1. I think Obama has the exact right idea! I am with him 100%, education needs to stay affordable.

2. The fact that Obama will go out of his way to show up on tv shows to stand up for this cause makes him even more credible. As the president, there are plenty of other things he could be doing, but he is taking the time and effort to take a stand on an issue and make sure that his message is heard by different audiences.

3. I believe that colleges simply need to have lower tuition costs. In many countries in Europe, once you get accepted to college, no matter where you get accepted, you pay a low, flat rate. This makes sense to me because students are working incredibly hard to simply get accepted to schools, which are becoming increasingly competitive every year. We are one of the richest countries in the world, and if other countries can do it, I think our economy could support this system too, if we spend less money on jail and war. Our government needs to find a way to simply lower college costs, rather than trying to create more and more programs attempting to help kids out.

6)

1. “Well, $500,000 a Year Might Sound Like a Lot, but I’m Hardly Rich.”

2. “‘Sure, it’s an objectively large sum of money,’ they say. ‘But it is far smaller after I spend it.’”

3. The rich think they are saying that they are just like everyone else; they have a limited amount of money.

4. I think it’s incredibly annoying of them to try and pretend they are “just like” the 99%, when if you actually think about it, them having so much money is exactly the reason why other people are poor.

5.

5)

1. “Hey, I WorkedHardto Get What I Have!”

2. “Why, oh why, does the media bolster President Obama’s rhetoric by using his term: ‘the rich’? Would it not be more appropriate to say ‘the successful,’ or ‘those who work harder?”
3. They think they’re saying that they aren’t someone who just inherited a ton of money, they actually go to work every day to earn it.

4. I think they don’t realize that no matter how hard they work, if they make a lot of money they are lucky. There are plentyof people who work extremely hard and don’t make a lot of money and would be glad to trade jobs and incomes.

5.

4)

1. “If I Can Do It, So Can You!”

2. “We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”

3. Rich people think they are saying that this is America, and we are a Capitalist society, so anyone can just go get rich if they really want to.

4. This is incredibly stupid because if it were true, everyone would be rich.

5.

3)

1. “You’re Just Jealous Because I Made It and You Didn’t!”
2. “Part of it is jealousy. I stand by that. And here’s why I don’t have a lot of patience for that. My parents, they never played the victim card. My parents never said that we hope the rich people lose something so that we can get something.”
3. The rich think they are trying to tell people not to try to benefit yourself simply by attempting to hurt others.

4. This is stupid partly because it is true that the rich will have to give up some of their wealth in order for there to be more equal distribution of wealth. That’s why it’s called that. It seems fair to me that someone could have one less summer home so that multiple other families can afford to put food on their tables.

5.

2)

1. “You Shouldn’t Be Punishing the Very People Who Make This Country Work!”
2.  “There is a deeply disturbing message coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement … Simply put, it boils down to this: We must punish success …”
3. If you punish rich people, no one will want to be rich and our Capitalist society won’t work anymore!

4. Sorry that you consider it “punishment” to downgrade to only a $5 million dollar home so that other people can have medical care and a college education.

5.

1)

1. “Stop Asking for Handouts! I Never Got Help from Anybody!”
2. “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Did anybody help me out? No.”
3. The rich think they had a hard time getting rich so people should actually be impressed by how hard they worked to get where they are.

4. Being on food stamps and welfare is help.

5.

1. The average income is currently $41,673.83.

2. This ends up being $3,472.82 per month.

3. I think that it would be possible for one person to live comfortably on this, but I think it would be extremely difficult for a family. Young children and babies are especially expensive, and I don’t think would be enough money to comfortably support even a family with one or two kids. However, hopefully in a family with children there would be more than one person with an income, and with double this amount it would be more manageable.

4.

-Some counties are huge! Especially some in Nevada and southern California

-I wonder if living/food costs are lower where the income is lower, and higher where the income is higher, or if there is a lot of overlap

-Alaska has the most dramatic differences in income distribution

5.

-A lot of the east coast is wealthy

-California, especially the Bay Area, is also pretty wealthy

-It seems like the areas closest to the water kind of have higher incomes

-The middle of the country has more equal income distribution

-Income is not distibuted very equally in the US

1. The Federal Reserve is the United States central banking system.

2. The Fed was created on December 23, 1913 to stabilize the United States financial system. There was demand for more organization and more paper money, so the Fed was created to help create monetary policy.

3. There are Federal Reserves in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Altanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco.

4. The job of the Fed is to provide stability to the United States financial system, to “conduct monetary policy”, and to supervise the banking system.

5. A main criticism was the recent bailout of banks. There have also been more general criticisms of it’s constitutionality, effectiveness, and private ownership.

6. The Fed is

a) 802 total friends

b) 74 friends “in real life”

c) 748 “acquaintances”

d) 10 family members

e) 26 “friends of friends”

f) 17 people I’d never met in person (but for the last couple weeks I’ve been going through my friends list and deleting these kind of people, so I used to have a lot more)

Well, they would look very young. I’d guess that 95% of my facebook friends are either in high school or college.

I also attached this screenshot because I thought it was kind of interesting for two reasons. For one, I don’t personally know a single one of these people (or any of the other 41 that don’t show on this page) but they all want be to my “friends”. Why?Second, facebook didn’t used to warn me to only accept friend fequests from people I “really know”. This is new, and I wonder if they’ve added it because more and more people are noticing how weird facebook is in that way.

I am shocked about how few students are responsible with their credit card spending. I have a credit card, but I am extremely responsible with it and use it sparingly because the idea of debt terrifies me.

Three facts that stood out to me are:

- In 2004, the average college student had $946 in credit card debt. By 2009, the average stood at more than $4,100.
-Only 9.4% of credit-card-carrying college students paid off their debt in full each month
-Only 14.6% of the surveyed students claimed to know their interest rates

I think that the wider implications are that if even students who are being educated in business in college aren’t able to manage their spending with credit cards, how can the rest of young people manage to? Credit cards are putting many people in debt because they are using them irresponsibly. Also, the “financial literacy” of college students is decreasing; lower and lower percentages of college students are paying off their credit cards on time.

Key finding:

Credit card companies trick students into getting credit cards by starting them with low limits and then rapidly increasing them, so the students are suddenly able to spend much more than they will be able to pay back.

Specific demographics approach credit card use differently, for example, older students use credit cards less. Either they understand better the consequences of too much spending, or the younger generation is becoming more irresponsible about their spending, and ignorant about the way credit cards work.

1.

• 1 in 4 Americans between 16 and 19 was unemployed
• The teen unemployment rate climbed to between 23-24% from 14-18% in the 2000’s
• For blacks the teen employment is higher than one third, 34.7%
• The teen unemployment rate has been over 20% since 2008
• The overall unemployment rate was only 8.3% when the teen rate was in the 20’s

The fact that the black teen unemployment rate is so much higher is alarming to me because it is significantly higher. I noticed they didn’t give the rate for white teens to compare, and I’m curious what is would be.

2. Teens who are not employed don’t get the work experience, learn the job skills they will need later in life when they find a job, and it has been proven that teens who are employed make more money later in life, so they are likely to make less money.

3. One expert suggests keeping minimum wage low, another suggests raising it. Another says that overall unemployment rates must be lower before teens have a chance of getting a job.

4. It makes me really grateful for my convenient, well-paying job! I am a little curious about how many of the teens that are unemployed actually want to be employed/have tried to get jobs. Either way, it’s a bad situation and it’s unfortunate that it affects young people so much.