Time Well Spent

Do you know why the number 8760 is important? It’s the number of hours in a year. What if we thought about how much of our life it takes to buy something, like a carton of eggs or a house, instead of thinking about how many dollars it costs?

This curriculum explores an alternate way of thinking about the “cost” of any object: the effort that is “hidden” underneath a dollar bill.

Using this curriculum, learners explore historical trends in productivity, how wealth is created in modern economies, and how to technology increases in quality and decreases in price over time.

“Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.””

— Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Watch the Presentation:

ACRE Scholar and UCA professor Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl presents the “Time Well Spent” lesson and activity to a group of Arkansas educators at a Teaching Free Enterprise in Arkansas workshop.

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