IHSS Blog 2018-2019

Perjhing Mardani IHSS January 28, 2019 Mr. Roddy In 2019 we are faced with many different economic divides making it a very complex day and age that we are all living in. One topic that I see as very important is the United States unemployment rate which is at one of the lowest rates it has been in 49 years. As we see, there has to be something occuring causing this rate to drop. The actual percentage rate of unemployed people since September of 2018 is 3.7 percent. When we look at the changes our economy and the United States has made in the past years we can see how this number came to be. It is never good for a person to have lost their job. This can cause homelessness, debt, and other financial problems for the individual. Most people have children, and not having a job is not an option. Unemployment is not only harmful to the individual but to our country as well. It causes payments from the federal government and state towards unemployment benefits. In February of 2017...

I read a paper talking about how Healthcare is expensive and a possible way to decrease spending. The paper suggested health care providers should increase the availability of their price information to their customers then people can look and choose the cheaper providers. Health care spending makes up 18 percent of the US economy, and keeps growing. One of the things that makes this field so unique is the fact that consumers don’t usually know much about the pricing. If health care providers were to become more transparent with their costs then people would be able to switch to providers who provided cheaper care. This paper discussed the potential ups and downs of providing more open information within this market. This interested me because health care is currently a foreign concept to me, but as I get older, I will need to worry about these things. I think that beginning to gain an understanding of the subject would be a good idea. In this paper the author talks about a potent...

Smog is a huge issue when it comes to human health, dirty air can cause a large varied list of diseases and even death.  The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that air pollution is the cause of over 1.6 million deaths in China alone, and over 7 million worldwide. Those affected usually die of conditions such as stroke, heart disease, heart attacks, or lung diseases. What particularly is in the air? Well due to coal fires and exhausts from cars, the air is polluted with materials such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and soot. With all these materials stagnating in the very same air that is being pumped in and out of our lungs, it makes sense why it would be so toxic. Due to the scale of this issue, China has begun to implement methods to counter air pollution as well as methods to cut down on Carbon Dioxide emissions. Coincidentally, the government is also improving efforts for renewable energy, specifically solar power. This isn't all sunshine and rainbows, in fact,...

Because of lost output from federal workers, delayed government spending and reduced demand, the Congressional Budget Office announced a new analysis stating that the government shutdown has taken around 11 billion dollars out of the United States Economy. The Monday report showed that the government shutdown during the fourth quarter cost the economy around 3 billion dollars. The expected impact of the first quarter in 2019 will be even greater at an estimated cost of 8 billion dollars.  Most of the impact is due to the federal workers who lost their jobs. Although some of the damage done will be mended when the federal workers regain their jobs, a total of 3 billion dollars was permanently lost during the 35 days of shutdown. Because of the shutdown, the expected economic growth will be slowed from last year’s 3.1 percent to 2.3 percent this year. This is a great example for the economic problem which all societies face. This is the problem of how to make the best use of limite...

The article I read was about the economics of Bitcoin and how the market for it works. Bitcoin is set up to have an almost perfectly inelastic supply with there never being more than 21 million bitcoins at one time. This will allow for the inflation rate to never get too high despite the price of a bitcoin being incredibly volatile. The article explains how it is very unlikely that Bitcoin will ever replace our currencies such as the dollar do to it’s volatility, and the article states that many investors treat it as a highly unreliable store of value. It also compares the Bitcoin market to the crude oil and natural gas industries and shows how the supply and demand works for both of them. Along with that, the value of a single bitcoin even with the volatile market is incredibly high, to the point where it can’t be used as a reliable medium of exchange. It is for all of these reasons that they determined that cryptocurrency won’t break into the mainstream. a I think that this artic...

