Should the Government Raise Federal Minimum Wage

According to A Political Thoughtsfrom a Mom Just Taking it One Day at a Time, Jen argues that raising the federal minimum wage would be a mistake because it would raise the cost of living and reduce the number of jobs made available. I would have to disagree with her on this point. Jen states the majority of those who earn a minimum wage are by younger adults (16-24). But it is important to realize that the standard cost of living is rising each year, especially in the education sector.  During the ages of 16-24, many young adults are either in high school or college. Many people forget to factor in how expensive school can be. According to the United States Department of Labor, the last time the federal government has raised the minimum wage was on July 24, 2009. Let’s compare the cost of education from 2009 to now. According to the National Center of Education Statistics, a four-year degree in 2009 cost $20,409. In 2011, three years ago, a four-year degree cost $22,092. As the cost of Education goes up, why doesn’t the federal minimum wage go up as well? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October 2012, 69.6% of high school graduates not enrolled in college were more than likely working or looking for work. Education is expensive and many people cannot afford it. Many students depend heavily on grants or financial aid to go to school and working at the same time. Raising the minimum wage will help many students with their standard living as a student while attending school.

Japan and the United States

                  Although Japan is considered to be an isolationist country, away from other countries, it has proved itself to be one of leading countries in the world. Japan is considered to be the world’s second largest economy, which makes it one of the most important countries in the world. Japan as many different economic ties with other countries, but is strictly only militarily allied with the United States. Japan is a highly advanced technology society, which makes it one the most important nation-states in the international system.

 Japan was originally headed by an imperial household that kept Japan isolated from the rest of the world for centuries. Japan’s constitution states that the emperor was the symbol of the state and the unity of the people, but holds no real power. The political power is held by the Prime Minister and elected members of the Diet and sovereignty lies within the people. After the Meiji Restoration of 1866, the Japanese finally entered into international politics, where they finally became allies with Great Britain. They exercise their alliance by receiving British naval expertise and technology in exchange for the Japanese protecting British interests in the Pacific, which helped allow the Royal Navy to concentrate against Germany’s navy in Western waters. In the 1930s, due to Japan’s aggression in China, the allied Japan-British relationship collapsed and led to the Axis Pact in 1940, which allied Japan to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The alliance held until the defeat of the Axis in 1945.  Following World War II, Japan was rebuilt under American’s support. Japan was disarmed until the pressures of the Cold war caused them to re-arm and sign a Mutual Security Assistance Pact with the United States. This lead to Japanese’ diplomatic and has been based on a close partnership with the United States and the emphasis on the international cooperation.  

            Japan plays a crucial role in East Asia’s politics. Japan is part of the United Nations, Security Council, and one of the “G4 Nations.” Japan has territorial disputes with Russia, Korea, China, and Taiwan over the control of marine and natural resources. Japan has an ongoing dispute with North Korea over North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens and nuclear weapons program. Like other countries, Japan has many self defense forces in the air, land, and sea, but Japanese constitution forbids military forces to wage war on other countries. Japan’s deployment of non-combat troops to Iraq was the first military use since World War II.  After the Cold War ended, United States appeared to have had entered a unipolar age with the US being the sole superpower. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the United States was faced with challenges such as potential terrorist attacks, nuclear proliferation, staggering petroleum and gas prices, the failure of mutual trade negotiations and global warming, the United States has been powerless to exert leadership as a sole superpower, and the major powers were unable to create a multilateral framework. The financial crisis caused the United States to enter into a "nonpolar" era brought on by both globalization and the accompanying weakening of nations' control functions. During this period, the United State’s dollar depreciated, this caused for many foreign investors, such as Japan, to invest in the United States market. This helped Japan’s financial institutions to strengthen their foundations and progress back to the international stage by investing in the US banks. By doing so, Japan’s supplementary actions contributed to a credit recovery in the global financial system. The Japanese government lacks the ability to improve liquidity fairly and precisely into the country's financial and capital markets. This causes Japan to lack the funds of yen for new domestic ventures and causes a barrier to invest further domestically. Many financial and other companies are avoiding the domestic market and looking abroad, such as the United States’ market. While Japan is investing in foreign ventures, rather than domestic ventures, these actions caused a lack of public funds to be injected into government which lead to the Japanese financial crisis of the 1990s because of the lack of public trust in the government. After this valuable lesson, Japan now realizes the importance of the role and the value of government in maintaining trust in the financial market and the growth of social welfare and fiscal systems. There had been signs of a geopolitical power shift from the West to Asia. The financial crisis and economic stagnation in the West will accelerate that trend. History shows that military conflicts are more likely during tectonic shifts in international politics accompanied by economic crises. While cooperating with China, Japan should firmly connect the United States to the Asia-Pacific region and work with it to construct a recovery strategy.

