and total washing cost is $2*10*100 = $2,000, so total cost is $12,000. It is easy to see that it’s way more expensive to do so.
However, I will wash a $10 value clothes at home.


They are both efficient, in my point of view. The situation in Europe is different from it in the US. European washing machines use less water, and it is also smaller and washing clothes in a soft way and keeping clothes in good shapes for a longer time. It is efficient for European because clothes cost more there. For Americans, they believe in “time is money”; therefore, to save time is the goal for them to use the washing machines that take less time. Even the machines are not as good for clothes as those in Europe, but the clothes are cheaper in the US. Also, they may want to save time from doing laundry to work and make more money.

"Sentimental" Value or $$$

I was reading this article about some land that belonged to Glen H. Curtiss, also known as "the fastest man on earth," because of the land speed record that he set and also because of his aircraft innovations that helped fight two world wars. There is a big feud about his historical land because there are many people who want to make money off of it by making a waterfront park or building condominiums so that the wealthy locals won't move away from their town. The man who wants to start the building projects, Michael Doyle, says that he views the new project as "a vital ingredient in shoring up the village's tax base and keeping wealthy locals from moving to lake or mountain resorts elsewhere in the Finger Lakes wine country and beyond." Many are very upset by these proposals because the land is "sentimental" to certain people in the town. Many of these "Curtiss devotees" want to actually spend money to make a memorial park for the historical land. Even Doyle, the man behind the building ideas, says that a memorial park would be nice; however, the money is not available. It is easy to see both sides of this issue, but the fact it that there is a potential for their town to make millions of dollars off of this land. Is the historical value of the land worth more than the actual money that they could potentially make? Just as Doyle states, "You can disagree or agree with condos on the lakefront, but the fact is there's economics involved. Nobody's going to be able to afford to stay living here."

Here Here for Paying for Prison

Well, I’ve been pondering on the topic of yesterday’s class of how crime is profitable. I couldn’t believe we, America’s best and brightest, are paying nearly $30 grand a year to get our education and try to make something out of ourselves, when these criminals get to spend a lousy 5 years in pretty much the same conditions without paying anything; actually, benefiting by $18 grand. Why do they get a free ride?

I found an article where a county jail made their prisoners pay $20 dollars a day. Despite the many criticisms, this program actually worked. The article also made the point that they originally didn’t expect this to work because criminals are already so far behind, but they made the payments.

I say screw them. They know what they did. They have that $18 grand from selling the stolen car sitting at home. I have no remorse for anyone who breaks the law and benefits from it. Especially since I’m sitting here trying to keep my grades up so I don’t get the little scholarship money I have taken away.

Why don’t they try this out in more places? Where would the money go? Should we feel bad for the criminals who would have the criminal record and in debt?

Just for reference, let’s see how much a MC student would benefit from stealing some cars. First, we have the choice to stay in school. Pay the $150 grand for 5 years of school, plus whatever interest on student loans there are, and then hope to God the school repays you with a good enough job to just pass by in life. Second choice, steal a few cars and finally get caught on the third car. After benefiting $60 grand per car and putting it in a savings account, you get sent to 5 years of prison. You finally get out and return to life with your $180 grand (plus interest over those 5 years) sitting in the bank. Granted, you would have to get an education while in prison to be on the same page as a graduate, but being $180 grand richer as opposed to $150 in the hole just seems very tempting (ignoring the other factors of course).

Maryland vs. Walmart: TANSTAAFL

The Maryland state legislature recently passed legislation requiring all businesses with 10,000 or more employees to spend at least 8% of their payroll on health care. Ostensibly, the state's goal is to reduce its Medicaid burden by requiring large employers, such as Walmart, to shoulder more of the burden. Now, assuming that Walmart does not have an endless pool of money in which to dole out more health care on its employees and continue its other operations at their current funding levels, what sort of tradeoffs is Walmart likely to make? Let me make one prediction: Walmart will reduce the wages it pays its workers in order to offset the impact of the higher health care benefits. It's not clear to me if Walmart's workers will be better off in the end. What other tradeoffs do you think Walmart (and the other large employers) will make?