Amy Finkelstein ECON 490 Blog

Blog Post Econ 490 I am happy to say that I have never been involved in a conflict in the workplace. I do remember an incident that took place while in high school at a restaurant where some of my friends worked. The restaurant was a new hamburger joint in town and most of the employees were high school students besides upper management. I had several friends that worked at the establishment and I remember them telling me a story of conflict in the workplace. Since this is a real situation I will be adjusting the story to keep the privacy of the employees involved. The issue was between two male employees. It was the fall of my senior year and one of the employees, let's call him Brad, had been dating his girlfriend for a few years. He was planning on going to the homecoming dance that was a few weeks out with her. Out of the blue, Brad was dumped by his girlfriend. Brad was shocked by his breakup and then found out that his girlfriend had been going out with one of the cowo...

I found the three New York Times articles to be interesting. Each article focused on different things however there was an overlapping theme of humans being good and fair people.  The article titled, The Power of Altruism , focused on the problem that western society has created the assumption that people are naturally selfish. The article talked about how expecting people to be selfish effects their inclination to be good. They talked about examples of implementing fines for parents that are late picking their children up from school and limiting vacation days of firefighters and the negative impact it had created in that community or organization. Creating situations to become more economic and less focused on altruism has caused, “utilitarian thinking has become the normal way we do social analysis and see the world. We’ve wound up with a society that is less cooperative, less trusting, less effective and less lovely.” The article titled , When a Child Thinks Life is Un...