Category Archives: Writing

The National Minimum Wage: A Problem We Cannot Look Over

In the middle of this current recession, many statistics about unemployment and the struggling job market can be seen coming across the internet and airwaves. Yet, the media often glances over a group of individuals that is struggling with unemployment more than any other sector of the economy: the unemployed high school and undergraduate workers. According to a report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, workers from the ages of sixteen to twenty four comprise only thirteen percent of all employed workers, yet this same group of individuals make up twenty-six of all the unemployed in the U.S. These workers are on the bottom of the list when employers are looking to hire, and with an increase of older workers seeking employment this year, unskilled and inexperienced workers are having a hard time finding work (Meece). The lack of employment for unskilled workers has become a problem too big to ignore, a problem that America must fix before this downward trend damages the American work force any more.

Although many factors contribute to the high level of unemployment among unskilled workers, a chief problem is the artificially high price of labor set by the minimum wage. Although it is commonly thought that minimum wage helps unskilled, younger workers earn a decent wage, the minimum wage itself actually discourages the hiring of inexperienced and unskilled workers. Companies will only hire workers that produce enough labor to compensate for the cost of hiring them, artificially enforcing a set value of labor prices, and forcing many low-skilled workers out of a job (Sherk). These same workers lose the opportunity to gain valuable communication skills, workplace training, and credible references. Without jobs to occupy young inner-city workers over the summer, youths can often end up joining gangs and dropping out of school. Pa Joof, the principal of the Prologue Early College High School in Chicago made an observation on this situation in an interview with the New York Times: “…you let these kids out there for four or five weeks, [and you] are going to lose some of them. That’s just the nature of the streets.” With wages set at a higher rate than companies can afford to hire them, young workers in tight inner-city job markets are severely hindered in their ability to gain needed work experience. Without job experience on their resume, workers can have more difficulty finding a job when the graduate high school or college. The divide between employers needing experienced workers and able workers without skill must be bridged in order to get America’s job market back on track.

The simplest and most effecting long-term method of reversing this problem is to completely remove the national minimum wage law. Without a minimum wage, businesses would be able to set individual wages at the exact value of workers, even workers who do not possess the skills to command $7.25 an hour, the current minimum wage. Although these workers may earn less than the current wage rates when they are first hired, as their experience increases they will be able to command higher wages, eventuallyexceeding the current minimum wage. An opposing sentiment to this idea is that without a minimum wage businesses would exploit workers by undercutting the wages of unskilled workers in order to save money. However, in an interview, Dr. Michael Zimmer, a professor of economics at the University of Evansville, explained that job market competition would prevent businesses from cheating workers for any length of time, because they would have matched the expectations of workers or risk losing employees. This same principle already prevents skilled labor from being underpriced on the current market, and would apply in the same way to the lower wage jobs if they were market controlled.

By dropping the national minimum wage completely, states would be allowed to set minimum wage laws lower, or to even remove them completely in order to allow businesses to hire workers at their true value, enabling businesses the ability to hire more workers. Giving businesses the ability to set lower starting wages for workers would be especially beneficial for smaller businesses, which have less of a profit cushion from which to pay underproductive employees (Rockwell). In addition to the economic growth encouraged by a lower wage floor, erasing the national minimum wage would help remove the need for failed expensive federal youth training programs such as the National Supported Work Demonstration, the Job Training and Partnership Act, JOBSTART, and Job Corps. With more jobs available, unskilled workers would be more likely to be able to get on-the-job training instead of in government programs, alleviating the need for taxpayers to support these very costly programs. American taxpayers would benefit from the reduction of these programs without worrying about young workers losing valuable job experience.

Although states would not be required to remove statewide minimum wage laws when the national law is removed, the positive economic effect of doing so would encourage states with similar wage laws to do so. Without a national minimum wage law in place, unskilled and inexperienced workers would have the option to move to states with more favorable minimum wages laws if they were unable to find work close to their current residency. Individuals would benefit from the options given them by the removal of the national law, and states would still retain the freedom to enact a minimum wage if they felt it necessary.

The need to remove the national minimum wage is more apparent than ever before, with a hard-hit economy and struggling labor market. The damage being done to the youth labor market by the minimum wage must be stopped. As a citizen aware of this issue, you are enabled to let others know of the need to remove this damaging law. Alerting your federal and local representatives about this problem is a key first step to seeing it removed. Just as equally important, though, is the need to spread awareness of this issue. Despite its harmful effects on the employment of unskilled workers, the minimum wage is often thought to be a protection for unskilled labor instead of a hindrance. Either as workers within the unskilled labor market or workers who will be reliant on their services during retirement, we owe it to the current generation of young workers to remove this detrimental national law.

