Assignment #20
Part 1: Freshman Year
b) Obama being elected!
c) I remember learning about Hatshepsut for my freshman year research paper for Ms. Gusfield. I think I remember it because it was the years biggest assignment.
d) I would try harder in Geometry!
e)
f) Make new friends but keep the old
Part 2: Sophomore Year
b) The biggest difference was feeling on rally day that I could yell 1-2!
c) I remember the World Cup in South Africa and the Shakira song for it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRpeEdMmmQ0
d) I remember learning about Tupac and Thug Life in Becker’s class.
e) I am proud of getting through the craziness I went through when my Aunt and five cousins came to live at my house.
f)
g) RAGE
Part 3: Junior Year
b) The hardest part about junior year was keeping motivation to go to school at all and my freaking Math Analysis class!
c) Osama Bin Laden
d) The biggest surprise of my junior year was learning that there was a limit to just how far I could push it.
e) I remember learning about everything poems in Cunnane’s AP lit class
f) I’m proud of passing the AP lit test!
g)
h) I still want to RAGE
Part 4: Senior Year
b) The best part of senior year was the memories I made with all of my best friends that I’ve been best friends with for so long
c) I would tell my freshman self to be more careful and think harder about the decisions I made and how they affected both myself and others
d) College tuition and loans!
e) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TotbU952HNk
f) I got my first real job and learned how to act in a professional situation
g) I am proud of the work I did on the first semester IDP
h)
i) YOLO
Assignment #17
Credit cards are scary. I don’t have or want a credit card because I know it would get me into to deep shit. I know I will eventually need a credit card but I’m fine without one now.
Three facts that stood out to me: 70% of American college students have credit cards, five of every six of those students do not know their cards’ interest rates, 75% of them do not know their late payment charges and 70% of them do not know what their over-balance-limit fees might be.
These stood out to me because like really?! You should have to be tested on this stuff before you can get a credit card.
Wider implications: “It’s not just college students — it stems across the younger age group”
Only 9.4% paid off their debt each month, compared to 32% in 2003. 32% seems like a crazy low percentage to me, I can’t believe its only 9.4%
Assignment #18
1. The Fed is the central banking system of the United States.
2. The Fed was created by the United States Congress on December 23, 1913. It was created because the United States lacked any formal organization for studying and implementing monetary policy. Because of this markets were often unstable and the public had very little faith in the banking system.
3. There are 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities around the country that operate under the supervision of the Board of Governors.
4. Reserve Banks act as the operating arm of the central bank and do most of the work of the Fed.
5. The earliest debates on central banking in the United States centered on its constitutionality, private ownership, and the degree to which an economy should be centrally planned.
Assignment #16
1. “Well, $500,000 a Year Might Sound Like a Lot, but I’m Hardly Rich.”
2. “The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 … and so by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over …”
3. “Come on, we’re all in this together! It’s not like I have infinite money.”
4. They are comparing themselves to the billionaires that do make a lot more money then them and who they don’t feel rich next to but they are looking at the majority of us and realizing how rich they are.
5. 
1. “Hey, I Worked Hard to Get What I Have!”
2. “I became a self-made millionaire by the age of 30 by working grueling hours, being relentless and risking my own money. My success was earned with blood, sweat and tears.”
3. “I’m not Paris Hilton! I work 70-hour weeks to make this salary!”
4. Its not that they didn’t work hard to get where they are necessarily its that they think that every one that isn’t rich isn’t working hard.
5. 
1. “If I Can Do It, So Can You!”
2. “We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”
3. “This is the land of opportunity, where anyone can make it! Instead of complaining, just go out there and get rich!”
4. “How much time do you really have to spend off your goddamned yacht to see that this isn’t true? You don’t even need to leave the dock — there’s a guy standing right there who you pay to fix your boat’s engine. You know that 1) you absolutely need guys like him and 2) he will never get rich doing what he does. He could be great at his job, he might be the Michael Jordan of mechanics, he might work 100 hours a week — it doesn’t matter. Sure, if that one guy somehow also has the head for management and finance and the networking skills, he could maybe open his own chain of yacht repair shops. But they can’t all do that.” This quote explains how I feel. Clearly not everyone can be rich. Especially after reading part of Outliers, and seeing how much opportunity plays into success.
5. 
1. “You’re Just Jealous Because I Made It and You Didn’t!”
2. “I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — [it] is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”
3. “It’s wrong to tear down others instead of improving your own life!”
4. I think a lot of us our jealous, but we also just want the incredibly rich to use their money to do good things!
5. 
1. “You Shouldn’t Be Punishing the Very People Who Make This Country Work!”
2. “There is a deeply disturbing message coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement … Simply put, it boils down to this: We must punish success …”
3. “If you punish success, society will collapse into communism!”
4. The rich don’t make this country work, it takes everybody.
5. 
1. “Stop Asking for Handouts! I Never Got Help from Anybody!”
2. “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Did anybody help me out? No.”
3. “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps!”
4. Everybody gets help to get where they are, whether directly or indirectly, it’s impossible not to.
5. 
Assignment #15c
1. One in four Americans age 16-19 were unemployed in February
The national teen unemployment rate has been above 20 percent since mid-2008.