Catherine Hudson IHSS Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) article: “Towards a Legacy of Inclusion” for The Economists 33rd edition, The World in 2019, discusses the economic effect of income and gender inequality. Lagarde puts into perspective the impact of these ongoing challenges by addressing the readers as a singular “we”. She pushes the weight of the problem into our own hands and refers to it as our legacy. Hence the title, “Towards a Legacy of Inclusion”, she encourages us to own up to the events in the world we all live in and actively choose to make a difference and choose the kind of legacy we wish to leave behind. Income inequality not only amongst countries but also within, proves to be one of the global economy’s greatest challenges as only a minority have access to benefits such as education, culture enrichments or well-placed connections. This leaves not only the majority: those who are excluded from such benefit...

Tyler Holland Mr. Roddy IHSS 30 January 2019 Economy The Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility is the farthest point on land anywhere in the world from a sea or ocean, one of the last places that someone would consider to be the next center of world economy. However, this place is the current site of one of the greatest infrastructure projects. an Initiative known as "The New Silk Road", has been taking place nearby to this in a small town. This place, while only having a population of about 908 people has become one of the more recognized global trade areas. This project has an objective to create a big system of highways, power plants, and railroads in dozens of countries. This town is in a very fortunate location for this project, between two large countries and near to one of the next large global economy, this helps the city grow as a trading place for lots of goods. " China’s plans are significantly more ambitious, and they reach far beyond eastern Kazakhstan....

Blake Peterson Mr. Roddy IHSS 29 January 2019 Government shutdown affect on economy     The article I read talked about the five week federal shutdown and how it cost the united states economy around $11 billion, with around $3 billion of that money permanently lost. In total the shutdown cost the united state around double the amount of money that Trump was asking for to build the wall. The shutdown reduced gross domestic product by $3 billion in the fourth quarter of last year and $8 billion in the first quarter of this year. It also talked about how the federal debt held by the public will almost double by the year 2029. It is expected that federal debt help by the public is going to go up from $16.6 trillion to $28.7 trillion. The federal reserve has now decided to measure the economy before increasing its benchmark interest rate.     The article is important to let us know how the government shutdown affected our economy. It also showed ...

Why Uber Is an Economist’s Dream Uber created a massive open market, it is directed by its strengths from supply and demand. Uber not only broke up the way taxi syndicate runs but also brought people to accept “surge” pricing. “Uber is, in many ways, the embodiment of what the economists would like the economy to look like,” (Freakonomics Podcast, Stephen Levitt, 2016). Uber is well known for its use of technology to match drivers with riders (buyers and sellers) This is where their use of surge pricing comes in. They have used this method to balance supply and demand. When they are low in supply (not many drivers available/ large need for drivers) prices begin to rise. When they are high in supply and little demand (many drivers available/ little to no need for rides), prices dramatically decrease. They continue to make the ride-hailing market an economist’s dream. Something I found very interesting about Uber as a whole is the fact that they lack equal pay between men and women....

Gabriel Han IHSS Mr Roddy Jan 30 2018 The Government Shutdown As you may know, President Donald Trump has recently ended the 5 week government shutdown. The cause of this shutdown was the supposed 'crisis' at our southern border, and how it needs a wall. He shut down the US government, requesting 5.7 billion dollars for a wall. He reopened the government for 3 weeks, asking for the wall to be built, or else he would declare a state of emergency. But how did this shutdown affect the economy? 11 billion dollars. The US economy lost 11 billion dollars, with over a quarter permanently gone. It left government workers without pay for weeks, living off of food stamps. But not all of the money is lost. Some will flow back into the economy as the government resumes, but we still lost billions of dollars. This event is a major topic of debate in current politics, and the economic problems that have been and could still be created are huge, with the US losing double what Trump a...

Skateboarding brought in a whole new business as well as skateshops. As new skateshops popped up everywhere, new jobs were put out there and small businesses started to pop up with everything needed for action sports. As well as new jobs, popularity for the sport grew when the X Games started growing popularity. Obviously, as the X Games are a big thing in action sports, a big amount of tourists started to come into the state, take Philadelphia for example. Philadelphia hosted the X Games in 2001-02 and when they did they brought in loads of money. During those two years, tens of thousands of hotel rooms were rented out, international news coverage brought in money from the other countries, and millions of dollars were made in retail and food sales. The X Games also brought in popularity for Philadelphia as skaters started taking over the skateparks built there and the streets. The universities grew in population as skaters decided that the state had an awesome skate reputation. ...

