Critical Thinking; Welfare fraud

     On Friday, December 2, 2016, GOVT 2305 published an article titled “Welfare Fraud.” In this article, the author argues that the welfare system of America has a lot of problems, and the worst problem is the fraud of selfish people. Of course, the system gives help to the people in need, so government should go on operating for the people. However, there are pretty many people using the system for satisfying their greed even though they do not need the benefit of the system. Therefore, the selfish people preventing the fair distribution of welfare by deceiving government must be extirpated as the author said.

     Extirpating the selfish people should be done for the people in need who cannot get the benefit of welfare system. This is because the people in need can be left behind at the priority order of people who can get benefit as the selfish people occupy the prior order. Also, the fraud of them even can lead wasteful spending of taxes. As a result, there are still many people who really need government’s aid, but did not get it although government estimates the amount for the welfare system every year and sets the budget according to the estimation. Accordingly, government can increase taxes in order to lessen the intensive voice of citizens demanding financial aids. However, there is a limit to increasing taxes, so it can make the possibility higher for government to have high national debt. Therefore, the selfish people’s inconsiderable acts should be harmful to entire American nation although they just think their acts as minor impact upon the welfare system.

     Of course, the fraud of the selfish people is not the only problem of the governmental welfare system. Actually, it is impossible that the hand of government is reached to all of the people in need carefully. In other words, government cannot help all of the poor people. Thus, helping from more smaller bodies such as neighbors’ help or local government’s aids should be necessary to complement the welfare system. Also, government should develop the operation system of welfare with the continuous question how the aid for the poor can be distributed well. However, extirpating some of people’s selfish acts should be one of the most important corrections for the welfare system.

What US government should do?; who will pay for the "free" service?

      As the interest in the free child care system increases, the issue about who will pay for the “free service” is getting controversial as well. Actually, the biggest concern is that implementing the free service can increase taxes. Of course, it is inevitable for government to use a tax, but the problem is limitation of using a tax; the amount of tax that can be allocated to a policy is limited. Generally, government collects more money from citizens to solve the problem. However, increasing taxes contradicts the purpose of the free child care policy that is releasing the economic burden of citizens. It is difficult to overcome the dilemma, but it can be possible if a lot of individuals’ voluntary support accumulate.

     Then what is the individuals’ voluntary support? The donating system of Word Vision can be an example of it. As each donator of Word Vision supports one child in the poor countries, each family can support one child of a family which needs the free child care. For example, each daycare institution can ask whether every family which visits there to put their child in day care have the intention of donating a little money for a child of a low income family. Someone might take the suggestion with pleasure, on the other hand, there should be someone who refuses it. However, parents are more likely to feel sorry for the situation of the children who are left alone when their parents go to work than the others. Therefore, each volunteered families can support a child to the degree that they do not feel pressure, or some families share the cost of day care for a child of a low income family. Then the governmental cost for implementing the free child care policy might decrease, and the low income family’s burden of paying increased taxes might be released.

     Now that this method just needs people’s warm heart, it may not need a lot of financial support to promote it. As a result, it can produce high efficiency with low cost. Of course, it has a problem how many families will be interested in the donation and donate for the children, but it seems possible to be succeed in collecting a lot of participation in the method as Word Vision saves many children in the poor countries. Even if not many families would volunteer to help the children, a few families’s help can be a great support to some of the low income families who have trouble in caring their children at where the hand of government does not reach. Furthermore, the method might be much more successful than people expect because the world is still warm.

Critical Thinking; Is The Minimum Wage Really Good For America?

     On Friday, November 4, 2016, M. Kristina's US GOVT 2305 Blog published an article titled “Increase USA Minimum Wage, Blog Stage Five." In this article, the author argues that increasing minimum wage is necessity for achieving “American dream.” In other words, giving more money to Americans can make them happy and successful in their lives. As the author said, the minimum wage should increase according to inflation. However, it is doubtful that increasing minimum wage can really help Americans to lead them successful lives.

     Of course, increasing wages should be good for individual person because individual income increases; there is no one who hates increased income. On the other hand, it can be a bad news for employers because they are the people who must give money to employees. Now, even the global economy is going through hard time and inflation is getting worse; then how the limited amount of money can be allocated to so many employers equally. Although large companies also hate the news, they can afford the increased wages. The growing companies that succeed economically is also able to do it. However, there are still many companies of which sales are not enough to give their employers the increased wage so that giving wages become a big burden of the companies’ employers. As a result, they might cut the jobs. Even though they try to give the increased wages to their employees, the companies can be in danger of becoming bankrupt. As a result, it would affect to the unemployment problem. If so, can we say that increasing minimum wage can make Americans happy?

