Global Recession: US Responses

Global Recession: US Responses LCB/2356 Explain the predictions that the OECD have made concerning the US economy, making sure that you define the terms â€Å"Budget Deficit† and â€Å"Debt† in your solution. A budget deficit is when the nations is spending more then their revenue received. This would mean that expenditure exceeds tax revenue resulting to a budget deficit. The term â€Å"Budget Deficit† is usually used to refer the government expenditure rather than businesses. A debt is an amount of money that is owed to another person or organizations. A debt is usually repaid after a certain amount of time given or when is able too depending on the situation. A debt is a method that is used for some corporation or businesses for making a large purchase of something that they cant afford. The prediction made by the OECD with the budget deficit of 2011 being tacked at 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the American debt increasing to 101.1% of GDP. This helps prove the fact that the American government is spending way more than its actually receiving in revenue. This would also help us assume that the American government is putting into effect on the fiscal policy which means that the government increases their spending and decreases taxation. This would lead to budget deficit as expenditure surpasses revenue. There are two schools of thought on how the US government should deal with its current economic problems Deficit Reduction As for the Greek and Irish Governments, Deficit reduction entails a fiscal policy where it decrease the governments spending and increases the taxation rates in order to increase revenue. The objective of a deficit reduction is to make sure that the revenue that the nation is getting are greater than the expenditure that they are doing. Therefore reducing the deficit and possibly bringing about a surplus in budget. A budget surplus would help the nation pay its debts therefore giving the government a capable of developing without having have to repay theirs debts in long term which will also ease up the political tensions with other nations economically. Contractionary fiscal policy, while the budget deficit is reduced and also decreasing the national’s debt, it also has a lot of disadvantages to it. As it decreases the expenditure, aggregate demand would decrease because it is Consumption + Investment + government Spending + (Export – Imports) (C+I+G+(X-M). As increasing the taxes it would reduce the aggregate demand therefore it may cause disincentives to work therefore it would affect the productivity, However this would not effect is the income is really high and balances out with the higher tax. As the government’s spending decreases this would also lead to increase in unemployment which would lead to decrease in consumption because there is no money to be spent by the general population. As shown in the graph above of a contractionary fiscal policy. The decrease in the amount of government spending, G in C+I+G+(X-M) leads to the Aggregate Demand Curve shifting inwards from the AD to AD1. Therefore this will decrease the price level which is an indication of inflation in the economy as shown from PL to PL1. This would also lead to the Real Domestic Output to be decrease from RDO to RDO1. We have to consider the long term affects of Contractionary Fiscal Policy that while it allows a decrease in debt, decrease in spending and increased revenue which reduces the budget deficit. The problem that arises from this as unemployment and decrease in government spending will result in low economic growth and giving it slow progression. Fiscal Stimulus and Progressive Taxation Another school of thought regarding the plan of action to deal with the ongoing American economic crisis is to implement a Keynesian stimulus package with the reform of the tax system in order to make it more progressive. A Keynesian stimulus package is when the government puts in more money in the economy in order the strengthen the economy and preventing a recession by boosting employment and spending, this is also known as a expansionary fiscal policy. A Expansionary Fiscal Policy seeks to expand the money supply in order to have a higher economic growth. The long term effects of expansionary fiscal policy would also have to be considered, Constant economic growth, more job employments, and also more consumption which helps with the economy. However, As the economic grows the inflation rates does too, it also leads to an increase of budget deficit as the expenditure is higher than the revenue gained and increasing the debt that the government would borrow, which eventually would h ave to be repaid. Therefore as for the government to spend more they would have to increase the taxation to balance out the revenue and expenditure. A progressive tax system is when the taxable base amount increase, the tax rates would too. This refers to the more money the person or the organizations makes, the more tax they are charged and the less they are making the less tax they would have to pay. This aims to allow the lower tax payers to be able to keep more money in order for them to continue consuming while increasing the tax revenue. However, people in the higher tax bracket would find this unfair because they would rather everyone pay the same amount therefore implementing this system would make it hard. One of the main goal of the progressive income tax is to make it a tool for redistributing income from the upper class to the lower and middle class, this would help keep the income gap from growing between the rich and the poor. It would also give more revenue to the government because they are collecting more money from the higher incomer earners. This is make the government collect more money from the tax payers rat her than if everyone had to pay the same amount or percentage. As a result, this would help the government develop or provide more programs and services that benefit the society. However progressive tax system also has some disadvantages for it, One would be that some businesses would be discouraged to expand or invest as additional profit is taxed at higher prices. It would also make people feel discrimination as I said before the higher tax earners would see it unfair to them because this system doesn’t promote equality amongst individuals. As shown in the graph above, Its showing the effects of the expansionary fiscal policy, when the government spendings are increased leading to an increase in aggregate demand from AD to AD1 as G in C+I+G+(X-M) making the Aggregate Damand curve to shift inwards. This would also mean that the increase in Price Level, Which is from PL to PL1 and an increase in Real Domestic Output, Which is from RDO to RDO1. Explain in broad terms the background to the â€Å"Credit Crunch† and how this impacted on the real economies of both the USA and the UK The â€Å"Credit Crunch† also known as the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 is the worst global financial crisis since the â€Å"Great Depression† of the 1930s with its after effects still being considered still as shown by the Euro Crisis. There may be a number of reasons which may include of the credit crunch but its not limited to; the burst of the housing bubble in America, Lack of banking regulation, however the biggest cause would be the encouraged risk of taking from years of stable economic growth and low inflation rates which makes the borrowing and purchasing of bad securities and properties. The housing bubble of America started earlier in 2006 as the house prices were all risen up more than 100%, this is beause of the ease of attaining mortgages at that time. This led to people deciding to take loan and acquire additional property in order to take advantage of the higher value in properties, in other words to buy and resell properties to make a profit. Regardless of that, people in the end are not able to pay their loans because of predatory lending, which is when the loans are advertised at a low interest rate but are switch out to adjustable rate mortgages where the interest charged would be higher amount of the interest paid. This then led to people having have to lose their properties and also leading to a huge decrease in property prices. Therefore this would lead up to a liquidity issue however banks had no liquid assests and leading to the decline and eventually bankruptcy of many banks. The collapse of the mortgage repayment was considered the start of the financial crisis. Another reason would be that the lack of financial regulation and supervision of financial institution who were involved in the risky investments, excessive borrowing and lack of transparency. The borrowing of money made by many banks in order to invest in their project usually ended up being a failure resulting of the bank investing on something that they cant make profit off therefore giving them the inability to repay their debts. The fact that this happened in a very large scale in cooperating many different banks linking each other, it led to the bankruptcy of both borrowers and lenders giving them no more or insufficient money to function. References http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/expansionary_policy.asp (Accessed 20.11.14 [Online]) http://www.econport.org/content/handbook/ADandS/AD/Shift.html (Accessed 20.11.14 [Online]) http://www.sparknotes.com/economics/macro/aggregatedemand/section1.rhtml (Accessed 20.11.14 [Online]) http://www.ehow.com/info_7742308_pros-cons-budget-deficit.html (Accessed 20.11.14 [Online]) http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stimulus-package.asp (Accessed 22.11.14 [Online]) http://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/fiscal-policy/fiscal_policy_criticism/ (Accessed 22.11.14 [Online]) http://hubpages.com/hub/Flat-Tax-vs-Progressive-Tax-Pros-and-Cons-for-the-US (Accessed 23.11.14 [Online]) http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/progressive-tax-system-definition-pros-cons.html (Accessed 23.11.14 [Online]) http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/creditcrunch.asp (Accessed 26.11.14 [Online]) http://www.investopedia.com/university/credit-crisis/credit-crisis4.asp (Accessed 26.11.14 [Online])

