My List of Questions

The Economic Crisis of the 21^st Century

 

Who is responsible for the economic disaster?

Who predicted it would happen?

Who thought it would not happen?

What were the first signs of the crisis coming?

How does it compare to the Great Depression?

What is the difference between a recession and a depression?

When did it officially become a recession?

What caused the mortgage market to collapse?

How did mortgage rates affect the real estate boom?

Was the burst of the real estate bubble the starting of all of this?

Was 9/11 the real cause, and this is just residual effects?

What government intervention has helped?

What government intervention has hurt?

Did the government do to prevent this from happening?

What did the government fail to do to prevent this from happening?

Are big corporations to blame?

Is there any “one person” or any “thing” responsible for the mess?

How did Bernard Madoff get away with a $50B ponsey scheme?

How much worse will it get before it gets better?

Will it get worse before it gets better?

Have we seen the bottom?

Where is the bottom? 

What signs will indicate we have reached the bottom?

How much money has the crisis cost America?

How much money has the average American lost?

Has America made the same mistakes of the Great Depression?

Does every generation need to make their own mistakes?

Could this have been prevented?

How much worse was the Great Depression than this?

Can any “one” country be identified as the culprit?

When this is over with, when will the next one happen?

How often do we have recessions in America?

When was the last recession?

What did we do to get out of it?

How does the media influence slow the healing of this crisis?

Do the media protract the crisis?

Is the crisis immune from Government help?

Does it just need to “run its course?”

How much do politics play in this?

Are other countries in as much pain as America?

Has the suicide rate increased from this crisis?

How many suicides can be accounted for during the Great Depression?

Does technology have any effect on the speed with which the crisis is happening?

How many people have lost their jobs?

How do the jobs losses compare to that of the Great Depression or other Recessions?

What jobs are available right now?

How do the government bailouts help or hurt?

Who has received the government bailout money thus far?

To what extent do the bailout packages affect the national debt of America?

How many bankruptcies have been caused because of the crisis?

How many foreclosures can we attribute to the crisis?

Are any industries or companies profiting from the crisis?

How bad has the stock market losses been?

Where is the stock market bottom?

What was the percentage drop in the market during the Great Depression? 

What stocks have increased since the beginning of this crisis?

Should people pull their money out of the market?

How will the crisis affect social security?

How many people are on food stamps because of this?

Does class warfare have anything to do with this?

Are the rich really hurting right now?

Are there people that have not been affected?

How will children remember this crisis?

How much have real estate values dropped?

When can real estate values expect to return?

What were the hardest hit areas of the country?

Did the price of oil have anything to do with the crash?

Will the crisis force the government to takeover more banks?

What are the negatives of nationalizing banks?

Did the Iraq War have anything to do with this?

Has spending increased or decreased in the Iraq War since the crisis?

If a decrease in War spending has happened, has it affected the ability of the troops to do their jobs?

How has the crisis affected migration to the United States?

 

 

 

 

 

Economy Poem

Poof! Goes The Magic Economy

Poof goes the magic economy Where toadstools and fairies Smoke dollar bills In trade and cap barrels While fat cat CEOs Bailout with their golden chutes The taxpayer will foot the bill!  Not to worry,  GM And its rickety products Are here to stay. And never mind homeowners Such a cliche Our father, who Wal-Mart in Heaven Target be thy name. The Toys R' Us Come Starbucks will be done On Earth, as a Mall in Heaven. Give us this day Our Panera Bread And give us our Wendy's As we forgive those Who eat at McDonald's And lead us not Into Chrysler But deliver us from GM For thine is the Republicans Democrats The two party system  Never to be broken. Transfixed upon this cross of gold.  Denis Kucharski

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poof-goes-the-magic-economy/

 

Spelling Quiz Part II

A couple weeks back I posted spelling test part I.  Here is part II.  Try it out and see how you do.  It's never a bad time to start working on improving vocabulary and spelling.    Check this out 

Also, another cool thing some of you may have seen before is this:

I am giong to witre a praargaph prupsoely msiseplling ecah wrod.  It's amzanig how our mnids are stlil albe to raed tihs wtihuot mcuh prlboem.  Try it out on yuor frnieds.  Jsut keep the lsat two leteters of the wrod in the crorect speliling.