     Although the author gave an example that few states are successful in improving economy by increasing minimum wage, it is unsure that the case of the states can be applied to another sates’ economical situation. Besides, the indicator of economic growth seems focus on the growth of industry as a whole rather than individual person. Therefore, it should be considered again that the states’ entire economical growth helped the individual’s economical growth too. Also, as the author said that most of the people who can get benefit from increased minimum wages are the young people under 25 years old, it seems to need more evidence that increasing minimum wage can really help whole American nations to succeed economically.

    What is the real meaning of the successful life? Is it making a lot of money? In light of self-realization, successful life means enjoying life with their dream job. Also, making more money is not a primary goal of the people who come to America in order to get jobs. One of the big reasons why they come to America is that there are more open and equal opportunity in getting jobs. Then increasing minimum wage can be a good news for them, but cannot be a crucial factor for achieving American dream. Furthermore, not many people in America lives as pursuing their personal goal. Even the people who earn a lot of money work without happiness. Thus, increased wages can fulfill individual’s personal desire through leisure activities, but it does not mean that they are living successful lives.

    In short, it is not bad to increase minimum wage, but it seems still doubtful that the wage can really become a practical key for realizing American dream. Before concluding simply that solving a visible problem can bring a good result, we should consider whether the solution can cause another side effects.

What US government should do; the Issue of Free Child Care

    Why do families in America need free child care? This is because there are so many dual-income families. The dual-income family is usual in almost every country. Of course, having both parents in workplace is inevitable choice among families in the United states as well. 

     Women’s participation in workplace is one reason why the dual-income family is increasing among families. Women are rare in workplace in the past, yet participation of women in public affairs is increasing now; they have been released from the stereotype that houseworks are women’s duty. Naturally, the number of housewives decreases. Accordingly, more men change their role in family from making living money to housekeeping. However, not many couples exchange their role each other; housewife to businesswoman and businessman to househusband. Instead, both of them want to achieve social success although they have young kids. Unavoidably, they decide to send their children to child care. 

   Economical reason is another reason why many both wives and husbands decide to work for affording living expenses. As the living expenses are more and more increasing, making money alone in family is not enough to supporting whole family. Both parents need to earn money together, so their children are left without parental care. As a result, children need to another caregiver instead of their parents, so parents send their kids to child care.

     Unfortunately, the cost of child care is pretty expensive. Thus, affording child care cost is becoming another burden of family, especially to low-income family. The dual-income family can make more money than the single-income family, but the dual-income family should pay child care cost. In short, they might spend a lot of money on child care.

     Then should government provide free child care? Yes, they should in order to relieve the burden of families, especially for low-income family. Furthermore, it can resolve the problem of wealth inequality by giving free child care to the family. However, providing free child care broadly in many states of America is not easy because of the reasons such as costs for practicing the policy and problem relating to labor. Also, even the families who do not need free child care can take advantage of the policy, then the purpose of it can be implemented ineffectively; the family who really need free child care cannot receive the benefit of it. As a result, more money is necessary to maintain the policy, and national budget also increases. However, national budget comes from taxes. After all, rising taxes can be burden of family. Thus, government should run the policy effectively without wasting money.

     Also, the issue of free child care focuses on expediency of adults. Nevertheless growth environment is important to growing children, the kids of dual-income families lacks of parental care, which is crucial environment for children. Besides, the quality of free child care is hard to be good. Children are the next generation to lead world in the future. Accordingly, raising young generation greatly is much more significant problem than solving economical problem. Therefore, government should provide the free child care policy for children not only for their parents.

Critical thinking; is the policy for promoting turnout effective?

   On Thursday, July 7, 2016, the Washington Monthly published an article titled “What Works to Turn Out Voters?” In this article, the author, Anne Kim, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, describes what policies for promoting people to vote on elections are effective with the credible reports of GAO. According to her explanation, same-day voter registration and vote by mail are the most effective policies, and texting of voting center and extended voting hours have potential influence. On the other hand, “Early in-person voting, emails, mailings and robo-calls” showed disappointing results in studies that examined the effectiveness of the policies. However, she emphasizes that even the effective policies do not have significant impact on raising the rate of participation in vote.

