The Failure of the American Economy Through the Eyes of a College Student: Part 1

Look at this chart. Does it disturb you? Does anything at all bother you about this chart?

Well, it bothers me.

Let me start by saying, I am a college student, I am not Allen Greenspan, I'm not even pursuing a degree in economics, all I intend to prove with these posts is that it does not take a degree in economics to understand that lack of regulation combined with uncontrolled greed crippled the American economy.

Deregulation-The beginning of an era

When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980  he ushered in an era of supposed prosperity, with his new economic policy called "Reaganomics" at the head of his presidency. What was Reaganomics you ask? 
As you can imagine, it is difficult to find an unbiased answer to this question, but to the best of my knowledge, the basic principles of Reaganomics are as follows:

1. Reduce government involvement in all sectors of the economy.
2. Reduce the tax burden of the wealthy and shift it to the middle class.
3. Reduce taxes while cutting government spending.
4. Increase spending and faith in the American economy to combat inflation.
5. The DeRegulation of the economy: "A Laffer Curve" Based economy.

These principles are not harmful to an economy when used within reason, but used in the way the Reagan administration did, they have harmful long lasting effects.

Short Term Profits, Long Term Pain

What Reaganomics did, was simply shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class, Reagan's theory being that the wealth would "trickle down" the social spectrum from the elite to the middle class, and then from the middle class to the lower class, and each class would reinvest their new capital into the American economy. The tax burden was enabled to be shifted through the Tax Reform Act of 1986 signed into law by Reagan which in turn affected the AMT or Alternative Minimum Tax. All this actually did was exempt the already filthy rich from taxes, which in turn made them even richer and forced middle class Americans to bare the brunt of taxes. Twenty years later, and the IRS still cites the AMT as the number one problem with the tax code, coincidental? I think not.

The economics of the Reagan administration seemed valid at the time, and they even created a short term period of prosperity due to its associated tax cuts and "spend everything" mentality associated with Reaganomics. Reaganomics effectively widened the gap between the wealthy and the middle class, consolidating the wealth into the hands of the extremely wealthy, but it never really did "trickle down". What was really going on behind the scenes was that the national debt was tripling throughout the Reagan administration as seen in the below pictorial

The exact ramifications of the Reagan Administration on the economy are unclear at this point, but, in my opinion (as this is an OP/ED, not the New York Times), he began the downward spiral of the American economy by starting the deregulation of the economy and implementing a "buy now, save later" mentality.

The Year 2000

The year 2000, when George W. Bush wins a questionably contested presidential election against the "ManBearPig" Al Gore. Throughout the next eight years, the Bush administration would lift countless regulations on banking that had been in place since the Great Depression of 1927, like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Phil Gramm, a character of questionable sorts helped enact. What did this fiscally irresponsible act do that was so awful you ask? It kept regulators away from a particularly shady business known as "credit swapping". This is simply the buying and selling of bundled sub-prime mortgages, which in themselves are criminal. This is only one of the numerous examples of the Bush administration lifting legislation that helped regulate the American economy.


The Sub-Prime Lending Scam

The Sub-Prime lending scam was in essence a way to loan money to people who could not afford to own the houses  they took the loans out for. Simply put, rather than going to the bank with $10,000 and a job that earns $2000 per month, for a $100,000 loan you could go to the bank with $2,000 and a job that pays $500 per month for the same $100,000 loan. Now these figures are just example figures, but the point is that a sensible person with only $2,000 to put down would not go for the loan they could not afford, but go for a smaller more affordable loan. Unfortunately, this is not the case, thousands of vulnerable lenders including the young, poor, and uneducated fell into the Sub-Prime trap and have foreclosed on there homes.

