Crash Course

Crash Course (also known as Driving Academy) is a 1988 made for television teen film directed by Oz Scott.

Plot

Crash Course centers on a group of high schoolers in a driver’s education class; many for the second or third time. The recently divorced teacher, super-passive Larry Pearl, is on thin ice with the football fanatic principal, Principal Paulson, who is being pressured by the district superintendent to raise driver’s education completion rates or lose his coveted football program. With this in mind, Principal Paulson and his assistant, with a secret desire for his job, Abner Frasier, hire an outside driver’s education instructor with a very tough reputation, Edna Savage, aka E.W. Savage, who quickly takes control of the class.

The plot focuses mostly on the students and their interactions with their teachers and each other. In the beginning, Rico is the loner with just a few friends, Chadley is the bookish nerd with few friends who longs to be cool and also longs to be a part of Vanessa’s life who is the young, friendly and attractive girl who had to fake her mother’s signature on her driver’s education permission slip. Kichi is the hip-hop Asian kid who often raps what he has to say and constantly flirts with Maria, the rich foreign girl who thinks that the right-of-way on the roadways always goes to (insert awesomely fake foreign Latino accent) “my father’s limo”. Finally you have stereotypical football meathead J.J., who needs to pass his English exam to keep his eligibility and constantly asks out and gets rejected by Alice, the tomboy whose father owns “Santini & Son” Concrete Company. Alice is portrayed as being the “son” her father wanted.

Economic system

An economic system is a system of production, resource allocation, exchange, and distribution of goods and services in a society or a given geographic area. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community. As such, an economic system is a type of social system. The mode of production is a related concept.

The study of economic systems includes how these various agencies and institutions are linked to one another, how information flows between them, and the social relations within the system (including property rights and the structure of management).

The analysis of economic systems traditionally focused on the dichotomies and comparisons between market economies and planned economies, and on the distinctions between capitalism and socialism. Subsequently the categorization of economic systems expanded to include other topics and models that do not conform to the traditional dichotomy. Today the dominant form of economic organization at the world level is based on market-oriented mixed economies.

Market economy

A market economy is an economy in which decisions regarding investment, production, and distribution are based on supply and demand, and prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. The major defining characteristic of a market economy is that investment decisions and the allocation of producer goods are mainly made by negotiation through markets. This is contrasted with a planned economy, where investment and production decisions are embodied in a plan of production.

Market economies can range from hypothetical laissez-faire and free market variants to regulated markets and interventionist variants. In reality, market economies do not exist in pure form, since societies and governments regulate them to varying degrees. Different perspectives exist as to how strong a role the government should have in both guiding the market economy and addressing the inequalities the market produces. Most existing market economies include a degree of economic planning or state-directed activity, and are thus classified as mixed economies. The term free-market economy is sometimes used synonymously with market economy, but it may also refer to laissez-faire or free-market anarchism.

Mixed economy

A mixed economy is variously defined as an economic system consisting of a mixture of either markets and economic planning, public ownership and private ownership, or free markets and economic interventionism. However, in most cases, "mixed economy" refers to market economies with strong regulatory oversight and governmental provision of public goods, although some mixed economies also feature a number of state-run enterprises.

In general the mixed economy is characterised by the private ownership of the means of production, the dominance of markets for economic coordination, with profit-seeking enterprise and the accumulation of capital remaining the fundamental driving force behind economic activity. But unlike a free-market economy, the government would wield indirect macroeconomic influence over the economy through fiscal and monetary policies designed to counteract economic downturns and capitalism's tendency toward financial crises, unemployment, and growing income and wealth disparities, along with playing a role in interventions that promote social welfare. Subsequently, some mixed economies have expanded in scope to include a role for indicative economic planning and/or large public enterprise sectors.

Economy

An economy (Greek οίκος-household and νέμoμαι - manage) is an area of the production, distribution or trade, and consumption of goods and services by different agents in a given geographical location. The economic agents can be individuals, businesses, organizations, or governments. Transactions occur when two parties agree to the value or price of the transacted good or service, commonly expressed in a certain currency.

Economic activity is spurred by production which uses natural resources, labor, and capital. It has changed over time due to technology (automation, accelerator of process, reduction of cost functions), innovation (new products, services, processes, new markets, expands markets, diversification of markets, niche markets, increases revenue functions) such as that which produces intellectual property and changes in industrial relations (child labor being replaced with universal access to education).

A given economy is the result of a set of processes that involves its culture, values, education, technological evolution, history, social organization, political structure and legal systems, as well as its geography, natural resource endowment, and ecology, as main factors. These factors give context, content, and set the conditions and parameters in which an economy functions.