Works Cited

“Issues Concerning the National Minimum Wage.”Personal interview. 8 Nov. 2010.

Meece, Mickey. “Job Outlook for Teenagers Worsens.” The New York Times Business Day. The New York Times, 31 May 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/business/01jobs.html>.

Rockwell Jr., Llewellyn H. “Wal-Mart Warms to the State.” Ludwig Von Mises Institute – Tu Ne Cede Malis. Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 28 Oct. 2005. Web. 12 Dec. 2010. <http://mises.org/daily/1950>.

Sherk, James. “How to Minimize the Impact of the Recession on Young Workers: Avoiding a Lost Generation.” The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 1 June 2010. Web. 10 Nov. 2010. <http://www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/Avoiding-a-Lost-Generation-How-to-Minimize-the-Impact-of-the-Great-Recession-on-Young-Workers#_ftn19>.

United States. Cong. Joint Economic Committee. Understanding the Economy: Unemployment Among Young Workers. By Carolyn B. Maloney. 111th Cong., 2nd sess. Cong. Rept. Joint Economic Committee, 26 May 2010. Web. 09 Nov. 2010. <http://jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=adaef80b-d1f3-479c-97e7-727f4c0d9ce6>.

Foreign Oil Dependency: Zapping the Problem with Electric Cars

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Dictionary.com defines an addiction as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice.” By this definition, America as a nation could be labeled as an addict to many things, the chief of these being foreign oil. Over half of the oil used by Americans each year comes from foreign countries, and this number is on the rise (“Reduce Oil”). With such a dependency on other countries for the life-blood of our transportation, Americans are now in grave danger of economic and security crisis if this trend it not reversed. Sadly, many people only know half the story when it comes to the reasons we must stop relying on foreign oil.

Of the national security problems facing America today, one of the most serious is our dependency on oil imported from volatile nations. In a study in 2006 by the Energy Modeling Forum at Stanford University, experts looked at the odds of a major disruption in the world oil supply because of geopolitical, military, or terrorist violence. The study compared the odds of not drawing a spade from a shuffled deck of playing cards, which is one out of four, to the odds of a foreign oil disruption in the next ten years, which is slightly higher, at eighty percent. The study further identified the four regions of the world where a disruption is likely to come from, and found that these regions produce nearly sixty percent of the world-wide oil supply (United States Congress…). As long as Americans depend on foreign oil to supply their vehicles, continual price and supply issues can be expected for decades to come.

Despite the problems created by military and geopolitical strife, to attribute all the turmoil in the foreign oil market to these issues would only account for half of the problem; the other half of the problem comes from price fixing caused by oil cartels such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, price fixing and manipulation has cost our economy 1.9 trillion dollars from 2004 to 2008. This problem would be reduced by a higher reliance on locally pumped oil, but higher costs and government regulation makes it considerably more expensive to produce oil locally (Goolsbee). These two factors are forcing policy makers to look at other energy options with which to fuel the American public.

To reduce the oil consumption of gasoline burning vehicles, which account for forty percent of all oil used in America (Komanoff), a popular solution has been to switch to driving hybrid electric-gasoline vehicles. This compromise claims better mileage without the sacrifice of autonomy, but comes with some major drawbacks. Hybrid vehicles such as the Prius use electricity to supplement fuel use for better efficiency, but still rely heavily on gasoline as a primary fuel. Solutions like this can save consumers money on fuel in the short-term, but do not solve the long-term problem of foreign oil consumption.

To solve the long-term problem, Americans must find a way to reduce the use of oil on an every-day basis; they will have to quit their addiction cold-turkey. If Americans can significantly reduce the amount of oil they use each year, local supplies would be able to cover industries such as air travel and rail transportation. The most feasible method of doing this is to use pre-existing electric technology to its full potential with fully electric vehicles. In 1998, major car manufacturers GM, Chrysler, and Ford created a handful of fully electric vehicles to comply with a California law that required two percent of vehicles sold in the state to give zero emissions (“The buzz about electric cars.”). Some of these vehicles were very popular, particularly the EV1, a Saturn vehicle that was strictly leased to owners during the time the law was in effect. After the law was lifted, though, these automakers stopped production of these vehicles, and continued producing gas burning vehicles. Even though this perfectly viable technology is available to auto manufacturers, it will continue to remain unused until companies feel pressured to produce fully-electric vehicles. That is why there are two parts to solving the problem of foreign oil dependency. The second part requires the government to create production incentives.

