Taxes- How Does The Government Spend Money?

We all know that the money we pay in taxes goes to the government. However, has anybody ever asked what that money is being spent on? There is a number of Americans who truly don't know where their money goes. For example, 32% of American income taxes are spent on Human Resources; however, 20% is spent on past military, 31% is spent on the CURRENT military, while the other17% is spent on physical resources and general government.

Critique of GDP Podcast

Today I will review Mari & Jared's Podcast on the Gross Domestic Product. Their podcast has incredible content, both throughly explaining the GDP, while simultaneously adding their own little touch to spice up the podcast, and keep it interesting. The recording is loud, but not too loud, and completely clear, they made sure to have very good quality in their recording. The images used for the podcast were good, not off task at all and contributed greatly in keeping the listener tuned in. Mari and Jared's method of using pictures of themselves talking on the phone was brilliant. They made the podcast in the style of a phone call, which is one of those things where you have to go like "why didnt I think of that?". The podcast in general was very educational and funny to listen to, they did a really good job

Taxes-How Does The Government Get Paid?

There are a number of different taxes payed by Americans in the United States.

An Income Tax is determined by the amount of money earned by people annually. An Excise Tax is the tax determined by the manufacturing of certain goods and/or services. The Property Tax is the tax for the payer's possesions. A Sales tax is similar to an Excise tax in that it involves goods and services, only difference is that sales tax deals with general goods and services, while excise deals with specific ones.

The government gets paid from the taxes paid by the people of the country.

Student Loans...Beware

Ok, now student loans can be either very minor, or very troubling. They can be especially troubling when the price soars above the student's head in terms of budgeting their money. This guy, Rick Park, seemed to had fallen into a bad situation involving student loans. He even got assistance from his mother to pay off these loans, coming in at a huge $705 a month. However, that was simply because of the school he chose to attend in conjunction with his financial background, that Mr. Park caught a bad end of the deal. I personally think that student loans are, in a sense, double-edged swords. Simply because they can be very beneficial or very tragic depending on how your job's pay after college is. I do plan on taking out student loans, however, how I am going to go about doing that is still unclear to me

Critique Of The Federal Reserve Podcast

This is the Jelani P. Goodwin review of Ivona & Corina's Podcast

The content of this podcast is extremely good. Ivona and Corina both successfully demonstrated their vast knowledge of the Federal Reserve System. They seemed to have followed the guidelines set by Mr. Moloney when he assigned this project, so that part clears out. They even added a bit more information that was requested, which is a way better job than mine. The quality of their recording isn't that bad either. It is completely understandable and able to be heard.
Both girls seemed to have searched a lot more than a select few in the class including myself, because they had a lot of good pictures, and not just "pictures to fill space" but actually relevant photos. Their style of podcast follows the type of the "student asking for help with a topic" style, which is the same that my partner and I used. It is basic podcasting at its finest. If one was to simply watch and listen to these girls' podcast, they would be educated enough to have more than a general understanding of the Federal Reserve System.

Compound Interest & The Rule Of 72

Well, first off, Compound Interest is the act of interest sort of "piling up" over time. For example, should you deposit $100 in the bank, with a 10% interest rate. Next year you'll have $110 in the bank right? Now the following year your investment will be $121 because your interest rate gave you 10% of the previous year's interest, so it was COMPOUNDED. Now that this has been explained, the next thing I would like to get into is the Rule of 72. At first its principles were a bit unclear to me, but now I understand them. The Rule of 72 is used to determine the time in which your deposit will be double of the amount you put in. An example of this would be, if you put in a $100 deposit with an interest rate of 9% a year. Using the rule of 72, [72/9=8] it would take 8 years for the $100 to become $200. That's about it.

Insider trading scandal

There was a major insider trading scandle uncovered recently. A group of employees working for U.S. top banks were charged for insider trading, which dated back to the '80s. In addition, they were accused of using information and blackmailing to make millions of dollars. This case involves over a dozen people and four major Wall Street investment banks. About 8 million dollars were found from the accused. In all, 13 people have been arrested in the criminal case. This is one of the biggest wall street scandals since the 1980's.

Dow down 416 pts! - Why?

The stock market took a dramatic blow a few days ago. One of the more primary reasons for this is because of the even more dramatic 9% drop in China's economy, which in the long run affected the global economy, therefore affecting us. Another reason, is that the stock market hasn't had an extreme drop like this since the time of the World Trade Center attacks. After doing good for five straight years, with little drop, it is only natural that the stock would cave in a bit sooner or later, it's just unfortunate that it had to be combined with the global economy drop from China.

Types of Economic Systems

Traditional Economies: Traditional Economy is the system that involves resources that are accquired through inheiritance, and also has strong social networking.
Centrally Planned [Command] Economy: The economy system that involves the state or government controlling the factors of production and the decisions made about their use and distribution of income.
Market Economy: Market Economy is the economy system in which the elements controlled by the state or government in a Command Economy are determined by the use of free markets and guided by the Free Price System. The production in this case is determined by the businesses and consumers.
Mixed Economy: Mixed Economy is an interesting economy system. This is simply because it takes "the best of both worlds" and combines them by adding elements from both systems into one.

Opportunity Costs

An opportunity cost is the cost paid in place of something else that you may have wished to do. When economists speak of it, they are most likely speaking of things that they purchased, however, may have still wished to purchase something else. An example of an opportunity cost would be if I had 20 dollars to spend however I wanted, and I was given the choice of going to a 20 dollar party with a girl I've liked for a long time. As opposed to buying this game that I had been waiting on its release for years. I choose to go with the girl, and that was my opportunity cost, by paying for the party with the girl, I relinquish the OPPORTUNITY to buy the game. A personal example of Opportunity Cost would be when one time, I had only 5 dollars left in my pocket, and was extremely hungry. However, my friends wanted me to come to a small get-together party, admission cost-5 dollars. The party wasn't supposed to begin for 5 more hours, and IM HUNGRY!! So, I decided to wait for the party, and suffer for 5 hours with no food. Horrible I know...

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