Environmental and Biological Influences in the Classroom :: Teaching Education Essays

Environmental and Biological Influences in the Classroom The fourth grade class that I looked at had a number of different personalities. Some of the differences can be attributed to either environmental or biological causes. Some of the differences I thought might be something that was due to environment however, after talking to the teacher, Mrs. St.Germain, I changed my opinion to being a characteristic due to the biological influences. Some of the differences I noticed I thought where due to genetics or biological causes. One student that I thought exhibited characteristics that may have been due to environment was a girl who exhibited a lot of shyness. She was very quit and sat following directions at all times. As a whole the girls in the class where much quieter than the guys, however, this girl was quite a bit more quite than all the other girls were. I attribute her shyness to the environment that she was brought up in. I feel this very strongly after talking to Mrs. St.Germain. The girl was an immigrant from Haiti and had just learned to speak English in the 2nd grade. This late introduction into American society, lifestyle, and way of life is probably rather overwhelming and that causes the environment to add to her shyness. Another student seemed very outgoing and rather loud compared to the rest of the students. When I was coming to the room he introduced himself right away and told me the rest of the class was in the media center. At times he interrupted class and could be a nuisance at times. At first I thought that this could be an effect of an environment where he did not receive enough attention. After talking to Mrs. St.Germain though it turned out that he has ADHD along with another hyper activity disorder and his mother would not allow him to be medicated. The next student that I observed was very smart in math. I was told that he often times beats the teacher when doing math multiplication dittos. I think that his intelligence is something that would be passed down through his genes. On the other hand if a learning environment is established than a higher intelligence may result from the learning environment.