Unless companies can anticipate making a profit from selling electric vehicles, automakers cannot be expected to produce them. Government grants and cash buying-incentives already sit on the books, but this solution only exists while the money is available, and therefore is not a viable long term solution. Instead of paying corporations premiums to produce these vehicles, a more effective approach would be to make it easier to manufacture expensive components, such as batteries, here in the United States. Currently, U.S. auto makers are limited in their production of electric cars due to a lack of vehicle-grade batteries produced in the U.S. and the high cost of shipping batteries from overseas (Smith). By encouraging the construction of new battery manufacturing facilities in the U.S. with open regulation and favorable tax laws, companies would be encouraged to introduce fully electric vehicles into the market. The cost reductions resulting from affordable options for batteries and other parts would drop the overall manufacturing cost of fully-electric vehicles, and provide consumers with affordable purchasing options.

The end result of this proposal would be an affordable electric car market, which is the first major step to quitting our addiction to foreign oil. Instead of settling for a hybrid compromise between oil and electricity, Americans would have a truly viable option for moving from oil to electricity. With a firm hold on the market, new electric technology would have the backing needed to become more efficient and versatile for transportation. The possibilities of electric vehicles are tremendous, but unless Americans are willing to break their addiction to foreign oil, they may never be able to explore the full potential of electric vehicles.

Works Cited

“The buzz about electric cars.” U.S. News & World Report 114.16 (1993): 19. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

Dictionary.com. “Addiction | Define Addiction at Dictionary.com.” Dictionary.com | Find the Meanings and Definitions of Words at Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC., 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/addiction>.

Goolsbee, Austan. “DEPENDENCY PARADOX.” Fortune 152.4 (2005): 17-19. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

Komanoff, Charles. Ending The Oil Age. New York City, New York: Komanoff Energy Associates, Feb. 2002. PDF.

Smith, Rebecca. “Firms Join Forces on Car Batteries – WSJ.com.” Business News & Financial News – The Wall Street Journal – WSJ.com. The Wall Street Journal, 18 Dec. 2008. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122957206516817419.html>.

United States. Cong. Senate. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. By Hillard Huntington. 109th Cong., 2nd sess. S. Doc. Print.

U.S. Department of Energy. “Reduce Oil Dependence Costs.” Fuel Economy.gov. U.S. Department of Energy, 3 Nov. 2010. Web. 04 Nov. 2010. <http://fueleconomy.gov/feg/oildep.shtml>.

37 Who Saw Murder

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Sometimes fear can cause humans to act irrationally to situations. That is the only feasible explanation I have for why roughly 37 people witnessed the repeated stabbings of a New York woman on March seventh, 1964 and did not immediately call the police. This act of violence was not committed by a gang or armed assailant, neither did it happen in a rough part of New York City; this crime happened in a respectable, middle class area of Queens, New York. According to an investigative New York Times article by Martin Gansberg, at 3:20AM a man stabbed Catherine Genovese on the way to her apartment and returned twice after being scared away by residents of the area, fatally wounding Genovese the second time he returned. There was not logical explanation why the residents didn’t call the police after hearing Genovese’s first cries for help, much less the second time she was attacked. One man nearby the event even witnessed the second attack from his doorway, only to return to bed without calling the police, simply because he was “tired.” Others were concerned when they heard the screams, but out of fear of harmful repercussions, chose not to call the police. Was this a valid concern?

Despite being safely locked inside their homes, the surrounding neighbors had no excusable reason for ignoring this incident. One neighboring couple cited their lack of response to the fear that they would be mixed up in a lover’s dispute, the wife continued the explanation by saying that she didn’t want to her husband to get involved. Detectives afterwards were baffled that even this line of reasoning could justify letting a neighbor die, especially when the attacker was so easily chased away. Sadly, Catherine Genovese’s death could have been prevented if only one neighbor had reported the incident immediately. Hopefully, American citizens will read this article read and heed its warnings, so next time this story can have a happy ending.

Works Cited

Gansberg, Martin. “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police.” The New York Times 17 Mar. 1964. The New York Times. The New York Time Company. Web. 28 Oct. 2010. <http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/scraig/gansberg.html>.

Selling With Social Media

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According to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, on July 21, 2010 the popular social networking site had surpassed 500 million active users worldwide. Seeking to profit from this enormous user-base, Facebook has introduced a number of marketing and advertising tools, the most well-known of these being “Pages”. The Facebook “Pages” application has now become a must-have marketing tool for businesses, along with email and texting. Unlike any other marketing tool, though, Facebook “Pages” requires a new level of business interaction to be successful.