Cool huh?

Framing Class - Kendall

In a selection from the book “Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America,” the author Diana Kendall analyzes the different social classes in America, including the way they are formed, and how they continue to be formed.

Kendall examines how television shows such as “The Simple Life,” with Paris Hilton, reinforce the class system by displaying the working class and their daily lives as degrading.  The spoiled heiress, Hilton, reduces herself to jobs such as working in fast food restaurants, or on farms etc.  The people in the show are not actors.  While watching this type of show you can see how Hilton does everything she can to make it be known that she is not of this class. 

The main issue with Kendall’s rhetoric, and that of many from the progressive movement, is that they do not adequately describe solutions to the problems.  Certainly many enormous and valid issues are brought to the readers attention, however, very few if any quantitative solutions can be found.  To make this type of rhetoric far more successful, the author must demand action.  Michael Moore’s style is a great example of a “how to” manual in demanding action.

There will always be a social class division in the world.  As long as there is greed, there will be those who want the treasure, those who have the treasure, and those who just want more of the treasure they already have too much of.   

Homeless Kids.  Probably need simple things, like food, shelter, and love.

One man's "toy." Probably need simple things like caviar, a 32 person crew, and a fishing pole. And yes, there are two helicopter pads.  

Serving in Florida - Ehrenreich

In a fascinating excerpt titled “Serving in Florida,” by Barbara Enrenreich, the author sets out on an experiment where she submerges herself into the world of the minimum wage worker.  Enrenreich works as a server at a low-end restaurant, and as a housekeeper at a local motel.  Her results are sobering to say the least. 

In her experiment, Enrenreich was attempting to learn what the low-income class of Americans experience on a day-to-day basis.  She wonders how it is possible to live by making only $6.10 per hour.  Enrenreich forges minor relationships with coworkers at the places of her employment.  She relays to the reader the way these people deal with life, e.g. the lack of proper health maintenance due to lack of health insurance, the borderline homelessness, and hunger they face.

This real life documentary style of writing is very effective.  Enrenreich has a gifted way of presenting logos, pathos, and ethos throughout the text.   In one of her many vivid descriptions of Jerry’s restaurant, where she waiters for $2.10/hour plus tips, she writes how the smell is wretched (referred to "citris fart"),  the sanity is nonexistent, the management has little respect for the employees, and the customer nearly becomes "the enemy."   The visual images of her environment are brilliantly illustrated.

Enrenreich portrays how many people get trapped in this rat race for the rest of their lives.  Lack of advanced education, and the ability to achieve it, binds people to a life of wage-slave labor.  The only hope for many of these low-income wage-slaves is some sort of government support to give them a jump-start.  Otherwise, it is nearly impossible to save enough money, or find enough time, for them to break the cycle.  

Chelsi's Grammar Comments

This week I am posting grammar issues that Chelsi pointed out to me on my cartoon essay.  

The issue I'm going to focus on this week is rule 18 on Chelsi's Political Cartoon Analysis Grading Key.  Rule 18 states: Try to avoid "to be" verbs in your writing.  Review the rules about active / passive voice.  

On uark.edu I found the following rules and examples:

In active voice sentences, the verb expresses the action in the sentence, the subject performs the action, and the object is the recipient of the action. Active sentences follow the pattern: subject-verb-object.

Jill kicked Jack.

In a passive voice sentence, the subject and object flip-flop. The subject becomes the passive recipient of the action.

Jack was kicked by Jill.

My issue was I put "has" "had" "were" in several of my sentences. One of my sentences was "What has caused this massive collapse..."  I deleted has and it sounds much better.  "What caused this massive collapse..."  Sounds much better, right?

Michael 

Spelling Time My Friends

Every year since I have been out of high school (over 12 years) I have gradually lost my ability to spell.  I was dang good at spelling all throughout my schooling years.  Once I started using the computer more and more, I began to rely on "spell check" in the software, and not in my mind.  If today, I had to hand write a document I'm sure it would be full of spelling errors.  I want to work on this. I think most people should work on this.    

I'm using the quiz website I found last week for a spelling test.  I was pretty surprised after taking a couple of the quizzes that I really could improve my spelling!  Check out it HERE