<p>I’m pondering the idea to study Economics and I would like to hear from people who have it as their major/minor. What was your reason for choosing Business/Economics?</p>
<p>This question (or a slight variation of it) was asked earlier:</p>
<p>Why should I study Business?</p>
<p>So I’ll give you the same answer I gave that person:</p>
<p>There are basically three things people do for a living:</p>
<p>(1) They work for a governmental body</p>
<p>(2) They work for a non-profit entity</p>
<p>(3) They work for a private business, or start their own business, or invest in a business.</p>
<p>The study of Business looks at how the third of these (which is about where 80% of all people work) can perform their duties better and achieve their goal–which is to make a profit for their owners (stockholders or individuals). </p>
<p>Business is also very closely related to public administration which looks at how the other two groups can achieve their goals.</p>
<p>Now it is true that you can major in political science to go into government, and it is true that you can major in sociology to go into non-profit work, and it is true that you can go into engineering or fine arts or the dance/theatre field to figure out what product or service a company should provide. But you have to go into business to understand how the product/service is to be financed, sold, promoted, produced, accounted for, and delivered profitably. And you also need to take business to find out how to report all this to the government and to figure out how much tax is to be paid on any profits.</p>
<p>There’s an old saying: “Whatever they are talking about, they are talking about money”. There’s a lot of truth to this–and it is why we study making money. When a company ceases to make a profit, that company eventually perishes–and the products and services it provided cease to be. In the long run, business provides a better standard of living to most people.</p>
<p>If you look at history, you’ll see that the richest man who ever lived (adjusting for inflation) was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth when he died in 1937 would be the equivalent of $190 billion in 2007 dollars. Yet, John D. Rockefeller lived in a time when there was no TV, no air conditioning, no internet, no cell phones, no video games, when air travel was inconvenient, when cars could only go about 40 miles per hour tops, when refrigerators with freezers were rare, when it took months to cross oceans, and indoor plumbing was still inconvenient–and even for most of his life, when there were no electric lights in most parts of the country. One could argue that the average person in the US today lives much better than John D. Rockefeller ever lived, despite all his wealth–and the major reason for this is not just the technological inventions, but also the business infrastructure that allowed them all to be spread to the average person here in the US. Nowadays that infrastructure is going global–and one could easily argue that this is benefitting people throughout the world.</p>
<p>Thus, I guess the reason I would say that I studied business was to determine how to improve the standard of living throughout the world. </p>
<p>So tell me, what was is your reason for wanting to major in economics? </p>
<p>P.S. Some businesses also focus on improving their communities and the lives of their employees, but unfortunately, that has never been a major goal of most businesses. Hopefully, that will be seen as at least a minor goal of business as the course curriculum changes over time in business schools.</p>
<p>Good answer Calcruzer. </p>
<p>I am in the same boat as the original poster. You want a real answer? It’s financially lucrative and opens doors. But then you have to keep in mind that you need the disposition to be a businessperson. In any field, you have to be good at what you do.</p>