The Debt of the Government Shutdown Sarah Seeliger Mr. Roddy IHSS 29 January 2019 The Debt of the Government Shutdown The article I read was about one of the consequences of the recent government shutdown. The article stated that the five - week shutdown costs the U.S. 11 million dollars (New York Times). A quarter of the money that is owed now was lost for good (New York Times). These figures are the first conclusive calculations effects that the longest government shutdown in history has on our economy,and  the current cost of the shutdown is double the 5.7 billion dollars Donald Trump asked for in order to build his wall (New York Times). A lot of the lost money will enter back into the economy after people start getting paid again, but there’s a lot of damage that cannot be fixed, meaning that the effects of the shutdown will remain (New York Times). The government is going to be running as normal for three weeks, but Trump has cautioned that he will shutdown th...

This article by James Surowiecki is about why we don’t have universal income. It first starts by addressing that the Canadian province of Manitoba did have an experiment in the mid 1970s where they started handing out money to their citizens. For example, in the town of Dauphin, they started sending out checks to thousands of residents every month in order to guarantee that they all received income and the project, called Mincome, had a goal to see if people stopped working? Or if poor people spent too much of their money and stayed in poverty? It was stopped and decades later an economist at the University Of Manitoba dug up the numbers and she found that life in Dauphin improved drastically. For example, more teenagers stayed in school, hospitalization rates went down and the working rates barely went down. One thing about guaranteed basic income is that it’s always had both left and right support, both embracing the idea. Its seen as a means of ending poverty, combating rising ine...

This article brought up issues related to drug cartels, and some background information to how they work. Tom Wainwright, the author of this excerpt, did research on drug cartels, and realized how similar they run to big franchises. These cartels have private relationships with the growers and suppliers of cocaine, for example, and they are able to communicate with them, to be able to price what they are then reselling, based on market costs.One of the solutions Wainwright brought up was implementing some sort of legalization over some of these drugs, instead of complete elimination. He explained how unreasonable and pointless that would be, since the drugs would be coming in and out anyways.  I thought this article was really interesting important to the study of economics since these drug cartels bring in a lot of money, and run like a real business. But, drugs are very illegal. Almost a third of those convicted of a crime are of relation to drugs. Since drugs carry a high ris...

I watched a video about the history of engagement rings in America. The video talks about how before the 20th century, people just got married, and while engagement rings and things similar had been used in the past, it wasn’t a common custom. In 1938 the De Beers diamond corporation launched ad campaigns saying that giving women diamonds was the best way to show his love for her, and that the size and price of the diamond reflected on him. The campaigning was successful in creating an american tradition in marriage, as well as our feelings about diamonds. Even the rule of how you should by a diamond worth two months salary was arbitrarily invented by De Beers. The video goes deeper into the value of diamond jewelry by saying that “diamonds are intrinsically worthless”. The video further explains that diamonds aren’t actually that rare, and that they are seen as so is because De Beers has a monopoly on diamond mining, and artificially limit the quantity of diamonds. The thing that make...

Nathaniel Samuels Mr. Roddy IHSS 30/1/2019 Economics Roundtable

Clark May II Mr. Roddy IHSS January 28 2019 Japanese Interest Rates Japan over the last few decades have dealt with high inflation rates and they have had some very interesting ways of dealing with it. One tactic, was lowering their interest rates to below 0%. This has been very effective for them. Their inflation rate is only 1.6%, well below their goal of 2%, so now they are looking to make their monetary policies more normalized. Recently, they changed the price ceiling of a 10 year government bond yield to 0.2% from 0.1%. While this does show signs of them change, the banks have stated that they will keep interest rates at a negative percent, or an extremely low rate. Even if it is raised out of the negative side, it still won’t make financial sense to invest in government bonds because the inflation will be higher then the yield so you will still be losing money. Due to the many years of these low rates, numerous banks have not been profitable. With this problem getting...

