Natural Resources (Capitalism vs. Socialism)

    Capitalistic governments have no control over any natural resources. All natural resources are controlled by the people. Prices of natural resources are driven up and down solely by the market, competition, and supply and demand.
    In socialistic economies, government controls some natural resources they can control them by controlling price or the resource itself. One example of a socialist government controlling a natural resource is with a minimum wage. People and their skills are considered an essential natural resource, and when a government controls to a degree how much employers must pay for this natural resource, the government is showing socialistic qualities.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism in Schools

    In capitalistic schools, students have complete choice in classes. There are no public schools; all schools are privately owned. There is also no government funding. Competition fuels the quality of capitalistic schools. Not all children must attend school.
    Communistic school systems consist of government funded, owned, and run public schools. Schools are uniform. Students are not able to choose their classes. Career choices (and therefore education) are chosen by the government. All students are educated, but education is specialized based on assessments of students' talents and on students' chosen careers.
    Socialistic education systems are a mixture of communistic and capitalistic education systems. Some choice is awarded to students in the choosing of their classes, education, and career paths. There are both public and private schools. There is some government funding. Everyone has the same opportunity for education in socialistic school systems.

20% Project December

   We will evaluate our project based on how much money we raise. Our goal is to raise more than $21,000. This month we came up with a couple of new ideas for fund raisers. Our biggest obstacle is that our first two ideas, which would have made a lot of money have fallen through. Now our biggest obstacle is coming up with and planning new ideas to make as much money with much more limited time.

Book Review: How to Analyze People on Sight

    The book my company read was How to Analyze People on Sight. This book talked about the physiology of certain body types and how that affected personality. The body types mentioned were the alimentative (fat, pleasant) type, the thoracic (big-chested, energetic), the muscular man (morally firm), the osseous type (bony, steady), and the cerebral type (thinker). The book explained how to recognize these types and the traits that went along with each type.
     A highlight of this book was that it really was quite interesting. A lot of the physiological traits mentioned could affect personality very logically, and I liked that. For example, the rigidity of osseous type due to large bones makes sense to me because bones are rigid. On the other hand, most of the theories mentioned in the book were laid out only in a logical way instead of being backed by research. This bothered me because, though many of these things seem to be observations, the observations/experiments were not cited. Thus, I don't know that there were legitimate experiments involved or if the author only watched a few people for an hour.
     Something else I found interesting was the effect of food on personality due to body type. On page 10 the author states, “Recall [an] occasion when a square meal made a decided difference in your disposition within the space of thirty minutes. If one meal has the power to alter so completely our personalities temporarily, is it any wonder that constant overfeeding causes everyone to love a fat man?” On the other end of the spectrum, “The brain worker long ago discovered that a heavy midday meal gave him a heavy brain for hours afterwards" (Page 58). From these two quotes we see that, on all sides, eating habits greatly impact personality, which I thought was a very interesting correlation. On the whole, I actually did enjoy this book.

Lemonade Stand

    The variable in the lemonade stand game is the weather. Sugars and lemons are the perishables. The constants are cups because they do not spoil or change. I learned that a large profit is required to make hardly any money when you are running your own business.

Minimum Wage

    The government should not raise the minimum wage for a few reasons. First of all, the effect on small businesses would be great if the minimum wage were raised. Small businesses employ about half the workforce (Ian Sheperdson, Forbes). Raising the minimum wage would adjust wages according to inflation for workers (Annie Lowrey, The New York Times), "but this takes no account of inflation [for banks], and it will take at least another year for real lending to return to its previous peak" (Ian Sheperdson, Forbes). Because banks are the major external source of finance for small businesses. If banks are not lending as much and employees require a higher wage, small businesses suffer.
    Second, in the State of the Union address President Obama said "A family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong” (Lowrey). The problem is, raising the minimum wage won't help that much there. "About 60% of the officially poor don’t work, so the only thing raising the minimum wage does for them is to make it harder for them to get a job....It is estimated that less than 15% of the total increase in wages resulting from an increase in the minimum will go to people below the poverty line " (William Dunkelberg).
   Finally, the number of jobs will decrease, and more people will be layed off. "The Law of Demand always works: the higher the price of anything, the less that will be taken, and this includes labor" (William Dunkelberg). For these main reasons, the minimum wage should not be raised.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianshepherdson/2013/09/10/small-businesses-are-the-missing-key-to-a-full-economic-recovery/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/us/politics/obama-pushes-for-increase-in-federal-minimum-wage.html?_r=0
www.forbes.com/sites/williamdunkelberg/2012/12/31/why-raising-the-minimum-wage-kills-jobs/

Stocks Assesment

   Stocks are portions of a company that a person can buy. At the end of the year, a company who offers dividends gives a percentage of the profits to each shareholder. A trade is to buy a stock for less than six months. A trade should occur when a catalyst is coming up that could boost sales. A catalyst is an event that causes a change in the price of a stock. This could include an earnings report or releasing a new product.