Snared in a Pinch: The Poverty Trap

I read this article that suggests that the being in poverty itself brings to the table more problems than unpaid bills. The author went on to propose that these hardships could induce stress, resulting in "poor" decision making, entangling the individual in a situation where they are "so concerned about the present that [they] can't begin thinking about the future."

You don't say.

I will not sit in my air-conditioned room, blogging, and dismiss this conjecture. Shafir certainly knows his area of expertise, and I lack the experience or knowledge to challenge his claim. Rather, I would like to focus on the issue of being in poverty as a whole. I do not want people to read this and jump to the conclusion that "Oh! This is why those people want my spare change! This is why people require welfare. This is why I can feel fortunate about my position in the comparable world."

Popular science has a disposition to relate enormous issues to a novel cause. Journalists just eat it up. While I can guarantee that there is a percentage of under-achievers who fall into Shafir's affirmation that being surrounded by other working class heroes could hinder your chances of rising up the tax bracket, it's not time to generalize. Everyone has a story. Everyone is in the situation they are in because of the decisions of their parents, their governments, their precursors, their triumphs, their inspirations, their failures, their lucky days, and their sleepless nights. It's seldom one factor that attributes to being poor.

Frankly, being poor has been the norm for the greater part of forever. It's only recently that Wikipedia scholars and cognitive pioneers have asked "why?" The middle class being the primary group (in developed nations) is in its infancy.

Life does an impressive job of beating people down. The most staggering aspect about this article is that poor people being distracted is not common sense. It's not even to the extent that the lower class don't think about the future: I think it haunts some of them. Realistically, they just have too many problems in their wallets to worry about their next "big step." Being in a poor financial situation does not fundamentally transform someone, it obstructs them from allowing the person to rise to their maximum potentials.

Everyone has a story.

Make Kony Famous

Joseph Kony is a Ugandan guerrilla group leader who has had major control over the past 26 years throughout Africa. He has kidnapped children, forced murder as well as sex trafficked under age girls taken from their homes. He is listed number one on the ICC's list of the most wanted and has caused a huge uproar throughout the world. He has caused such a commotion that a charity group, invisible children, formed with specific intentions of stopping this man and saving the African children. After going to D.C. and eventually convincing our government to send some 100 special forces units into Uganda, they began raising more support from the country and are attempting to keep the fire burning through donations and buying of the "action" kit. Although the group stands for a good purpose, there has in fact been some suspicion of a report that they used 8.8 million of their 13.7 dollars raised towards their personal spending of filming, travel, and transportation. Even with this fact being somewhat well known the group has continued stronger than ever, sending a Kony video viral and raising huge support throughout the world.

I personally am supportive of the group although their spending has been a bit suspicious, it is still inspiring that in economic times such as these and human sensitivity at a low they are able to continually raise massive support both financially and personally. It is important people do not get so caught up in saving and watching their expenses that we still remember the importance of lending a hand to struggling countries, whether or not we are at any type of risk for it or not.

Hayekian Beliefs

After studying and learning a
little more about the Hayekian economical views, I become even more strongly
against it as I observed the full understanding of the concept. In the beginning
all I believed the system to be was that the government should stay out of economic
affairs and let them sort out by themselves. Later on after researching a
little further, I came upon the true meaning and over view of the entire belief
system. Not only is someone who believes Friedrich Hayek’s beliefs agreeing
that the economy should sort itself out but as well as racism as well. Hayekian
believers thought that slavery should still be a part of the society because it
was a part of life in many previous cultures. A more recent issue would be the
Civil Rights Movement. Hayekian believers would say that it is rational to not
step in and segregate but simply stand back and let the whites and blacks
handle matters on their own. After time has allowed this belief system to
develop, the Hayekian followers have been able to cope with the basic principle
of morals. This has allowed the Hayekians to adapt and realize that the
abolishment of slavery was in the best interest of the society. After reading
and understanding more on Hayeks beliefs, I was able to conclude that adopting
this concept into the U.S. would not only hurt our economy but as well as the
entire nation as a whole.

Woo Pig Sooie!