Political blogs: Workers are Leading a Fight Against Income Equality

Workers are Leading a Fight Against Income Equality by Joe Hansen

In Joe Hansen’s editorial blog, Workers are leading the Fight against Income Inequality, in the Huffington Post; Hansen highlights the deeply embedded inequality in today’s work force. The article caught my attention because there have been several heated debates about raising the minimum wage to cover workers’ basic necessities in life. Worker have been coming together to challenge big corporations on the way they do business. Due to the pressure from the fast food industry workers, Obama has been trying to pass the federal minimum wage but has been constantly blocked by Congress. Hansen focuses his attention on Walmart. Due to their tight supply chain management, they are able to squeeze every penny out of each product they sell. With a 17 billion dollar profit from last year, they could afford to give their workers a better pay but refuse to do so.

Joe Hansen is the International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). The UFCW consist of more than 1.3 million people. The majority of those workers belong to the market industry, such as Walmart, Target, and other supermarket stores. The UFCW’s goal is to protect the rights of workers. They challenge big corporations to provide decent living wages, retirement security, safe working conditions, and the right of men and women to live the American Dream. Hansen primarily focuses his attention on Walmart in a majority of his blogs because Walmart consists of 1.4 million workers.

Hansen argues that Walmart should be able to raise the minimum wage for their workers. Last year alone, they profit 17 billion dollars in sales. Their family’s net worth is approximately 144.7 billion dollars. Because Walmart refuses to raise the minimum wage, the big corporation is widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Although the workers have a job, they still rely on federal aid from the taxpayers for food stamps, Medicaid, and housing.

I agree with Hansen, I believe that the minimum wage should be raised in order to help several families from relying on the government for financial help. The reason why many Walmart workers are struggling even though they are working is because Walmart is only allowing the majority of their workers to work part time of 20 or less hours. When workers work part time, they do not receive the full benefits of working full time. Therefore, many workers must get assistance from the government. I work in a tax credit community and see this situation all the time. Several of our residents work at Walmart and majority of them need assistance from the government with food stamps, section 8, or Medicaid. If Walmart would stop being so greedy and redistribute the wealth, the government would not have to use their tax dollars to help those that does not really need help if they could work full time and maybe we will not have a recession with a large federal deficit. 

Be Careful United States....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/united-against-china.html?ref=opinion

For centuries China and Japan have been at constant war with each other. The latest dispute was over territorial issues over the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited island in the East China Sea. The Japanese private owners ended up buying most the islands, which resulted in a huge protest in China. This dispute over territory escalated and is considered to be the most serious Chinese-Japanese dispute since the post-war. India, also, has some territorial disputes with China which resulted in a border war in 1962. In the article, United against China, by the Editorial Board, highlights an interesting question, Is the United States against China? The reason this question came to be is because India and Japan have been getting very friendly with each other. The Editorial board consists of nineteen journalists with different expertise. They write The Time’s editorials, which represent the voice of the board. Japan offered India two billion dollars to help with India’s infrastructure, train system, and children’s hospitals. The two countries are in the process to discuss further about Japanese aid and loans for nuclear power reactor projects and to create a high speed railing system. Although India has refused to take sides over the territorial issues between Japan and China, they are still stuck in the mix because of their close relations to Japan. India even invited Japan to join India-United States naval exercise. India and Japan are happy with their relationship but Japan shouldn’t expect India to side with them over their dispute with China. They suggest that Japan should discuss their foreign policy with Washington. The intended audience is indirectly towards the United States government. If the US is not careful about whom they get friendly with, there could be a growing hostility between the United State and China. They believe that Japan is trying to sway India, by showering them with money to get them to side with them. It is inevitable that they would have to team up against China. Even though India insists that they are not going to side with Japan, their friendliness could potentially lead to an alley in the future. United States should stay neutral in the matter. The United States is in no position to upset the Chinese at this time. The national debt is at an impressive $17 trillion right now. China is responsible for 7% of the total debt, making them the largest foreign lender to the United States. China has slowly been reducing their amount they are lending to United States, from 10% to 7%. If the United States continues to keep borrowing money from China, they will own most our debt and we’ll have to work for China. Therefore, United States needs to be careful about their relationship with some countries, like Japan. If China gets upset with the United States, they could demand all the money back at once and put the United States’ economy in a deeper recession.  