     Her argument suggesting broader reforms for promoting turnout to states is agreeable to the low turnout problem of the United states. As what she refers, current policies are limited to one aspect of convenience of voting. Officers might thought that enhancing convenience of voting system seems good solution of this problem, as the convenience in economical scene promote frequency of use. For example, some products’ convenience in real life causes high sales. People even buy expensive but convenient products. Convenient store is also a good example of how convenience can affect significantly to the frequency of use; a number of customers are using convenient store because of its high convenience. Thus, convenience in economy has great impact on frequency of use because it is directly upon daily life. However, elections are not everyday events and in political area, so convenience cannot be a direct reason for voters to vote. In short, the convenience in economy gives the reason why people buy something, whereas the convenience in voting system does not give voters the strong reason why they should vote. 

    Besides, the interventions of states for making voting system more convenient for voters is similar to beg of voters to participate in elections, which can make voters more passive in political events. More serious problem is that the convenient voting system does not appeal to voters significantly. Therefore, the policies for promoting turnout must be what makes citizens participate in vote spontaneously.

     Also, citizen’s interest in politics is the most important factor that must be considered for developing the policies. No matter how easy to vote, voting is still bothersome for politically indifferent citizens. However, more voters will vote on elections if they have strong desire to vote. Think about the people who vote for celebrities. They endure the bothersome in voting joyfully with love for their favorite celebrities. On the other had, attachment to candidates is insufficient to promote people to vote. Thus, it is necessary to make people have their favorite candidates in order to promote them to vote without external push.

Critical thinking; Is the creative thinking really helpful in predicting future terrorism?

     On Wednesday, September 7, 2016, the Congressional Quarterly published an article titled "How creative thinking could help prevent the next 9/11." In this article, the author suggests interesting idea that creative thinking is helpful to predict and prevent terrorism in the future. He gives some examples how the writers’ imagination seem to have predicted the 9/11 terror. It might be true. However, it is not enough to consider the imagination of them as prediction of the 9/11 terror; the stories which imply a terror might be just what people have imagined at least once. A lot of novels might had predicted the 9/11 terror by imagining possible happening or even conjecturing based upon facts, yet no one can sure whether the writers of the novels which imply the terror were really prophets of upcoming hazard or the writers' imagination became true stories after the 9/11 terror had occurred. In short, the author’s idea that creative thinking can be helpful resource of forecasting terrorism has insufficient logical evidence that the idea is true; there is high possibility that the similarity between the stories and 9/11 terror was just a casual coincidence. To make his idea more reliable, he should have given enough evidence that the writers created the stories based on a well-founded conjecture.
    As he said that avoiding the next terrorism is difficult, actually almost impossible, thus, predicting upcoming hazard such as terrorism must be implemented elaborately with reliable facts. Of course, sometimes unscientific thing can be a satisfactory explanation of enigmatic situation, so similar imagination of many people about terrorism could be a starting point of predicting the next one and preparing emergent situation because people might sense an imminent danger unconsciously. However, now, when the threat from terrorism is prevalent in all around the world, especially in America, there are sufficient sources of information which officers of government can refer to in preparing future terrorism. Many terrorists’ identity are disclosed, and they keep on warning their next terrorism plot so that officers can observe their movement closely instead of reading all of the terror stories. Furthermore, even though novels reflect reality and some of these are based on facts, it is not natural that people think a made up story as a prediction of upcoming terror. Also, if the made up stories that seem to foresee terrorism but actually is not true are considered seriously, it can give unnecessary fear to citizens. Therefore, the author’s argument that the highly imaginative people can be America’s “last, best hope” for preventing future terrorism is not likely to persuade his readers. It should be better using the imagination skill to prepare unexpected situation when a terror occurs for protecting citizens from death threats after figuring out and analyzing the movement and intention of terrorists.

Good article #1 - U.S. Election; A big and important upcoming event for all

On Thursday, September 8, 2016, the BBC published an article titled 

US election: Six times Clinton or Trump messed up. 

(Link - http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37292761)

    The upcoming presidential election is a big event and a significant issue of the United States, for the event will affects to America's future largely. Thus, people are necessary to pay attention to the candidates' movement carefully. The more Americans are informed about the candidates, the better they can determine who is the most competent candidate who can lead Americans to the stability and prosperity of America. In this regard, this article is worth reading for Americans and will help to get informations about the candidates. According to this article, both candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald trump, have regrets that they made in the past; three regrets of each candidates are referred. Hillary Clinton's stains are the issue of using private server as secretary of state, her support of the Iraq War, and her words about the Libyan casualties. While Donald Trump has three regret which are praising Putin, trashing generals, and military rape. By reading this with your insight, you may move forward to the presidential election even more wisely than before.