Celebrity's of the Week

Tom Hanks

Clint Eastwood

Al Pachino

The Good, The Bad, The Fed

                                    
Many people believe that the Fed is either good or bad. This is a misconception, since the Fed was incorporated for a reason or else it would not be there. A major reason, and a very understandable one at that, people strongly distrust is because the Fed is not actually part of the US government despite it having the title 'Federal' in its name. "the Federal Reserve ... declaring that it was “not an agency” of the U.S. government and therefore it was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act" (1) Since the Fed is not part of the government it is not obligated to release information about itself to the public. "Our money supply has rapidly increased over the past century due to the  Federal Reserve printing massive amounts of money like there is no tomorrow"(2) The Fed is completely in control of the amount of US currency is printed and due to this the amount of actual dollars there are has greatly increased over the years. This ultimately has caused inflation which greatly harms the economy. Despite all this it is actually a myth that the Fed prints the money. "Although the Bureau of Printing and Engraving prints it, it delivers it to the Fed, and then the Fed gets to decide how much of it to put out into the economy," says W. Michael Cox, director of the O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business. The Fed only determines the actual amount of money released to the public.

(1) http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/11-reasons-why-the-federal-reserve-is-bad

(2) http://www.bankrate.com/finance/federal-reserve/myths-federal-reserve-1.aspx

Celebrity's of the Week: Spongebob Edition

Spongebob Squarepants

Patrick Star

Squidward Tentacles

Gravity CEO cuts his own pay

CEO Dan Price decided to cut his own pay by 90% in order to close the "gap" between himself and the employees. Once receiving a $1 million pay he decided that all the employees of his company should receive a raise and achieve $70,000 annually, including himself. In order to accomplish this Dan had to cut his own pay and delve into the company's profits, all to change the downward spiral of this company. Many employees were struggling to get by since some of them were making only $36,000 per year. In order to improve this stale atmosphere that was developing within Gravity Dan decided to give every one raises, and take the necessary measures to make sure every one got one. This greatly improved peoples attitudes and Dan said he used this raise as "moral imperative." The company now is receiving great responses on service and the employees could not be happier.
However Dan did mention that he would take an increase in his own wage as the company's increase to a point where it would not be harmful to the company. This is uncommon since CEO's normally deduct others wages or fire people in order to either motivate them and increase profits again. Dan proved that by deducting your own pay for a period of time and increasing others a company will not only turn around but it will flourish. Instead of motivating people through fear it's smarter to motivate employees through money since everyone likes money. The larger amount of money they are receiving allows the employees to feel economically secure in their environment, since when an employee has a problem the company will become greatly affected. "Happy employee Happy Customer"

The Recession and You

Recession - a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters. Recessions are actual typical in economics, since economies fluctuate. These are "like a Cheshire cat, might disappear, reappear, and change shape." (5) They constantly are different and can be very hard to predict. The word alone is hard to define, so trying to predict when there will be one is just as hard. It is a period of time when all economic activity is much less then it should be, but that can happen whenever a major crisis occurs in a country. Recessions rarely lead to Depressions since "they occur when the economy's normal or recuperative mechanism fails to engage." (5) During depressions no economic activity is made which leads to many problems. Things such as unemployment rate increasing, value of things increase uncontrollably, and among other things. They are typical caused by a series of bad investments and giving businesses and consumers unneeded things that basically put down the idea of future spending.
The market though does have a cycle that it follows and it shifts between two different forms of market, a bull market or a bear market. A bull market is when market activity and investments are increasing. Even in a period of time when people expect prices to raise would mean that it is a bull market. Where as a bear market is simply the opposite of the bull market. During this period of time activity is down and stocks within the stock markets drop. This however only lasts for a couple months typically. There are great examples of the different switches of market throughout the US history. Before the Great Depression the stock market experienced a bear market which meant that the investments and stocks lost all value and people began to loose money. Another example would be understanding how the stock market works. People like to buy stocks during the bear market since prices of stocks are cheap, while the bull market means that people want to sell since the stocks are worth much more than what it was before.

The Underground Economy

This "hidden" economy is detrimental to the function of the current economy. This economy is nothing more than the lower class or unemployed people taking upon odds and ends jobs. These jobs not only help the people earn money but it also helps/deters the current economy.
Some of the benefits are that the people are actually earning some money for them selves. Who doesn't like money, these people who do jobs like house cleaning receive their money untaxed so they will be able to spend it more freely on things they would too. The people who lost work hours in their jobs can be somewhat supported with these type of jobs as support.
There are many negatives though to this "economy". One of them are that since the money is tax free the government is losing income so they raise taxes to make up for what they are losing. This effects everyone else and creates more people to take up odds and ends jobs. This hidden economy typically is involved with elevated crime rates and drug use which is always a bad thing no matter what.