Written task

This task will be related to Part 1: â€Å"Language in cultural context† specified in the topic of â€Å"Language and Identity' and how both (language and identity) are related to each other. In order to find the relation, the movie â€Å"The Freedom Writers† was studied. This film portrays the achievement of dreams, and how people living in the same place can express their language in different ways depending on their social and cultural history. The task was centered on how language is shaped by a cultural context, represented with a diary entry written from a character from the movie: Ben.He talks about his and his classmates' experiences with Miss Erin as a teacher and how her life changed together with their own, and how social differences interfere in their social relationship. This diary is separated into different sections according to what he lives every day, talking in present tense. Along the diary there are quotes from the teacher and the students, used to emphasize the main theme of this task: language and culture. Through those quotes the teacher showed code switching, trying to get to know her students by their own language.Ben tells his story his personal point of view and sometimes he compares the teacher's story to his own. Nowadays this is a big problem for some people who go to different countries and still don't adapt. That's why this was a good exercise for better understanding of the problem (cultural/social) and practice better writing. A diary entry was chosen for this task because it is interesting how the point of view from a certain character can change the way a general audience can think about a certain topic.The characteristics of the airy entries were to add different dates to each paragraph and write in first person. *Written task based on the movie â€Å"The Freedom Writers†- directed by Richard Laggardness- year 2007 Rationale words: 300 How my story begins to change Monday 1 2: This is my first diary ent ry, so I will talk a little about myself. I lived all my life in Los Angles, California. One day I had to move to Long Beach, California for family reasons. In Los Angles my teachers were very serious, formal and not so appealing with students.For some reason everyone thought we were educated, but the real taxation is that teachers mistreated us. Once I moved to Long beach everyone was different from me, not in the educational part, but in the physical and language aspect; I was white and everyone else black, I talk in a certain tone and they talk in a different one. They discriminated me for those differences and I wasn't able to defend myself, so instead I stayed quiet and ignorant. Suddenly my story began to change when Miss Erin arrived to school.I always saw something good about her; she wasn't like the other teachers; she seems educated, DOD looking and she was white. I didn't feel alone anymore around my classmates: someone was Just like me in the physical aspect. However, at the beginning I saw a strange attitude from her towards the class; she didn't understand us very well. I didn't know why, she did not look racist, but with time I was able to realize she didn't understand the way my classmates talked. I say â€Å"my classmates† because I do not feel I belong to them, not now.Tuesday 19th: Today, Miss Erin had chalk on her skirt and one of the boys of the class told her: do you want give me fries with that shake†. Everybody laughed very hard, she laughed a little so nobody notice she didn't understand the Joke, I knew she didn't understand what he meant by that phrase, because that used to happen to me too, in fact I still don't get them but I am used to those strange phrases. I realized that the misunderstanding was mutual, she didn't understand them and they didn't understand her since she used very professional words like: auxiliary, abrogate, acrimony etc.Nevertheless, she tried so hard to understand the class' engage and be part of them but her culture was too different from theirs, however I was able to realize something; she didn't want to learn the language Just to be updated, but because she cared about us and our education. Miss Campbell told Miss Erin we had to learn real discipline but how could she teach us discipline if she couldn't communicate verbally with us? Wednesday 20th: Today at class, Miss Erin started to imitate the way they talked, she told us: â€Å"My badness† when she tried to be nice with us, as a consequence everyone started laughing because it was mispronounced.Also she got mad sometimes with one of my classmates, so she had to punish him verbally in a way that he could understand her, by saying: â€Å"This is a buck you' to me and everyone in your class†. Either for worse or better she tried to communicate. I thought she was very brave to learn their language and face them in bad moments, it was certainly something that I would never do, I am too fearful. Friday 22nd: On this day Miss Erin told us she realized that the bad pronunciation and spelling mistakes came from their bad attitude, since they didn't care about their own education.She notices that they express that attitude through drawings (that I never was able to understand) it was like their language was expressed in a simple drawing. She saw one of the drawings my classmates did; it was a comic mocking one black boy of the class. That was the moment when Miss Erin explained to us the story of the holocaust; nobody in my class knew what it was, neither did l. She told us that this event of the past was related to discrimination Just like the type they were doing to this boy. She explained how important education was for us, the opportunity it eave us to; go to school, college, work etc.She sounded really sad and mad at the same time, because we were losing a chance that many people throw away. I felt happy in a certain way because finally there was a teacher who cared about us in a deepe r way. Right after that, she gave us some diaries where we could write, not only to write our feelings but also to improve our grammar. At the beginning, of course, nobody wanted to write because they weren't used to express their feelings and writing their daily life on a piece of paper. Personally, I was scared for someone to e my life, get to know my fears and use that evidence to mock me.Nevertheless, one girl in my class took the first diary, which leads to the rest of the class to pick one too. Monday 24th: Miss Erin, arrived to school with a big surprise; everyone started to write in their diaries, it was awesome how they started to care about their grammar and their attitude was instantly changed, they were happier, their grades began to rise; it seems like writing took away all their problems. I can talk by myself to; I'm not afraid anymore of my classmates and our cultural differences, in fact, now I have friends.However, Miss Erin still doesn't get the language; one day o ne boy told her: â€Å"No that don't fly ‘ma†. And she told him â€Å"I'm not your mom†. Of course everyone laughed, including me, but not mocking, instead, they told her that was a sign of respect. Now that two years have passed from the first time we saw Miss Erin, she has learned our language and we all make Jokes between each other. All this effort came from her, that's why I have to thank her for teaching us to be better persons with the rest of the people and most important, with ourselves. Task words: 1. 000

