tonne of tea, 3.3 tonnes of wool is forgone. In this case, Country A has a comparative advantage over Country B for the production of tea because it has a lower opportunity cost. On the other hand, to make 1 tonne of wool, Country A has to give up 5 tonnes of tea, while Country B would need to give up 0.3 tonnes of tea, so Country B has a comparative advantage over the production of wool. Absolute advantage on the other hand refers to how efficiently a party can use its resources to produce goods and services compared to others, regardless of its opportunity costs. For example, if Country A can produce 1 tonne of wool using less manpower compared to Country B, then it is more efficient and has an absolute advantage over wool production, even if it does not have a comparative advantage because it has a higher opportunity cost (5 tonnes of tea). Absolute advantage refers to how efficiently resources are used whereas comparative advantage refers to how little is sacrificed in terms of opportunity cost. When a country produces what it has the comparative advantage of, even if it does not have an absolute advantage, and trades for those products it does not have a comparative advantage over, it maximises its output since the opportunity cost of its production is lower than its competitors. By focusing on specialising this way, it also maximises its level of consumption. Opportunity cost at governmental level Much like individual decisions, it is often the case that governments must consider opportunity cost when enacting legislation. Taking universal basic healthcare as an example, the opportunity cost at the government level is quite clear. Assume that implementing basic healthcare would cost a government $1 billion: the explicit opportunity cost to implement such legislation would be a combined $1 billion that could have been spent on education, housing, transport infrastructure, environmental protection, or military defence, for example. For this particular scenario, the implicit cost is quite minimal. Only the cost of producing such legislation through human labour and the time of production would need to be accounted for. While the previous situation’s implicit cost may have been somewhat negligible at a government level, this is not true for all scenarios. Using hijacking prevention methods following the September 11 attacks as an example, the additional burden of implicit costs is evident. To implement more