Celebrity's of the Week

Steve Buscemi

LeBron James

Dean Winchester

Rewards Vs Earnings

The US government has been using a standard system for employing people for government jobs. This system was otherwise known as the Spoils system. Before 1881, it was natural for presidents to replace federal employees with people that helped out the president during his campaign. The president is allowed to hire individuals into high ranking jobs, but before 1881 it did not matter whether or not said individual was qualified or not. The president simply held the power to do so, which is why this system is named the Spoils system because "to the victor goes the spoils." In the past the president elected people like friends or family members to high ranking positions, since they were the victor. During Washington's presidency he nominated many federalist to government positions and later when Jefferson took the reigns he cleared all the people from their positions and reelected people with views similar to his since he felt that he held not only the power but this helped deter corruption. Eventually in 1881 James A. Garfield created the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act which basically eliminated the previous Spoils system and replaced it with a merit system. This meant that people that actually both qualify and earned the position received it. This however did not completely abolish the spoils system it simply made it harder for the positions to be given away, it seemed to be more of a way to deter presidents to give these positions away. Most of the current government positions are all determined based upon the merit system or competition based tests, despite that about 3% of the government jobs are determined by the president outside of the merit system itself.

Sources:
http://www.shmoop.com/federal-bureaucracy/spoils-system.html

Celebrity's of the Week: Creators edition

Paula Deen

(Phil's Idea)

Emeril Lagasse

Swedish Chef

Cell Phone Leakage EVERYWHERE!!!!

               

Many people believe that they have "privacy" from others, well those people are dumb. Thinking that you have privacy is a false delusion that one should abandon right away. Police officer's are allowed to be given search warrants which allow them to search any place that the warrant states. In the case of Riley v. California the police officers searched Riley's phone once he was arrested for having two loaded guns in his car. With his phone in hand the police officers began to violate the sanctity of the phone and found information that linked Riley to a gang shooting. He was given 15 years in prison for attempt of murder. The Supreme Court then looked over the case and determined that since the police officers did not receive a search warrant they violated the fourth amendment and the privacy of Riley. Due to this mistake Riley was relieved of the attempt of murder sentence. In order to search something "the police need a court-issued warrant to do a search."(15) If not the police will ask if they are allowed to do a search and if you say no then they would need the warrant, but if you say yes then you just gave up your right to privacy. There is no way for people to understand exactly what the framers of the constitution wanted since technology has changed many things. "The Framers could never have imagined anything like smartphones, Facebook, and Google." (14) The framers were alive during a period way when they only had telegraphs, so it was no probable for them to anticipate the creation of cellphones or the internet. These are things that the current generations understand and they would know how to effectively create ways to "search" these new technologies without violating the fourth amendment. When the Framers first wrote the fourth amendment into the constitution they "had in mind the British soldiers" (15) since they would barge into peoples homes expecting them to house them. This is a clear violation of peoples privacy and in some cases harmed the stability of the homes. The fourth amendment in the beginning was intended to protect the people from someone violating their personal records or other forms of privacy. Again there is no way that the Framers could have predicted smartphones or other such technologies. This is why the constitution was made so that it could be added to or changed so that it fit into the current stream of life.

Celebrity's of the Week

Alton Brown

Rob Gronkowski 

(Alex Rebello's Idea)

Captain Jack Sparrow

Review of The Federalist #10 by James Madison

After reading The Federalist #10 I learned a few things about what that document is saying. James Madison talks about many different things all throughout this document mentioning many different things about the government and how societies work. This is majorly about how Unions and Factions of people have corrupted the views of the public and have obscured the objectives of the government itself. Unions and Factions can be very destructive in the United States government structure for a few different reasons and that is explained throughout this document. It discusses the structures of Republics and Democracies and the actual effects Unions have on people and governments.

“The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished” (James Madison) This explains a major problems that Unions/Factions represent in society. Their influence alone makes them quite the opposing force, their sheer numbers make them the majority which allows them to sway many people to their side in arguments. People typically agree to the side with a larger majority, this usually does not matter whether or not that side is correct it just means that majority rules. They can control who becomes elected. However with every disease there is a cure.

There are many ways to cure this ‘disease’ “two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.” (James Madison) The first way means that once a faction begins getting ideas or motives for their actions that motive must be eliminated or controlled. If they are allowed to run rampant with these ideas, they will spread and cause havoc across any nation. They have to be closely monitored so things do not escalate out of control. The other way of controlling them is to control the after effects of a faction as efficiently as possible. If they were to sway many people using ideals a person must find a logical way to counter those ideals and sway them back so that the factions do not end up with supporters. Once with supporters they begin affecting the government, but things must be put in place to protect it from situations like this. This is why the United States is a Democratic Republic.

Democratic Republics make it harder for the Factions to take control. There are differences between Democracies and Republics. “The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.” (James Madison) This shows the major differences between those two structures of government. The first being how votes work. A Republican votes on every decision that the government makes, while a Democracy elections people to make their decisions for them. Secondly Democracies must vote in people to make decisions so the more the people in a country would mean the more people that would have to be elected in to make these decisions, while in a Republic everyone would simply vote on the decision itself. Despite this the actual leaders of a country determine what goes on within it.

The actual power of elected leaders only depend on their land they are in control of. “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.” (James Madison) This means that no matter how influential the man is they are only in control of a certain area and cannot go beyond those boundaries. These Factious leaders can determine certain thing within their states but they dare not go beyond that since they know they will be competing against other Factions.

This is what I understood once I read The Federalist #10 by James Madison. It explained a lot about the dangers of Unions/Factions that reside in countries.