Economics - The study of how people utilize and distribute scarce resources based on supply and demand. More specifically, it is the study of how people use their limited resources in an attempt to satisfy unlimited wants. Closed Market Economy - where trade and commerce are extremely limited to governmental controls or desires. This is often seen in medieval times where kingdoms kept to themselves and only produced what the King desired or locals needed. Wealth of Nations - Text of Adam Smith where he introduced the ideas of open markets and Laissez Faire Economics. Adam Smith - Author of Wealth of Nations. Open Market Economy - Where trade and commerce are encouraged outside of political boundaries. Laissez Faire Economics - "Hand's Off" economics where government interference in the economy is minimal. Malthus, Thomas Robert - British economist who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), arguing that population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results, unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease. Ricardo, David - British economist whose major work, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), supported the laws of supply and demand in a free market. The Iron Law of Wages was an alleged law of economics that asserted that wages will tend towards and reach the sustenance level due to market forces. The alleged law was named and popularized by the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid 1800's. The law is sometimes attributed to the work of David Ricardo, but this is often disputed because of his approach to the price of labor equaling the cost of maintaining that laborer. According to Lassalle, wages cannot fall below subsistence level because without subsistence laborers will be unable to work for long. However, competition among laborers for employment will drive wages down to this minimal level. Law of Diminishing return - Capitalism - Socialism - Command Economy - Communism - Consumer Choice - Competition - | 
