Class Update...

So today was reckoning day.

Last week, if you remember from my post, I got very upset with my class for not doing their homework and flipped out on them.

Today, I had my class line up outside and get there homework out in order to enter class. As it turned out only about half my class did their homework. So they spent the hour doing work around the high school for the discipline officer.

The other half of the class that did their work was suprisingly interactive and engaged. We got through a ton of material and it was by far the most rewarding class I've taught so far.

Some highlights:

When discussing indirect (sales) tax, I told them about how powerful a weapon this can be for government to discourage a type of activity.

So we talked about taxing petrol (gas) and how if one city taxes it at 10%, you go to the neighboring city that isn't taxing gas and pay less money. I then asked what happens if the country taxes gas at a high amount and it doesn't make sense to drive to Chile to get gas, what are you going to do?

Their response:

PROTEST!!!!

Kill the President!

Steal the gas!

My response:

No, you can't protest, you can't kill the president, you can't steal. Think about what economic decisions you would make.

Their response:

Ohhhhhh...not use gas!!! (they got the concept and talked about switching to natural gas which is somewhat popular with taxi drivers)

My question:

What things should we not tax?

Their response:

BEER!!!!!!

My response:

Ok, no tax on beer. Who's happy? (most of the class cheers) What are the benefits of cheap beer? What about the negatives?

They eventually realized that the negatives of the population being drunk were real, and had real costs to the public (cancer, fights, car accidents, bad moral decisions, domestic violence, family problems, etc.) So then they wanted to ban beer!!