GDP Podcast - Review

For my GDP review, I reviewed Jelani and Hope's project on Gross Domestic Product. I found it to be really funny and the images were great, but the content was a little off from what I could tell. A lot of the time they didn't sound too sure of themselves, but that could have been easily fixed with a little more recording time. The actual quality of the sound of the project wasn't horrible, although they used a lot of slang words, which is good if you know the people (due to personality), but if you didn't know who was doing it, you might be turned off from it.

The images are seriously half the whole podcast. They're so awesome and on point I don't think I can stress this enough. The style of the podcast seems to be to try to amuse/inform and it does the job pretty well, although it's easy to lose attention. I didn't really learn too much from the podcast because I had studied the same exact and most of the information was pretty much exactly the same.

Taxes - How Does The Government Get Money?

The government and the state charges us many different taxes, for multiple reasons. In general, these taxes (on all different levels of government) help to pay for different things. On the federal level, they pay for social secuirt, WIC, and other government funded-programs of that kind.

Some of theses taxes are:
Luxury tax - taxes on goods such as electronics, and things that we do not need to survive.
Income tax - a percentage of what you make ($$) that goes to social security, and often goes to yoou savings account.
Property tax
and Business tax (these include food business, gas, cars, etc.)

Student Loans- Beware

Culinary school; it offers a lot of dreams from Iron Chef status, to your own TV show, to something as prestigious as owning a 5-star restaurant. That's why kids payt such high amounts of money to attend these schools. When yolu first start out in a restaurant, you dont make more more then $10 an hour, and that is nowhere near enough money to pay back loans and support yourself. This often causes the students to be in quite a bad situation. I think student loans are an amazing thing - if your future occupation can pay them back in a decent amount of time. For example; going to a local college for undergrad is more more practical then going to a $40,000+ college, simply because it's undergrad. The graduate degree is what matters most, and that is somewhat based upon where you go. People need to consider what means more to them; expensive school and sky-high loans, or local school, and no loans. I'd opt for the latter simplty because I love the city and don't want to leave. It also offers a sound alternative to paying a ton of money. If I do have to take out loans, it won't be much, and I'll make sure that I pay them back before the big interest rates hit.

Insider Trading Scandal

Well, what ended up happening was a large group of well known lawyers and bankers were receiving secrets revealed to them by insiders at UBS and Morgan Stanley. And they ended up using these tips to know when to buy/sell to make the most money. When people use these tips to cheat the market, it's known as insider trading, and s a huge no-no amongst the finance world.

DOW down 416 points. Why?

Well, one of the major reason that the US stocks dropped so far was because of Chinese stock slipping as well. Due to the fact of over-inflation in both countries, it's causing a deadly trend in the economy which is slowly making our money rather worthless. This is a pretty bad drop, but not nearly as bad at 9/1 orr the Great Depression, but it definitely is a serious drop.

Opportunity costs

I think when economists talk about opportunity costs they're basically just saying everything has a trade-off. For example; if I buy a 50$ game, I could have instead used that 50$'s to hang out somewhere with my friends, and that trade off is one that I have to understand before buying the game. Basically, money can be used on anythingl and learning what to use it on is what opportunity costs are.

Types of economic systems

Traditional Economy:
Well, in this form of economy, many trade skills are passed down from parents to children. For example, if my parents we're goldsmith, I often would follow steps in the same trade. It seems to be popular in a lot of countries that aren't very developed, but it stll seems to work for them.

Centrally Planned Economy:
Within this kind of economy, the government chooses what kind of goods each person gets, and what goods each person receives. Communism follows this economy.

Market Economy:
This market is the one that the U.S. uses, but it also seems to be the most practical. It is driven simply by consumer need, and the will to succeed. For example; if I want to open a business I can, but if it's an uncommon business that I open, it may not succeed.

Mixed Economy:
A mixed economy is what in actuality what all governments have. It's a fusion of all different kinds of economy in which everyone can open shop, work for the government, or follow in their parents footsteps. This also happens to be my favorite form.

Well the difference between socialism and communism is that in socialism the people have a say in what they want to government companies to produce, but in communism, the government chooses everything.

Stock Market plan

Well, ok, I'm usually very fond of smallr things that form into a big idea (penny stocks that hopefully will go up.) I tend to think that it' les of a gamble if you have 20 small stocks then 3 huge ones, because if one huge one bombs, you do as well, but if one of 20 does, you barely notice it. I'm also kind of going on blind instinct, and going with companies that look good or that I know, I'm still not sure on how to heck how the market actually works out. Like Day 1, Nintendo Inc. dropped a point. Yay. But here's hoping that it goes back up pretty soon.

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