Setting up a Facebook page is a free and relatively easy process. However, unlike websites and other social media outlets such as MySpace, Facebook pages cannot be themed or re-aligned to fit a unique layout. Instead, Facebook pages rely heavily on the content added by their authors and fans. The authors of certain pages can post short feed-updates, send messages to fans, add profile pictures, upload photo albums, post notes (similar to blog posts), create calendar events, and add custom page tabs. These authors often use the custom tabs on their pages to display everything from fancy advertisements to point-of-sale applications. All other content added to the page, such as wall posts and reviews, can only be added by users who “like” or join the pages.

The user element of Facebook marketing is what separates it from previous forms of marketing. Advertisements in print media, radio and television have always been unavoidable and expected. If users wish to watch a television program, they expect to sit through at least several advertisements; however on Facebook, the users are not forced to view details of any particular product, but instead must seek out the product they are interested in. This new form of marketing has yet to be directly linked to a solid financial return, but major companies like Pepsi are already starting large advertising campaigns on social media sites (Morrissey, “Does Social Sell?”).

Although marketing on Facebook is relatively new, certain approaches to marketing on Facebook have already been found to be more effective than others.Some of the most common of these marketing techniques are: attention, interaction and incentives. To draw large amounts of fans through attention, some pages attract users with humorous videos and catchy graphics. As Morrisey noted in “Hoping to find some new fans for a great brand…”, soft drink manufacturer Coca-Cola is a leader in this marketing. After taking over a fan-created page containing viral Coke-into-Mentos videos, the company expanded the page and now boasts millions of fans. Other companies such as Old Spice utilize fan interaction on their Facebook page with a video response section called “Old Spice Guy”, and on September 12th had over 965,000 fans (Facebook). The last way of drawing fans, using incentives, has been successfully used to fuel the Starbucks coffee chains page, which was the number one business page on Facebook as of August 2010 (Neff).

Many pages do not share the success of Starbucks and Coca-Cola, however. This is commonly due to issues such as poor page management, lack of content, and weak product branding. Although a brand such as a small-town plumbing company may never see thousands of fans, some common mistakes can drive away fans and hurt a company’s brand. The first of these mistakes is spamming users with irrelevant, preachy, or repetitive posts. Another mistake can be a dry and boring page, often the result of a poor quality profile picture and a lack of information about the product or brand. According to Brian Bennett, the owner of Social Life Marketing, llc., in order to avoid dry and uninteresting pages authors have to “[s]tep outside of [their] traditional box”. By forcing companies to fight for the user’s attention, Facebook has changed the way business advertising is run.

One thing is clear: Facebook pages are here to stay. Unlike MySpace and other fading social networking sites, Facebook has attracted the time and attention of many major corporations and is becoming a must-have for up-and-coming corporations. Major players such as Coca-Cola are now seeing their Facebook pages receive more hits than their individual websites, and Advertising Age magazine wrote that this shift was not unintended (Neff). Facebook control panels make targeting specific demographics much easier, and with the increasing development of targeted advertising, Facebook sites are slowly gaining preference over traditional websites.

Only time can tell how much of an impact Facebook will have on the marketing world as a whole, but it has already become one of the most popular platforms for interactive marketing.

In the end, there is one similarity that Facebook shares with all other forms of internet marketing: the success of any marketing campaign hangs on its creator’s ability to use the platform effectively.

Works Cited

Zuckerberg, Mark. “500 Million Stories.”The Facebook Blog | Facebook. Facebook, 21 July 2010. Web. 07 Oct. 2010. <http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=409753352130>.

Morrissey, Brian. “Does Social Sell?.” Brandweek 51.7 (2010): 8-9. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO.Web. 14 Oct. 2010.

Morrisey, Brian. “Hoping to find some new fans for a great brand ..” Brandweek 50.36 (2009): 13-15. Academic Search Premier.EBSCO.Web. 14 Oct. 2010.

Facebook.“Old Spice” Old Spice | Facebook. Facebook, 12 October 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2010. <http://www.facebook.com/OldSpice>

Neff, Jack. “What happens when Facebook trumps your brand site?.” Advertising Age 81.30 (2010): 2-22. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO.Web. 14 Oct. 2010.

Bennett, Brian. “Social Life Marketing” The Social Media Club of Evansville, Evansville. 16 Aug. 2010. Address.