Shots Shots and More Shots

The government should implement a mandatory taking of vaccinations and make them free for infants and toddlers. They should also have a penalty for those who do not abide by this mandate. Most Americans are fearful of vaccines. The main reason is that a severe allergic reaction could occur or you could become ill, this could occur because the shot is a strain of the virus trying to be prevented. It’s a very slim chance of this reaction happening and causing sickness or death. The general public's understanding of medicine and their unwillingness to take or seek medical advice is also a big factor because they believe that medical decisions should not be made by the government or doctors but by the parent or guardians. I believe that medical doctors know what is best, at least when it comes to vaccines because it is their area of study, and what they have dedicated their life to understanding and combating to prevent outbreaks and others becoming sick. If we took the time to educate the public more on vaccines, how they work, who makes them and any other questions someone might have about vaccines, then there will be more trust in the use of them.

Childcare

This commentary "Free Child Care" talks about giving aid to those who struggle to raise a child. I think that childcare should be free for struggling parents, but where do we draw the line at? Do only struggling parents get it? Do they have to be young and in school or do can they be older parents too? Do they even need to be struggling parent or parents?
This is something things that need to be decided because they will come up later on if free child care is to be implemented. I think that it should apply to all parents that do not meet the basic needs to raise a child, those needs being, food, shelter, and clothes.  If take in that most parents having children now is kids themselves then it would be of benefit to have free childcare for younger parents. This will decrease the number of abandoned kids, the number of runaway kids, and the number of kids who have to drop out of school to raise their child.

Money is the problem

In my classmates' recent blog post Should The Government Pay For My Tuition, she discusses the problem of paying such high tuition to go to a 4-year university. She talks about how the cost has steadily been increasing every year and how now financial aid just does not cut it anymore. The pressure this puts on those in middle class or lower causes them the to not want to even attempt enrolling into college for fear of debt that will never go away because most only qualify for loans and those loans don't amount to half of a semester's tuition most of the time. This causes our workforce to diminish because so many bright and new graduates cannot pursue their desired career simply because they can't afford it.
She offers a solution to increasing the financial aid while at the same time increasing funding from the government. I agree that by increasing it, we would be able to support more recent high school graduates and encourage more of them to enroll into a university. This will also, in turn, increase our workforce and the quality of our workforce because we will have more bright minds to increase it with.

Rank 14

     The American education system at this present time is, to put it bluntly failing, specifically the college system. It is insane  that thousands of people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. These individuals are our future teachers, engineers, doctors and or politicians and we do so little to accommodate these lower-income students. As of 2015, the U.S is ranked 14th in education in the entire world, we aren't even in the top 10 countries for education and yet we boast about how great our educational system is. If we want to ensure that the future of this country is prosperous we need to radically change our education system immediately.
      High tuition fees and fear of high debt for college discourages students from attempting to go to college, tuition should be free for students going to public colleges and universities. Last year, Germany eliminated tuition because the charging of $13,000 per year for college was discouraging students from going to college. Finland offers free college to all of their citizens and they're ranked 5th in education, this is not a coincidence. If other countries can take this action, then so can the U.S. UNfortunetly this will take much time to accomplish, so in the meantime more financial aid should be given to the low-income students to cover their room and board, books and living expenses.
     The current presidential candidates both have education policies that could be beneficial to future and current college students, but no system is perfect. In the article "Making Sense of the Two Candidates' Plans on Student Debt" it is explained what each candidates policy will do. Both plans would make college free for students and would essentially wipe debt, but only Hillary Clintons plan has real worth. She would make college free, wipe debt over time, and give jobs to students in exchange for this free debt program. This would push college education higher, increase our workforce, and hold us to a higher standard of education. Until we change our education system nothing else will improve for the U.S as a whole, education is a right, not a privilege. 

