Benefits vs Costs of College

• Among men, median earnings of four-year college graduates were 63 percent higher than median earnings of high school graduates in 2005.
• Among women, median earnings of four-year college graduates were 70 percent higher than median earnings of high school graduates in 2005. Information taken from: www.collegesavings.org

Play the game!

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

GDP

Start with slide 6!

Gross Domestic Product

View more PowerPoint from MrRed

Comparing Countries

Click here for the World Fact Book!

The New American Dream

http://www.good.is/infographics

CPI

Click here to access the Consumer Price Index Detailed Report that you will need for your productive group work activity. You will be using the information starting on page 79.

Gas Prices

Check out gas prices around the United States with this interactive price chart.

Change the cities to compare gas prices in cities throughout the US, including Des Moines. You can compare gas prices in other countries as well, like Canada. Change the date range to look at gas prices for a month to gas prices over the past three years. You can really get a good visual of inflation and deflation taking place. If looking at the 1-3 year view, think about events that occurred that may have caused a fluctuation in gas prices. Also, why would other cities have higher or lower gas prices than here in Iowa? Why aren't all gas prices the same across the United States?

Fairness Based Economics

Tax breaks, outsourcing, unemployment, aren't these all things we've been talking about?

President Obama's State of the Union Address 2012

Inflation

Inflation Is… A Letter to a Ten-Year-Old (http://gazizza.net/)

Excerpt:

Well, let’s pretend that you’re not happy with the allowance that your parents give you. You don’t have enough money to buy all the bubble-gum, hamburgers, comics or toys that you want. Let’s also suppose that you had a Magic Machine that could print all the dollars you wanted. (This is called “counterfeiting” and people go to jail for doing this. But just pretend that you could print as much money as you’d like.) Since you would have all the dollars from this Magic Machine you could spend as much as you like and would not have to worry about asking your family for a bigger allowance. When you’re on a limited allowance you have to watch your pennies pretty carefully. But if you had a Magic Machine, you could be less careful with your dollars. You wouldn’t have to choose between a new book and a pad of drawing paper. You could buy both and even more! This would be fine and dandy for a time.

But suppose your friends all had these Magic Machines or that you had so many dollars that you gave a lot of them to your friends. Well, if enough of you had loads of money to spend at the local candy store pretty soon something interesting would happen. The candy store owner has only a certain amount of bubblegum to sell. But suddenly, with you and other “rich” kids, there’s a big demand for bubblegum! If he had only 5 packages of gum for sale and there were ten of you who wanted to buy it, any one of you might be willing to pay $10.00 or more for one package of gum. (Remember that back when you had only your allowance, you’d never pay that much for a little pack of gum!) Because of the bigger demand, the owner of the candy store might decide to ask a higher price for the gum — and you will pay it because each of your dollars has lost some of its value. You may seem “rich” but your money has lost a lot of its buying power because there are others who also have lots of money and are “rich.”

In very simple terms, this is what our government has done. Through many decisions made by the officials in the government, there has been an increase in the number of dollars printed. There are just many more dollars—paper dollars that don’t buy as much as the old dollars did. (You’ve probably heard adults say, “Gee, the dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to.”)

Dolla Dolla Bill Y'All

Check out the Federal Reserve of San Francisco's Showcase of Bills which displays bills that have been used by the United States throughout our nation's history.
Be sure the click on the arrows next to "Change Showcase" to explore different time periods.

Shark Tank Mod Mom

National Debt

Visit the National Debt Clock Website to see what our country's debt really looks like!

Think about this as we begin to explore GDP, or Gross Domestic Product.

Business Plan

See the "Handouts" section of the blog to access the directions for your business plan project.

Helpful information can be found on page 60 of your textbook, or at the following websites:

What's Up Wednesday

Instead of our usual CNN Student News, check out this link:
"Where Children Sleep"

This page contains 19 images of bedrooms belonging to children around the world. I would like each one of you to take a careful look at each of these images, being sure to read the captions. Next week we will use these images as a starting point for our discussion and exploration of global economic development.

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood

Assignment for the weekend:
Keep a log over the weekend, noting all of the advertising that you see targeting kids. This doesn't have to be all weekend, it can be for 2 hours, 5 hours, all weekend, whatever you chose, as long as you note the start and stop times.

What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a new idea, inspired by a fellow social studies teacher, Mr. McClung, and his class blog. Here's how it works:

Every Monday (or sooner) students will have the opportunity to go onto the class blog to view a CNN Student News video. On Wednesday, we will be taking the first 5 minutes of class to discuss the videos. (It is important for students to make arrangements to view the video at school if they do not have internet access at home.) Students will be evaluated on discussion participation, and there will also be an occasional assignment. In the case of an assignment, I will show the video in class.


For our first What's Up Wednesday, we will be viewing a video on the Occupy Movement. Be prepared to discuss the following questions:
1) When in history have people protested?
2) Why do people protest?
3) Why are the Occupy protesters protesting?

Affluenza? No, not me!

After all of the Black Friday craziness this past weekend, I thought it would be a good time to hold a class discussion on the "Affluenza" epidemic that is spreading rapidly across America.

Definition of Affluenza:

An extreme form of materialism resulting from the excessive desire for material goods.

The definition that I used with students was taken from the book, Affluenza:The All Consuming Epedemic,

("Affluenza is) a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more."

Our pursuit to happiness has led us on a misguided pursuit for more. This pursuit has ironically not brought us happiness, but rather a sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life. This overspending and over-consumption has had other side effects including: wasted time, stress, being overworked, debt, inability to take care of live's "needs," and at times, violence and rage. At a nationwide level, Affluenza has led to the current economic state/financial crisis that the country is currently in. As our individual amount of debt is rising, so is our country's. Check out the following site to see the national debt: National Debt Clock.

Why are people pepper spraying someone else for a $2.00 waffle maker? Probably the same reason you are throwing a huge fit for getting a DSi, instead of a 3DS for Christmas. WE WANT MORE!