Prosperity of the Bush Administration

For five long years, (2002-2007) there was a time of prosperity in America, a time of prosperity built on the unregulated sale of derivatives, credit swapping, and the selling of American debt. Five years of uncontrolled free market capitalism, five years of short term prosperity that caused by the buying and selling of consumer debt, was this free-market capitalism at its best? Even better, "financialism", a new term, meaning a market based off of Wall Street and its buying and selling of consumer debt. The quick money prosperity rushed in by the slick financiers of the Bush administration was bought to the end by the bursting of the housing bubble it so desperately depended upon.

Next: Part 2-The Housing Bubble


Image Credits:
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/02/18/the-mainstream-media-wont-tell-you-but-i-will/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/05/job-market-unemployment-chart_n_792202.html

Top Five Motorola Droid Apps.

Think Tank here again with a review of the top 5 Moto Droid applications, ranging from useful to entertaining, all available on Verizon's Motorola Droid. For some background information, the Motorola Droid was Big Red's first phone of the DROID variant to be released last year, which has since sparked an Android SmartPhone revolution across all networks. While not the first smartphone to run on an Android OS, an open-source OS, it was the most widely advertised phone of its kind at the time. I purchased the phone in late June of 2010 and it have been pleased with it ever since. I do not intend to compare Android's and iPhone's because that would be the obvious comparison of apples and oranges, rather I would like to stick to what I know and give a brief report on my Top 5 most useful Android applications worth looking in to.

1. Astro File Viewer- AFV gives the user the ability to manage folders, files, and storage within their phone. The usefulness of this application is tenfold if you are a user who relies heavily on your microSD card because you can manipulate it from Astro, within Astro you can perform all the functions of a normal computer, such as, copy, paste, rename, delete, and even create a Zip  file within Astro. Overall, Astro File Viewer is a powerful application which makes more difficult tasks, like installing manual updates much easier.


2. Wireless Tether- Note: This program will only work with root access and superuser permissions, doing so could also end in a permanent termination of your contract with said provider. There are a number of good wireless tethering programs on the App Market, but the point is that your phone has the power to take in 3G signal and put it out as Wi-Fi, but Verizon locks down this capability on the phone, and charges up to 40$ a month on some of its models for this capability. However, if you root your phone, which is easy enough to do with an online guide, and install a wireless tethering program, you can do it for free. Take caution, if you go over your phones monthly data limit you'll be a victim of Verizon's per MB highway robbery overage prices.


3. Last.Fm- I'm a big fan of last.fm in general, and prefer it over similar apps like Pandora, because on Pandora, you hear the same 5 songs, with commercials interspersed between them, unless you want to pay extra. Last.Fm is completely free and ad-free and can work off of Wi-Fi rather than 3G, it also has a neat "scrobbling" feature which takes artists from your physical music library and adds them to your last.fm library. If your looking for a solid music app, I would look no further than last.fm.

4. Barcode Scanner/Google Goggles- this is a combination of two apps that take advantage of the phones optical device, which by the way is a top notch 5MP camera. The Barcode Scanner is used to scan both QR codes and normal barcodes to look up information on apps on the market and anything with a barcode really. The Google Goggles are an application from Google that takes a picture and searches google for said picture. It is mostly accurate, but really all depends on what you take a picture of, a popular label will most likely turn  up more hits than a picture of your dog or something menial. Both of these apps are practical applications that can be useful and are definitely worth a download.

5. Everything Else- there are a number of useful apps that I havent covered, like Adobe Reader, Document Editors, Fandango, and Google Calendar just to name a few.

I hope this has been helpful and informative in the process of having fun with your Droid!

Introduction

Here I am, 18 years old and almost finished with my first semester at college, and I have decided to experiment with blogging. I have no immediate aims for this blog other than to improve my writing skills and express my opinions on politics, technology, literature, film, history, and other current events. Although I feel I should start with a proper introduction.

I am a freshman at a top tier college in New York, that while it is not ivy league, is a difficult government college. In my spare time I like to read and explore new movies and technology, and delve into the world of politics, I plan to use this blog as an informative source for OP/ED on those subjects, as one of my eventual goals in life is to become a writer, or at least pursue it as a past-time, as I am doing on here.

More Later
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