I visited University of Arkansas a few weekends ago. As we did the college tour, two students were showing us around on campus. As we got to the business building, they started to explain some cool things about the department. The guy told that there is an investing class that every business major/minor has to take. The school donates $1,000,000 for the students to invest in the class so they can really get a hands on experience on the real stock market, rather than just learning through simulators for practice. I think using real money would put more pressure on the students to take it more seriously, in the chances of actually making/loosing real money. I thought this was pretty cool. This gives students the tools and knowledge to invest money early on. Especially being a business major, it is important to invest your money to make a good living. The earlier you start the more you will make. This is becoming more and more important because we need to start planning to save for retirement earlier on because our generations will not be able to plan for social security. Its cool that the university is investing money into their students, which will not only make the school money, but will overall drive the economy because those students will more than likely invest on their own, putting more money into the economy. I don’t know how common these classes are, but I think its an awesome idea that will spread if it hasn’t already. A lot of people, especially young adults, are scared to invest their money. By taking this class, more young adults will begin to put back money and start retirement funds early on and be smarter with their money.

2012 Progress

As 2012 has started off with a boom, assuming that it is leading up to the end of the world, we have also boomed economically. Our economic stance from only six months ago has greatly improved, in fact we are doing better than what was assumed we would be at currently. Our unemployment rate has dropped more than expected and manufacturing has picked up greatly affecting jobs and production. While our economy has experienced some big improvements it is still hard to say exactly how long they are expected to last. With the rapid unemployment drop it would appear good things are to come ,but we really can never truly tell. The economy is one of the seemingly impossible to predict, but with many good signs it is only right to assume our economy is going into a positive direction. We can only hope that more people are able to find jobs and more money will be injected in our ever changing economy. With businesses picking up and unemployment dropping, we can only hope for the best.

"Nonsense?" (Pt. 1)

Partially.

The point is that when two people argue over the one cause of oil price increase, both individuals are incorrect because there are several reasons as to why oil prices rise.

What frustrates me is that some people nowadays focus on the short term reasons for oil price increase or decrease. Putting blame on the dollar, conjecture, and instability puts the issue as a whole in a poor context. It implies that by solving these problems, everything can go back to "normal."

It's time we step back and address the real issue: oil is a limited resource. You may have read about "peak oil" in the article. It was the first time I learned of it, too: essentially, peak oil will occur when the rate of petroleum extraction is at it's max, after which we must begin to cope with "terminal decline." It's a day we have all seen coming, the end of the oil age... but some say Peak Oil has already occurred. That's debatable. The point is that grumbling over the sanctions on Iran and the possible Oil Wars, or (insert any explanation as to why oil prices fluctuate here) entirely disregards the base of the issue and merely puts off the the problems that we will eventually have to face, such as having no petroleum to power our cities, run our cars, make our plastics, and lubricate the gears of the entire economy.

Others that do not believe in peak oil feel that entrepreneurship will be the new driving force of energy production, having the ability to exploit new fields in alternative resources.

You can expect part two of "Nonsense?" next week.

New Job Program

The
United States has seen one of the most drastic unemployment periods this nation
has ever seen in the past few years. The vast amount of unemployed Americans
has led to the nation’s continual downfall. Recently, Americans have believed
that we were in the recovery stage of the recession due to how the economy is
reacting, but due to lack in hiring, one can assume that the economy is going
to take a double dip. Even after two, even three to four years had gone by;
there are still people out of the job. Many American citizens have been repetitively
searching for jobs and have failed to find anything until a new jobs plan was
set into effect. After researching what this new job program was, I realized
that it wasn’t even a job yet it was an internship. The creator of this program
believed that to start on a successful path you can’t just immediately walk
into a well-paid job even if you had a college education along with a solid 30
years of experience, you’d have to start fresh and allow yourself to build up opportunity.
So many unemployed Americans were very prideful and would not settle for
flipping burgers or sacking groceries, but as soon as the opportunity of this
internship opened up, many jumped on it.
After reading and learning about this job program, I was able to gain a
firm grasp on what our economy is really going through. My opinion of the
economy after realizing that the unemployment was still so high was that we
were going to double dip and go through another recession but if this job
program was able to expand and spark more unemployed people’s interests, the
United States economy may look at a peeking point in the near future.