Save Yo Money

People have a hard time with savings money when then they have cash on them or money in their checking account. Marie Franklin in Boston has figured out how to save thousands of dollars by just doing a few simple things. This process could be an incentive for people to want to save their money, and how just saving 5 dollar bills can lead to thousands in your savings account. She started this when she got fives back as change and kept it in her purse, and she kept doing this until the end of the week when she saved 35 dollars. I think that most people could do this simple trick to save money, and they invest that money into a bigger company to make money off the market.

The best way to start this process is by “tucking away every 5-dollar bill”(NBC News) that you get back as change. Before you do this immediately, you must use cash in “your daily consumption” to get the cash to save. Therefore, you should add up all the small things you buy in a week that you could use to buy cash and withdrawal that money from your checking account. Marie withdrew about “100 dollars” each week and recommends about the same. She did things that most people do not like doing which is using a 20 to buy a 3-dollar item, but by doing this, she at least gets one five back in change to save. Once the fives become a “100 dollars,” she puts it into a “savings account” that in return earns her interest. Eventually, that 100 dollars turns into a 1000 dollars, in which, she “takes it out (of the savings account) and reinvest it” into a bigger company or something that earns more interest. This seems like a great easy way to save money.

Some people might not see the incentive to do this like I do, but I don’t see why not give it a chance. You can’t lose anything from saving money and earning more money off the money you put aside. Well, there could be some challenges to this for some people. Not everyone makes enough to be able to pull a lot cash to buy smaller things. I understand this reason, but any other reason than that to me is not valid. Think about this until this week the stock market and economy was booming and interest rates along with shares were rising, so now is in the time to save your money to invest in these companies. Waiting to do to this could be worse the thing because you are losing out on potentially thousands of dollars just sitting in your bank account.

No matter what you decide to do use your money wisely and try saving more money since now more than ever more people not saving money. Long term saving have plummeted in recent years in America. Their long-term effects of not saving money could hurt you if we were to go into another recession. A “persons consumption” (Economics Web Institute) usually directly relates to much they will they save, and the rich tend to save more than poor which I found interesting. Most importantly having some amount of money put in away in a savings account or in an investment came extremely useless in the long term in case of an emergency.

Your Money is Your Money

The Republicans in the Senate are pushing for a tax reform to lower federal income taxes, and most of them ran their election on this promise to lower taxes. Both Democrats and Republicans have their argument for why they should stay the same, be higher, or be lower. I am for lowering of the federal income taxes. Democrats complain about how the rich do not pay enough in taxes even though they 45% in taxes, but they pay less through tax write offs and loopholes. More people in the United States would pay taxes if we lowered taxes andchanged the tax bracket since right now 45 percent of Americans don’t pay their taxes.

Lowering taxes to get more people to pay them could allow the US to receive more tax money to help public education, the poor, and many other things that we rely on the government to provide for us. The way we could lower taxes without actually getting rid of the percentages we have now would be to add more brackets into the existing tax bracket. This would allow someone to only have to pay 15% instead of 25% in taxes when they barely make more than the 15% bracket maximum. The max for the 15% bracket is 37,950 for a single person. By doing this, more of the lower income people would be more inclined to pay taxes which means more money for the government. Also, by taking less of the people’s money, they could spend that money on other things like tutoring, private school, and other things to boost our economy, but if everybody in America paid taxes, then we wouldn’t need the crazy amount of private schools we have. We could fix multiple problems by doing something pretty simple.

The lower and middle class would really benefit from lower taxes since less of their income would go to taxes and more towards basic necessities. The lower income class would be able to improve their living conditions and health if they could keep more of their money. Also, the tax forms are so complicated and confusing that most people have to pay someone to do their taxes which means less money for those people. People from these two classes also refuse to pay taxes which is around 45% of Americans because they are displeased and that the government needs to provide more for them. That is ironic since the government needs money to provide for us. The people chose have control of their own money since they earned not the government, and they should not tell me how I should spend my money.

Changes to the tax bracket need to be made. Right now there are 7 brackets with 10% being the lowest and 39.60% being the highest. The other ones are 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35 percent.They need to add more brackets between 15 and 25 to make the gap between the two not as big and one between 10 and 15 at many around 12%. Adding more brackets could be mean the difference between living pay check to pay check for some families and more money for other things that they might need. Making the tax system more simplified could get more people to pay taxes since 59% of Americans think Congress needs to fix the tax system. Theses changes could help get America to the next level in countries that pay the majority of their taxes. This could also take away people relying the wealthy to make for everyone else lack of participation and that the wealthy don’t pay enough in taxes.

The lowering of taxes and adding more brackets to the tax could help America and Americans in general. There are many benefits to doing this, but it is only going to help America if everybody pays their taxes. More tax brackets are needed in order more Americans to pay taxes and allow the government to have more money to spend on education and everywhere they feel its necessary. Lower taxes and more brackets could help this country move to closer to a more well rounded country that takes care of the basic things that we rely on a government to provide for us.

http://www.ri.gop/lowering_taxes

 

Something needs to be done

Gun control along with repealing and amending the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution has been a topic of discussion among many people since the recent Las Vegas shooting. Americans are worried about mass shooting happening more often as they sadly do to often in our country. People are blaming the National Rifle Association for this, and others say that it is other things. I do not think it is the NRA’s fault, but a missed red flag by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Repealing the Second Amendment would not solve the problem, but adding more gun regulations and amending the Second Amendment could eliminate more mass shooting and take guns off the streets.

