Magnificentme's blog

Today in one of my classes the professor went off on a tangent to talk about voting, since it is Election Day and all. The professor asked who was going to vote today, and a couple of students raised their hands. Then she asked how many people had possessed the foresight and planning to vote early or absentee. No one raised their hands. So while she scolded us, and tried to cajole some more voters out of the class she informed us why she believed that we needed to vote.  Read More »

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8108603

So this makes me think of the first Great Awakening and Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” (Which can be found here http://www.ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/sinners.html )  Read More »

I recently read an interesting article from “The Economist” about a rising concern over income inequality in the US. In general the people you assume are most concerned with inequality are in the lower income brackets; after all, there is still that saying “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Most people know that (according to Marx) the next step in economic growth is for the proletariat to rise up against inequality and create a communist system through revolution.  Read More »

I think it is interesting when people bash developing countries for their lack of environmental policies. Wagging a self righteous finger, and shaking your head sadly at nations who are trying to get their economies off of the ground isn’t really going to help at all.

First of all, environmental protection is a huge drain on developing nations. In ten years in Mali more than 100,000 hectares of land were deforested; most of the trees there weren’t cut down by people looking to farm land, they were cut by the impoverished. People cut down the trees and haul the lumber back to the city were they sell it... For pennies. There are so many people who have suffered misfortunes that they are all cutting down trees, praying to make enough to feed themselves, while driving down the price of firewood. For the most part the people don’t know any better, and those who do are too busy struggling with today to think about tomorrow let alone ten years from now  Read More »

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/downloads/bp30_cotton.pdf

West Africa and Central Africa have primarily agricultural economies, and many of the nations rely heavily on cotton to generate revenue. There are more than 10 million people in Western and Central Africa who’s livelihoods are directly dependant upon cotton; many more people rely upon it indirectly. However, in the last twenty years cotton prices have been plummeting. The price of cotton is now lower than it was at any point in American history, with the exception of the great depression.  Read More »

My Labor economics professor had a professor who went to capital hill some years ago to argue against raising the minimum wage. At the time all of the congressmen went out to lunch together. One of the congressmen was shocked that anyone could possibly oppose a minimum wage; his justification for creation of a minimum wage in the 1930s...

“It was the only thing we could do, and we had to do something, because all of the jobs were moving to the South.”  Read More »

Do you want to end poverty?
Every time I open AIM a little advertisement pops up for the ONE campaign. There are all of these celebrities claiming that we can end poverty “one person at a time” and that they don’t want you money, they only want your voice. It sounds great. Sign a petition, end poverty, how easy! Well I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but it won’t work.  Read More »

300,000,000. A huge number, almost unfathomable for most people, but it is now the number of people in the US. Just thinking about 300 million people will cause doomsday scenarios to play through most people’s heads, but the fact of the matter is for the US a growing population is more of a blessing than a curse.  Read More »