About the US Civil Rights Act of 1875

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a United States federal law enacted during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era that guaranteed African Americans equal access to public accommodations and public transportation.  The Act came less than a decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1866 had taken the nation’s first steps towards civil and social equality for black Americans after the Civil War.   The law read, in part: â€Å"†¦ all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.† The law also prohibited the exclusion of any otherwise qualified citizen from jury duty because of their race and provided that lawsuits brought under the law must be tried in the federal courts, rather than state courts. The law was passed by the 43rd United States Congress on February 4, 1875, and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875. Parts of the law were later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was one of the main pieces of Reconstruction legislation passed by Congress after the Civil War. Other laws enacted included the Civil Rights Act of 1866, four Reconstruction Acts enacted in 1867 and 1868, and three Reconstruction Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871. The Civil Right Act in Congress Initially intended to implement the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 traveled a long and bumpy five-year journey to final passage. The bill was first introduced in 1870 by Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, widely regarded as one of the most influential civil rights advocates in Congress. In drafting the bill, Sen. Sumner was advised by John Mercer Langston, a prominent African American attorney and abolitionist who would later be named the first dean of the Howard University law department. In considering his Civil Rights Act to be the key to achieving the highest goals of Reconstruction, Sumner once stated, â€Å"Very few measures of equal importance have ever been presented.† Sadly, Sumner did not survive to see his bill voted on, dying at age 63 of a heart attack in 1874. On his deathbed, Sumner pleaded to famed African-American social reformer abolitionist, and statesman Frederick Douglass, â€Å"Don’t let the bill fail.† When first introduced in 1870, the Civil Rights Act not only banned discrimination in public accommodations, transportation, and jury duty, it also prohibited racial discrimination in schools. However, in the face of growing public opinion favoring enforced racial segregation, Republican lawmakers realized that the bill had no chance of passing unless all references to equal and integrated education were removed. Over the many long days of debate on the Civil Rights Act bill, lawmakers heard some of the most impassioned and impactful speeches ever delivered on the floor of the House of Representatives. Relating their personal experiences of discrimination, African American Republican representatives carried the debated in favor of the bill. â€Å"Every day my life and property are exposed, are left to the mercy of others and will be so long as every hotel-keeper, railroad conductor, and steamboat captain can refuse me with impunity,† said Rep. James Rapier of Alabama, adding famously, â€Å"After all, this question resolves itself into this: either I am a man or I am not a man.† After nearly five years of debate, amendment, and compromise the Civil Rights Act of 1875 won final approval, passing in the House be a vote of 162 to 99. Supreme Court Challenge Considering slavery and racial segregation to be different issues, many white citizens in the Northern and the Southern states challenged Reconstruction laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1875, claiming they unconstitutionally infringed of their personal freedom of choice. In an 8-1 decision issued on October 15, 1883, the Supreme Court declared key sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional. As part of its decision in the combined Civil Rights Cases, the Court held that while the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination by the state and local governments, it did not grant the federal government the power to prohibit private individuals and organizations from discriminating on the basis of race. In addition, the Court held that the Thirteenth Amendment had been intended only to ban slavery and did not prohibit racial discrimination in public accommodations. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 would be the last federal civil rights law enacted until ​the  passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 during the early stages of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 Stripped of all protections against discrimination and segregation in education, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 had little practical impact on racial equality during the eight years it was in force before being struck down by the Supreme Court.   Ã‚   Despite the law’s lack of immediate impact, many provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were eventually adopted by Congress during the civil rights movement as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act). Enacted as part of the Great Society social reform program of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permanently outlawed segregated public schools in America.