It is the right of an American citizen to “bear arms” (Amendment 2) so taking away this right is stripping away the freedom that the Constitution promises us. The United States needs to find a solution to the amount of gun related shootings, but it is not going to be an easy fix. More gun control needs to be at the top of the list which starts with harsher restrictions on being able to get a hand gun license, and the amount of ammo and guns some one is allowed to buy at one time. Harsher restrictions could come with backlash since people might argue that these restrictions are limiting their freedom, but it is should not be a walk in the park to get a license for any gun especially semiautomatic and automatic rifles.

People on the other side might say the repealing the second amendment would solve the gun problem in America. Outlawing guns logically seems like the best idea, but many people in America own guns who would strongly disagree about this. Repealing the Second Amendment is taking away Americans freedom, but by repealing guns would stop the legal selling of guns. This would be great for those who are anti-guns, but people who are desperate enough to buy a gun could still buy them off the black market.

While repealing the second amendment seems the most logical, it would never work in the society we will live since most people own for protection or hunting even though they should feel safe in their country. I think that we should get rid of the the “well regulated Militia” (Amendment 2) since we have a national army that is one of the powerful in the world. It is not needed in modern society anymore. Since it is a right for the people to own a gun, they just need to need more regulated, which the government could put more security in place to look for certain red flags. There needs to be a certain harsher criterion for owning and why you want to own a gun. I am for people owning guns, but at some point, we need to realize that they are dangerous and not everyone should have one.

Amending the second amendment and regulating guns through gun legislation like in the past could help solve the gun crisis in that has been hurting our country for the last several decades. When John F. Kennedy was killed by Oswald, gun control was a topic of discussion after this event since Oswald bought the gun from mail order. Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut pushed legislation to regulate gun sale to people under 18 years old. He didn’t succeed at first, but finally, he got the Gun Control Act of 1968 passed which regulates firearms dealers and imposed a federal minimum age requirement of 18 for handguns and long guns. Carl T. Bogus says, “Publicly, the National Rifle Association supported the bill.” (Chicago-Kent Law Review) The NRA also spent “144,000” to support the bill. The biggest promoter of guns and the second amendment is even for harsher restrictions on owning guns. Limiting and regulating guns could decrease the mass shootings and gun related deaths in our country.

Image source:Vegas Shooting Picture 

Image 2 source: Second Amendment Picture

The End of an Era

The ending of DACA is a historical moment in the US which is causing the two political parties to rage war. Trump ended the DACA program which his conservatives’ partners praised him for since he based most of his campaign on immigration. It took him a while to do this even though he pledged to do so at the beginning of his presidential reign. The ending of DACA was coming at some time, which I have a mixed view about. In many ways it could be negative, but we need to look at what we can do to help our students first, not immigrant students. American students are at a disadvantage since we cater to the immigrants and not our own. In order for this country to keep growing, we must educate our citizens first and make the priority above the illegal immigrants.

It seems inhumane for rejecting immigrants that were already in America, but how do you think the average hard working American kid feels when they can not get a scholarship or the same education as an illegal immigrant? Republicans sped up the process of ending DACA since “nine Republicans state attorneys general had threatened to sue to halt the program immediately if Mr. Trump did not act” (NY Times). Republicans were furious about the DACA program that Obama enacted which Trump said it led to a ‘“massive surge” of immigrants from Central America, some of whom went on to to become members of violent gangs like MS-13′”(NY Times). The Republicans see this as the first step in Immigration Reform and ending the influx of undocumented children in to this country.

While ending DACA right now is the smart thing, people who have DACA can renew their permits if it expires in the next six months. Trump told reporters, “he feels compassion for those affected, but ‘long term it’s going to be the right solution” (CNN) which is ironic of him to say since he pushed deporting immigrants so hard during his campaign. He might have ended people from being able to become a DACA recipient, but he gave Congress six months to try to fix DACA and is even setting up meeting with Democrats as well about this issue.

This controversial decision to end DACA has more than to do with just education and immigration, but also with peoples’ views especially the view of anti-immigration. For the Republicans, this is a win for them by ending a form immigration, but on the other hand, the democrats feel that this is the most inhumane thing ever. We must look at this from both sides along with the positives and negatives. We do not really know the negative affects, yet besides the fact we are denying people an education, which we promised them. The one positive is less immigration for six months while DACA is suspended. We do not fully know what this could to the economy in the future, or how much money it will cost to deport all of these people on DACA. This is a battle over political views and beliefs, and it is the morally right thing to do.

I personally do not know if this a good or bad thing completely, yet. I think that we should try to fix it, but at the same time, we must focus on our citizens first. We push our citizens away sometimes and do not take care of them enough. The Washington Post explains that Trump was for the Dreamers and praised them, but then all of sudden, he is against them. He tweeted, “Make no mistake, we are going to put the interest of AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST! The forgotten men & women will no longer be forgotten” (Washington Post), which contradicts things he had said previously. I agree with him that we must take care of our citizens first, but what is he going to do to help us more. I am not sure if he even believes in this decision or if he is just doing this to get the Republicans praise back. Either way the DACA program is just a platform the two political parties use to fight over their drastic views over immigration.