The Perfect Economy

The perfect economy doesn't seem like that hard of a subject to talk about. When we were first introduced to the topic of the paper at the first of the semester I thought it would be fairly easy. But as the semester rolled on we went farther and farther into the study of economics and the less confident I felt about this paper.

The first topic we discussed is whether or not we thought eastern Kentucky was poor. We talked about how much the dollar was actually worth here compared to other states. Some of the other topics also introduced were welfare and high school dropout rates. Once we were introduced to some of the ideas that the teacher had, I realized more and more the depth of thinking required of this class. He talked about how there were no universities south east of the interstates and about how the average income of a person in hazard went from around thirty-five thousand dollars to currently around twenty-six thousand dollars.

On the second debate we discussed whether or not the government should own all land so that they could guarantee all citizens jobs. In the perfect economy the government should have control over some of the jobs but not all of them because it would be communistic. It would be a good idea if the government had the ability to guarantee everyone a job. In the debate we discussed whether or not the government would provide jobs for the disabled too. We concluded that the government should just focus on getting people jobs instead of owning all the land that the jobs create.

The third debate went a little farther into the idea of government owning certain things. The teacher introduced us to the fact that the government gives each person that lives in Alaska a check each year for the amount of oil that the government takes out of the land. We discussed whether or not it would be a good idea for the government to own all the coal mines and just send each citizen a check for the amount of coal the government would send out of the state each year. We thought that if the government owned all the mines they would only be concerned with the big mines and would try and do away with the others. Another way of looking at it is if the government owned all the mines they would bring big businesses in with them to supply the mines.

The next debate was about whether or not the government should control the prices of products. The idea arose of what smaller companies would do about earning profits. If the government lowered the price of there products to be competitive with the bigger companies then the smaller companies would be forced to produce lower quality goods. But if the government did control the market then the possibility of prescription drug prices lowering would be higher. We come to the conclusion that having a mixed market is a good idea.

Also, we discussed if the government should stay out of the way of business and let them earn as much money as they can. This is toying with the idea of whether or not the government should have control over business monopolies. If the top two companies that made one certain product merged then they could control the price on that certain market, not a good idea. In the perfect economy the government should have strict control over large companies.

Another topic that was discussed in class was what we could do with criminals instead of putting them in jail. We talked about how homeless people committed crimes just to go to jail where they got 3 meals a day and a roof over there head. I think in the perfect economy we shouldn't have a death sentence, instead we should sentence the prisoners to a life of overseas military duty. In which they would always be the first to go into a hostile situation, always in the most dangerous circumstances, that way they wouldn't be such a drain on the economy. They would provide a service to the public, instead of just being useless.

The next topic we discussed was how efficient the education system of the country is. The teacher explained to us how the education system in China worked. He explained to us that every student in the same grade of every classroom in the country was on the same page of the same subject every day of the week. One student said that he read on the internet that 24% of teachers are currently teaching out of their field. Another student commented that the United States had the second to lowest education scores in a given poll. But there is ways to combat these problems. First the government should work on getting the teachers they have in the fields that they belong. Next they should work on hiring more teachers and getting the student-to-teacher ratio closer to 1:1. In the perfect economy education would be the most important goal, because without educated people to teach the young ones then you don't have anything.

Another debate topic we discussed