Adrian Perez Mr. Roddy IHSS January 29, 2019 Trading Economics Source- https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/11/16/who-needs-america?zid=293&ah=e50f636873b42369614615ba3c16df4a “The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Ministers from its 11 members issued a joint statement saying that they had agreed on its core elements, and that it demonstrated their “firm commitment to open markets”. The political symbolism was powerful. As America retreats, others will lead instead.” Essential what the article was saying was the countries around the Pacific Rim, had a trade deal together, they were all intertwined and had a trading process going, but with only three weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump had declared that the United States was out of that trade process. The trade process was the TPP (Trans- Pacific Partnership). I feel that this article, let alone this topic, is very important, because it can v...

As the 53rd Super Bowl is coming up this weekend, I thought I'd write about the economic impact it has on it's host city (Atlanta). Last year's Super Bowl brought in about $450 million for Minneapolis due to visitors and company hosting events over a 10-day period from Jan. 26 to February 4 (Vikings). Last year's Super Bowl had visitors spending an average of $608 a day (tourists usually average spending $124 a day elsewhere). Another result last year, was a new record set by the amount of hotel rooms that were used as well as plane passengers that came to Minneapolis. The city had over $5.5 million invested in to the communities all because of the Super Bowl (Vikings). As for this year's Super Bowl which is being hosted in Atlanta, the Super Bowl  itself is expected to generate about $200 million in economic impact (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Taxpayers in Atlanta will end up spending about $700 million which will all go towards the new Mercedes-Benz stadi...

Brooks Farish IHSS Venezuela’s Economic Fall Venezuela is a South American country that has a deeply troubled economy. The cause of the economic decline in Venezuela is attributable to a decline in the price of oil coupled with the reduction in the volume of oil produced. The countries economic problems are also due to government lead mismanagement at the highest levels, especially the current dictator Maduro. Evidence of the economic decline in the countries GDP has declined by an average of 15% per year from 2015 to 2017. The government has responded with tightening currency controls which have resulted in the currency of Venezuela, the Bolivar, losing 99.9% of its dollar value, making it basically worthless. The citizens of Venezuela have experienced hyperinflation with prices of goods and services increasing 112% in 2015, 2,400% in 2017 and over 13,000% in 2018 (Flannery). In an effort to escape government prosecution and extremely difficult circumstances including food shortages...

Luke Kirchner Mr. Roddy IHSS 29 January 2019                                                 Could The World Economic Growth Slow?      Recently a report was issued that explained how China’s ‘slowdown’ could have massive effects on the world economy and growth in many fields. Due to the problems in China right now “...world growth could slow to a decade low of 2.3% in 2019 if Chinese growth slows sharply and could drop below 2% in the event of a combined slowdown in China and the U.S.” (Slater, Payne), which sparks many new theories about where our world economy will be in X number of years. The first indication is the earning fallout in major companies in the U.S. that have large markets in China. One example is Caterpillar, a construction vehicle and equipment supplier. “Shares of Caterpillar Inc. CAT, +1.74% slumped Monday after the Deerfield, Ill...

The Economic Impact of Pet Ownership This article covers the costs and economic implications that come with the ownership of pets. From cats and dogs, to reptiles and fish, any pets with have a significant impact on your wallet. Many people forget the long term price of owning a pet, especially if they get the animal for free. The costs of food, vet care, toys, etc all need to be taken into account before bringing home a new animal. Just a simple diagnostic test, a common veterinary procedure, usually costs anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000. It is estimated that Americans spend approximately $43.2 billion on their pets each year which is an incredibly large amount. The importance of this article is to highlight the economic impact of owning pets and everything you need to consider before bringing your new animal home. It’s important to remember that every animal is going to have a price be it a fish, a dog or a horse and the initial cost is...