The February unemployment rate for Hispanics age 16 to 19 was 27.5 percent
For African Americans it was more than one-third, at 34.7 percent.
High school seniors employed 20 hours per week were, 6 to 9 years later, expected to earn approximately 11 percent more annually than their counterparts who did not work
2. Less job seeking skills, less knowledge on how to operate in workplace, less earnings in the future.
3. Keeping minimum wage low, raising minimum wage, getting more people back to work overall.
I have a job, so this article doesn’t particularly worry me.
Assignment #15b
1. “Despite its post-apocalyptic condition, the fictional nation of Panem is quite technologically advanced. It has high-speed trains, hovercrafts, extraordinary genetic engineering capabilities, and the ability to create extremely advanced weapons. And yet Panem is also a society of tremendous economic inequality, with clear examples of absolute economic deprivation and even famine.”
2. “Economic theory teaches us that over the long term, prosperity is driven by two factors—capital accumulation and the “Solow residual” of technology—and that of the two elements the technology is more important…Knowing how to build a prosperous society, in other words, is more important than actually having the physical stuff.”
3. Because they have an extractive economy. District 12 which mines coal is an example of why it keeps them poor. “It’s oriented around a coal mine, the kind of facility where unskilled labor can be highly productive in light of the value of the underlying commodity. In a free society, market competition for labor and union organizing would drive wages up. But instead the Capitol imposes a single purchaser of mine labor and offers subsistence wages. Emigration to other districts in search of better opportunities is banned, as is exploitation of the apparently bountiful resources of the surrounding forest. With the mass of Seam workers unable to earn a decent wage, even relatively privileged townsfolk have modest living standards. If mineworkers earned more money, the Mellark family bakery would have more customers and more incentive to invest in expanded operations. A growing service economy would grow up around the mine. But the extractive institutions keep the entire District in a state of poverty, despite the availability of advanced technology in the Capitol.” There are many Districts like 12, keeping Panem poor.
4. Places that have extractive economies that were very prosperous in the past are poor now.
5. They end up like District 12 or contemporary Nigeria.
Assignment #15a
- Even we drilled all of the oil we have in the US we still would only have 2-3% of the world’s oil
- We rely on oil from the Middle East so when tensions rise there, and our oil supply is threatened, investors buy up the supply and profit off of our dependence, and prices rise.
- The key to to better energy efficiency in the U.S. is to force prices up even more with taxes
My opinion on the “gas situation” is that I’m okay with gas prices rising because I agree that its the only way to better energy efficiency.
Assignment #14b
Romney:
1. Reminds of Marie Antoinette saying “Let them eat cake”
2. No, because even when you read what they said in context, they are still saying ridiculous shit. The Romneys know they are public figures but they still don’t watch what they say.
3. The Romneys act like stereotypical wealthy people. They seem to have a disdain for the poor and they are unappreciative of what they have.
Santorum:
1. Totally disagree with Santorum, I think his moral viewpoints are archaic and misogynistic. I think he is gonna lose the support of most women by using his by using his moral standards as a campaign platform.
2. A neologismand is a newly formed word and Dan Savage is a gay rights activist who created a new definition for ‘Santorum’. The definition is: “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.
3. I think its crazy that google would do that! They should not censor there search results. If you don’t wanna see something, don’t google it.
4. The top searches are
5. I hadn’t heard of this before this assignment. I think its so out of pocket but I also think he got what was coming to him.
Assignment #14a
Mitt Romney is gonna win! He won in Ohio. I think Obama will win the election though.
Assignment #13b
Bearish: a particular sector, security, or the entire market is going to fall
Bullish: a particular sector, security, or the entire market is going to rise
Harry Dent, Gerald Celente, Robert Precher.
Precher compares our current economy to the Great Depression. Dent believes there will be a stock market crash in 2013 or 2014 that will be worse than the crash in 2008/2009. Celente warns us to be prepared for an economic 9/11.
Bulls are more optimistic about the economy bouncing back. I don’t know where I stand! I don’t know enough.
The bears think are debt is going to catch up to us and that the Occupy movement is only making it worse.
Assignment #13a
His thesis is that the person in office is not what is driving gas prices. What is happening in the Middle East is what effects gas prices. Gas is exempt from the laws of supply and demand because it is such a political issue. I agree with his thesis.
Assignment #12
I think we should just get rid of pennies altogether and round to the nearest five. They have such little value and seem like a giant waste of money to me. I feel like most everybody feels the same way about pennies, you can’t even use them on buses or in parking meters. As for the price of nickels, I don’t understand why we aren’t using steel? With all the problems our country has with money, this seems like a really stupid thing to be wasting millions of dollars on.
Assignment #11
“I’m not concerned with the very poor”
Newt Gingrich net worth ~ $7 million
Mitt Romney net worth ~ $250 million
Mitt Romney’s comment in or out of context is ridiculous. You would think that as a candidate for president he would be more careful of saying so obviously controversial. Newt Gingrich’s net worth is much lower than Mitt Romney’s but they are both incredibly rich and I think Gingrich is just trying to gain support from the all of the people Romney pissed off.
