The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which
consumers largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen. striving to make profits, produce these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under
competitive pressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the demand of individual
consumers, coupled with the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and how resources are used to produce it.
An important factor in a marke-oriented economy is the
mechanism by which
consumer demands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this
mechanism is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall in
response to relative demands of
consumers and supplies offered by sellerproduces. If the product is in short supply relative to the demand, the price will be bid up and some
consumers will be eliminated from the market. If, on the other hand, producing more of a
commodity results in reducing its cost, this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers. which in turn will lower the price and permit more
consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the regulating
mechanism in the American economy system.
The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources(private property), and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, adn produce goods and services for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the
ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual.
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