The Speech Heard Around The World

     In an article written by Sara Ruthnum entitled "Michelle Obama's Speech Was Exactly What We Needed To Hear" we are told about the powerful speech the First Lady's gave on why Trump should not only not be elected as the next President of the United States and that Hillary Clinton should be, but also the damage that he has caused in our society throughout his campaigning. She was trying to reach out to all voters, but she was more specifically talking to women voters. Her main points were Trumps blatant sexist remarks, his degrading of women and his openness on his sexual assault and predatorial actions towards women.
   “The fact is that, in this election, we have a candidate for president of the United States who over the course of his lifetime, and the course of this campaign, has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week, we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women. And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.”
     I mean that alone should have placed Trump unfit to even be a candidate for the presidency, but no like all his other skeletons that have come out throughout this election people are rallying right along side him. He has turned American society back to a time where women were treated as objects and seen as nothing else. He has turned societies thoughts backwards instead of pushing them forward like a future leader should be doing. This is why her speech has become so powerful because everything said is hard fact proven every day by Trump's actions. I agree with Ruthnum that Hillary Clinton will most likely win this election year, but that damage left by Trump's campaigning will be something that will remain in our society long after Hillary Clintons presidency. 

Could Trump be the answer?

      In an article by Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross entitled "How Trump would stimulate the U.S. economy" that was published on September 23, 2016, they discuss how Trump's plan would be growth-inducing for the U.S. economy. Authors describe different strategies of Trump which would stimulate U.S. economy. The argument that Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross both make is on how Hillary Clinton's economic plan would not improve the U.S. economy, unlike Trump's plan that would generate millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in income and in tax revenue for the economy. Both Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross are very knowledgeable about this subject, which gives more credit to their view in the article. Wilbur Ross is an international private equity investor, Peter Navarro is a business professor at UC-Irvine and both are senior policy advisers to the Trump campaign. In the article they give lots of evidence to prove their claims, some examples being how they show statistics of GDP growth since from 1947, and that 43 million Americans suffer in poverty and 4.9 percent unemployment rate in the US leads to nearly 1 in 6 men ages 18 to 34 in jail or out of work.
       “Hillary Clinton’s economic plan would not improve this anemic growth or heal other economic ills. It would raise taxes, increase regulation, and impose further restrictions on fossil fuels that would significantly raise energy and electricity costs. Clinton would also perpetuate trade policies she helped craft that have led to chronic and debilitating trade deficits. All this points in the wrong direction.
        Even Clinton’s centerpiece stimulus plan is growth-inhibiting. It would tax businesses to fund a highly leveraged national infrastructure bank. This approach would shift funds from the more efficient private sector to a less efficient government bureaucracy and introduce high-risk, subprime lending to the government.”
        On the contrast Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross claim that Trump's plan would realign corporate incentives so that it would be more profitable to invest in the United States by describing four components which would drive every nation's GDP and as the United States structural economic problems are primarily focused on the investment and net exports growth drivers and they also claim that Trump's plan of cutting the high corporate tax rate, reducing unnecessary regulation and cracking down on trade cheating would make U.S. corporation competitive on domestic soil. While Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross gave lots of evidence to prove their claims, I do not agree with Trump being the only way to improve it, one person can not improve something as large as the U.S. economy it takes everyone as a whole.

For Every 10 U.S. Adults, Six Vote and Four Don’t. What Separates Them?

On September 23, 2016, an article from The New York Times titled For Every 10 U.S. Adults, Six Vote and Four Don’t. What Separates Them? showing as the title describes what can influence how individuals vote and why they choose to vote or not vote. The article breaks down in different ways who votes and why. It writes about educational influence, wealth influence, racial demographics and even shows how low our voting turnout is for the presidential elections. It also shows a very interesting fact on how the majority of nonvoters are white, middle-classed and middle-aged voters and not young millennials.

This article by The New York Times is important because it shows that not only the majority of nonvoters are white, middle-classed and middle-aged voters and not young millennials, but why it is that only 58% of eligible voters turned out to vote in the presidential election in 2012.  “Most of the differences between people who vote and those who don’t vote can be accounted for by motivational reasons — levels of political interest and engagement,” said Benjamin Highton, a professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. “And levels of political interest and engagement are strongly correlated with education and income.” This to me always seems to be the reoccurring theme about why the voting turnout is always so low and it should be what we should work on so we can have a higher voting rate in the U.S. I believe that such a low turnout should not be the standard for voting in America and that things such as education and wealth and interest should not keep voters from shying away from their right to vote.