Reflecting on Supply and Demand

For years now, whenever my mom likes to complain about how much of a “primadonna” I am, she defaults to telling the same story of me when I was three years old. She’ll tell our friends and family how shocked she was that at the age of 3, I was demanding I had chocolate covered strawberries with whip cream as my birthday dessert rather than a funfetti birthday cake. She would then proceed to explain that it was an issue because buying strawberries in January was hard and not to mention expensive. Of course, I wasn’t able to understand that at age 3, and because my mom loves me, as the consumer she was willing to pay more for the strawberries so I could have the birthday of my dreams.

Flash forward 14 years, and I’m a senior in high school sitting in first period AP Microeconomics while Mr. Stewart teaches us about the relationship between demand, supply, elasticity, and utility. One of the key components of economics as a whole is the relationship between supply and demand. The two are inversely proportional so, when supply is high demand is low, and when supply is low demand is high. Depending on the situation, price is also affected. Using the example of my birthday dessert, in the time of January, strawberries are not in season making the supply very low. If a consumer really needs strawberries, say for a primadonna daughter turning three years old, they will pay whatever price because those are the only ones available. So, producers can get away with increasing the price of their product to ensure that they make good profit. If I were to know this information at age 3, maybe I would have settled for a funfetti birthday cake.