Question

What are the four scarce resources that any economic system must allocate between society's competing wants and needs?

a) Forest, minerals, ocean, and energy resources
b) Machines, technology, minerals, and energy resources
c) Information technology, physical capital, financial capital, and high skilled workers
d) Land resources, labor, capital goods, and entrepreneurship
e) High skilled workers, low skilled workers, knowledge workers, and service sector workers

Answer 1

The four scarce resources any economic system must allocate are land resources, labor, capital goods, and entrepreneurship. These factors of production are limited and must be managed to address scarcity and make decisions on production and allocation.

Step-by-step explanation:

The four scarce resources that any economic system must allocate between society's competing wants and needs are: land resources, labor, capital goods, and entrepreneurship. These categories encompass tangible resources like land and raw materials, human resources including skilled and unskilled labor, assets used in production like machinery and facilities, and the initiative and risk-taking involved in starting new businesses. Societies must decide how to allocate these resources to address scarcity, which is the limited nature of resources in contrast to unlimited human wants, and make choices regarding what goods and services to produce, how to produce them and for whom they should be produced. Each decision comes with a trade-off as choosing to allocate resources to one area means less for others, illustrated by the economic concept of the production possibilities frontier.