ot acquired the education and training necessary to leave behind a third-world environment and compete in the global marketplace. As a result, South American countries have untapped natural resources, citizens that cannot make a decent living, and a need to regroup and make better use of its space and resourcesùyet without the knowledge of how to do so. South America needs to raise the level of its education, teach its people how to succeed in business, and organize its companies to operate effectively.
3. We all make a trade-off between work and leisure during any given day, and to keep that trade-off in perspective we need to keep in mind the opportunity cost of work. Every hour that we spend working costs us not only an hour of leisure time but also the lost opportunity to do something and all the effects thereof. For example, if a man decides to stay an extra hour late at work and foregoes attending the after-work real estate conference as a result, he not only loses the hour of leisure but the experience of attending the conference. If by attending the conference, he could have learned how to make a million dollars a year and quit his regular job, the opportunity cost of that extra work hour must be tallied up in terms of the million dollars a year he is missing. By the same token, each additional hour of work he engages in causes the opportunity costùand therefore the loss to himùto rise. The opportunity cost can vary depending on what opportunities are lost, so even if the manÆs wage rate remains the same, he could lose various opportunities that would have netted him differing amounts of benefits from small amounts of money to huge amounts of money, better health, more friends, and so on.
4. If I had been the economic advisor to Nikita Khrushchev, I would have started my analysis of what, how, and for whom to produce goods and services by identifying who the consumers were in the Soviet Union and what types ...