Team Production

After reading the assigned articles, it made me more aware of growing up with your siblings as an example of teamwork. Personally I grew up with 3 younger sisters and in ways, I really see how this better prepared me to work with others today. Specifically with the sibling who is closest to me in age, one of my sisters is two years younger than me. Thinking back to my childhood, there were a lot of scenarios where my siblings and I were forced to work as a team. For most of us, these experiences from a young age serve as the building blocks for teamwork later on in life. From my observations, people who are only children don’t work in teams as well people with siblings. This might be a unique result of the only children I know, or could be a more common occurrence.

Building on the belief that people’s teamwork skills benefit from growing up with siblings, we are faced with ample opportunities to both work on and use these skills in the real world. From playing team sports in middle/high school all the way up to the jobs we will work for the majority of our careers. The success of a high school football team relies heavily on the ability of the players to play as a team. One team could have a handful of elite players, but not perform as well as a team with comparatively worse in skill players who play as a cohesive unit. The team that is willing to work well together is rewarded with the ability to be victorious. In college a lot of the classes we take require us to work in small groups. This can be for group projects, homework assignments, etc. If a few students decided not to participate and pull their own weight and “Let George do it,” then the group will probably not perform as well, directly effecting the result of the group’s work. How well the group does is reliant on how well the members work together. After college, a lot of us will be required to work as part of a team for our jobs. In certain divisions of the business, people are often required to work with a variety of coworkers on a project. On a larger level, each division of the company is required to work together. For example the HR must work with the Sales and Finance divisions. At the end of the day, the success of the company is in large part reliant on how well the individuals are able to work together. A common theme behind these examples is that the success of the team is related to how well the teams work together. Success can be seen as an incentive to work well with your team members.

I believe that being able to work well with others in a team is a valuable skill to have in order to lead a successful life. From a larger level and applying this belief to the readings, it seems that for the most part the concept of working as team can be applied to individuals making up our complete society. If every individual decided to act selfishly, then at the end of the day the success of the society might not reach it’s complete potential. We have to assume that most people are going to act in their best interests. However, it is crucial that parts of our society work together in order for continued success.

Consumption Spending / Future Income Risk

As assumed in the prompt, I don’t yet have a job lined up for when I graduate. This along with a variety of other factors has and will continue to effect my consumption spending both now and after I graduate. For the most part everything I have done in college has had an opportunity cost associated with it that also has had an effect on my consumption spending. From my understanding of the prompt, two key factors must be looked at when considering my future consumption spending potential: 1) What type of job I will have after graduation and its location   and 2) Decisions I have made in college that have contributed to an increase in my savings account vs. cost me money that I could have saved.

Ultimately the largest factor associated with my future consumption spending is what type of job I will have after graduation and where it is located. I will first focus on the location of the jobs as it has a variety of interesting and important factors that come along with it. Like most of us, if I choose to get a job close to home I would be able to live with my parents for a short time period if need be in order to save up more money towards a nicer place of my own. This would allow me to save the money that I would be spending on rent, property taxes, food, and/or a variety of other factors that would be added in that come with living on your own. I could save up this money for a later use, which I’m sure would be the best use. This could also create an opportunity where I would have a lot of extra spending cash to spend on toys and/or vacations with my friends. However, my parents would never allow this, and by now I realize this would be a terrible financial move in the long run. Either way, living at home would directly correlate to the possibility of increased consumption spending. Another aspect of getting a job close to home, but not living at home, is that where I am from the cost of living is much lower than in larger cities like Chicago and some of the nicer suburbs. However, there is the trade off of wage difference included to this as well. For an entry-level job, the salary difference would be minimal, but later on in life I would have much more income potential in a larger city. This is a trade off I need to consider when deciding if going back home to work would actually be worth it. If I decide to go straight to living in a city like Chicago or somewhere similar, I would be spending much more on rent and other living expenses. I would have less extra spending cash and probably be saving/ investing less, but ultimately would have much more business connections (friends from school) and long run income potential.

The type of job I have after college is also an important factor in the potential of my consumption spending. For the most part, a lot of entry-level jobs I am applying for have roughly the same starting income. Some of these also have commissions attached to them that could be used as an incentive to work harder in order to make even more money. Being an economics major, there are a lot of possible career options I could pursue. As compared to say an accounting major, there are a lot less “guaranteed good money” jobs for recent graduates, that could also contribute to my own consumption spending as compared to a friend of mine studying accounting. I see this at only the entry-level though, as I believe after a few years economics students have the possibility to have just as good, if not better jobs that accounting majors.

Now I will shift to focusing on the choices I have made in the past and considering their impacts on my consumption spending in the future. As a full time college student without a job during the school year, I have mainly relied on money I have saved up from summer jobs as well as received from my parents in order to pay for the majority of my things at school. I could have worked part time while being a student and saved this money up, but I feel I would have missed out on a lot of things I have had the privilege of experiencing during my time here on campus. We have all learned early on in our economics education that there is opportunity costs associated to almost every decision. This is especially true to how one decides to live while being a student in college. I could have spent my free time making minimum wage at some job here in town, but decided not to. On top of studying in my free time, I joined a variety of groups on campus that I was interested in. I could have been making and saving money in a job, but I decided to get the most out of my college experience through these organizations. One of these organizations is a prominent social fraternity here on campus. This organization has cost me a lot of money (dues, going out multiple nights a week, special clothing for events, etc.) that I could have been saving or investing. This is money that I won’t have to spend upon graduation. However, justifying this, I believe my experiences in the groups I have joined have been an investment in myself. I might not have as much spending cash when I graduate, but the experiences I have gone through within my fraternity will benefit me in the real world when I graduate. My decision to join these organizations might have cost me more money, where I could be working, but I believe they will pay off in the future.

Working as a lifeguard/head lifeguard during summers during high school and a few of my college summers, I was able to work 40 plus hours a week every summer and save up a decent amount of money to bring with me to college. However, instead of working in college, I used this money to live off as well as for leisure times such as vacations and new electronics. Because of this, I will have less of a savings account upon graduation, and will need to rely more on the income from my job.