I think I’ve learned more from this Economics class than any others I’ve taken. While those seem to be just reading out of a book, and giving historic examples, this seemed to require us to look at current issues, and the readings seemed much more relevant than those out of a standard economics textbook. I think the most valuable thing I learned was at the beginning, the differences between systems and how they’re effecting the future between nations. I also enjoyed learning how these up and coming developing countries are modernizing, seems we’ll have to work harder to keep up with or stay ahead of them.

I like the blog post style used for this course. I think it’s a lot easier to keep track of my own work. For example, I can go to my page and see what/how many posts I’ve made for each unit while for my other class that has the basic d2l set up, I’d have to go to the discussion question, and scroll through to ensure that I had already answered, and posted two replies for that unit. This was is more convenient for sure. The only thing I wasn’t necessarily a fan of was the scheduling. I found the relaxed due dates caused me to lose motivation and procrastinate more than I should have. Of course, this is simply a personal opinion on it, I’m sure some students loved the relaxed deadlines. One thing I think that would be helpful is to have assignments where we need to poke around the entire site more than just posting from the home page. More assignments requiring actual pages, than simple posts perhaps.

I think that my 3 best posts this semester were:

Trust The Poor?

• I chose this one because I was able to intertwine personal experience with the information in the reading to give real world examples of my standing on the issue.

Educate Yourself on your Insurance

• I picked this one because again I was able to speak somewhat of personal experience while talking about the readings and discussing issues we have with insurance, as I work in the insurance field.

Bad Governance
-This one I picked because I think its the post I felt most personally about, my most thoughtful post.

I am blessed to work with one of the worlds top insurance companies. The company gives top-notch insurance, an extremely generous amount of PTO, and we get paid for keeping ourselves healthy. They’ll even reimburse gym membership costs each month. They also have a generous base pay for every employee, no matter the position. The company does all this and still is among the best in the world. I think this comes from happy employees. they have a low turnover rate, and are constantly getting awards due to the hard work of their employees. They put a lot of money into their employees and are still doing very well. I think that the happiness of employees is based on recognition and incentives when it comes down to it, and i believe if companies distributed their income more evenly, it could be a huge step in improving the economy, saving them money on paying new employees and constant new training, and providing their employees with a higher income than most companies for the same job puts more back into the economy.

Hand in hand. I’m not particularly a ”tree-hugger”, however i do realize that things need to change. One thing i’d like to see change the fastest, is letting the millionaires get away with dumping, by paying a fine. Usually, the fine is less than disposing in a responsible way and in my opinion isn’t strict enough. Yes, it will cost more, but what happens when theres no clean water, or another disaster like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

While reading the book i chose for the review, Beyond Outrage by Robert B Reich i learned that even if CEO’s fail, run their companies into the ground and don’t stick with the company for long, they’re still walking away with millions. As an example, Scott Thompson lasted only 4 months as CEO of Yahoo!, yet walked away with 7 million.

I believe this is one of the most important issues we face today. In my opinion, the money is being tied up and is stuck at the top. The richest of the rich aren’t paying an adequate amount of taxes, and the middle class is being forced to make up for it. With rising taxes and shrinking incomes, the middle class carries most of the stress. We’re paying taxes, but that leaves us with less money to put back into our economy, so how do we keep it going?

When it comes to the cost of healthcare and the confusion of insurance, it is more important now to educate yourself on your insurance. Don’t just call up your company, read your plan documents before it is instated, look up weather or not a primary provider is necessary. I’m currently a claims specialist for an insurance company, and analysts here try to get around every guideline possible to be able to pay a claim but sometimes it just isn’t possible. A lot of clients could’ve prevented their big medical issues by calling and asking questions first, instead of after they find out their claim has been denied. Another way to help prevent these big issues, would be utilizing resources such as docnow.com to ensure a provider is eligible, in-network and accepting of your insurance before you go.

The disappearing social security fund disappearing is something that has confused me for a while. If we’re putting in what we’re getting out how can it simply be disappearing? To me, it seems more of an excuse or a predictable reasoning for congress to cut the funding completely. I believe its a good way to help have something there when you retire. Maybe not all you’ll need, a separate 401k would definitely be wise, but it is something.

Universal healthcare seems to attract two opinions among the majority of citizens. Those who say it’s impossible and those who seem to think its completely simple. I do agree with universal healthcare. One thing that jumped out at me in the article was laying the ‘socialist’ term on. Yes, the word is accurately used however it is a classification and not all things under that classification should be instantly discredited simply for being there. I think the word scares some in thinking this entire country will turn socialist, but really… by offering universal healthcare? In the long run it is more simple, not completely simple but better that what we deal with now. It’s also more affordable and attainable.