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?

The State of our Union

This is a word cloud of the transcript of President Obama's State of the Union address. I found it on the CBS News website. I believe that the words which appear larger in the cloud were used more frequently in Obama's speech.

Some of the larger words are: Americans, jobs, work, energy, tax, Congress, and businesses.

We can probably all agree that most of Obama's address focused on the economy, which is what we're learning about right now!!

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.”)

Light It Up

As you may know, I recently attended a concert where I saw the band For King and Country. Their song "Light It Up" really inspired me and I wanted to share it with all of you!

The lead singers, brothers Joel and Luke, had this to say about the song "Light It Up.

"For a time, our friend lived in a house where he would stuff blankets in the windows, switch off the lights and live for days at a time alone in literal darkness," says Luke. "We wrote this song for him, but for the longest time couldn't work up the courage to tell him. Partly because it was his favorite tune and also because we were afraid of how he would handle it."

When Joel and Luke finally worked up the courage to tell him, their friend stood up, walking out of the room, got in his car and drove off. Roughly 20 minutes passed until he called them up and with tears in his voice saying, "Thank you for writing that song for me. It moves me, encourages me, it gives me hope." http://www.wordlabelgroup.com/kingcountry

Middle school is a tough time. There is a lot of pressure to act a certain way to try to 'fit in' to the crowd. Combine that with all the other things going on at home and the world around us and we can have a total disaster! We all can fall victim to depression and experience feelings of hopelessness, sadness, and fear, just like the friend above. If you know someone who feels this way share this song with them, or better yet, do something to light up their life like Joel and Luke did for their friend!

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.