How the Government Spends $1.1 trillion

As one of the dutiful American citizens that pay taxes, I have always wondered how the Government spends our money. In an article called, How Congress divides $1.1 trillion in spending, by Associated Press; it breaks down how much money is spent on each government agency operations. The House has just approved the division of the $1.1 trillion for federal agencies for the year. It is now waiting for the Senate approval and expected for President Obama to sign later on this week.

According to Associated Press, the $1.1 is $30 billion less than what Congress had provided last year but $20 billion more than was provided after automatic spending cuts after taking legal possession of assets until the debt has been paid off or the other claims have been met for 2013. The government spends a whopping $92 billon on war for US military operations overseas, mostly in Afghanistan. Only $7 billion is used for disasters. This is $1 billion less for war and $44 less for disasters than last year. A majority of the $1.1 trillion goes towards defense by using $474 billion a year. It also includes a 1% pay raise for President Obama. Cuts and maintenance for research and development programs is $160 billion. They used $157 million for Sexual Assault and Prevention office. Some of the spending is helping Military retirees. The money is also going towards Obama’s health care law. $3.7 billion is going towards the Center for Medicare and Medicaid. The National Institutes of Health gets $29.9 billion for health care research. Other miscellaneous things include: abortion, transportation, domestic security, IRS, financial agencies, protection of the environment, education, flood insurance, food, agricultural, law enforcement, veterans, diplomacy and foreign aid, and the Congress operations.

$1.1 trillion is a massive amount of money that people can only dream up. It’s interesting how the government decides to spend it. One interesting thing that stood out to me about this article is how much the government uses our money to fund the wars overseas. They are willing to spend so much money on foreign affairs yet are not willing to put more money in the natural disaster fund here in United States. In my opinion, they should focus more on the internal problems in their own country before they focus on other people’s problems.  

Because I pay for taxes like every other citizen in the United States, the way the government spends the money is relevant to me. It’s amazing to see how much they spend on certain things. The break-down of the how the money is spent reflects the governments focus for the United States. It seems as though they are so focused on staying as one of the top players of the world that they pay little attention to their own citizens’ wants and needs.

I decided to blog on this because I feel as though everyone should know what the government spends our money on. We blindly pay taxes every paycheck, yet we don’t have a full understanding of where our money goes. With this chart, we are able to see what the government spends our money on. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-congress-divides-up-11-trillion-in-spending/2014/01/16/8b4fc4d8-7e83-11e3-97d3-b9925ce2c57b_story.html 

My Political Biography

Public socialization is the process by which we teach and learn our political knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, and habits of behavior.
Family is the most important agent of socialization. Parents transfer their political ideologies unconsciously so that their children develop their fundamental attitudes toward politics. Because of this reason, political conservative orientation is difficult to alter once it has been embedded.
The influence of church and schools play a significant role in a child's political upbringing. This influence is usually conservative. Students are not as exposed to political demographics and are taught mainly to just vote as their democratic participation with a free enterprise system.
Media in Texas is mainly conservative due to the large contributions in advertising from businesses. But since technology has advance and exposure to internet has broadened the liberal/conservative spectrum. Some of the main factors that might influence an individual to be a conservative or liberal in Texas, I would have to say, would be ones ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic status. These would determine how ones family thinks, what schools and churches they go to, and if they can afford to have access to media (i.e. internet, Television). If they were Anglo-Americans, African American, Asian-American would play a significant role in politics given their history with America's government.
Basic agents of political socialization that have influence my own political views would have to be my family and media. My parents, being successful business owners, lean more towards conservatism. Of which was the only ideology I knew growing up. But with so much exposure through peers and internet, my political ideology has skewed from that and has become more liberal than conservative. Growing up in an Asian American Catholic family, I've always been taught that my political ideology is conservative. My parents always urged me to vote for "Republicans" because we are Catholic and business owners. But as I grow older and understand all the political issues and form my own thoughts on them, I realized that I disagree with some things that the conservatives believe in and agree with some liberal beliefs.  My political ideology is in between conservative and liberal at the moment. I have not found a political ideology that I can completely relate to yet and I'm hoping this class will help me define my political ideology as an adult and to expose me to all the different things that are happening in the government right now.