Wasted Effort

While we were on the topic of looking at paintings of different American wars, I thought this would be an interesting image to look at.  This is an image of the Civil War, with Union and Confederate forces harshly battling each other.

Notice all the different flags from both sides show up in many places of the artifact, which shows pride, something that has come up a lot in American war images.  In the case of the Civil War though, it bothers me to think that these two opposing forces had pride in killing their own country.  We have gone over many times what sort of instigated the war, slaves and the cotton gin and everything, but I feel like the artist who made this artifact is making a profound statement.  I believe that this can be interpreted in a satirical means, and that the artist is showing the stupidity of the Civil War in this piece.

We talked about the ignorant and arrogant pride present in this image, but not yet about the plain brutality of it.  Look at the gruesome battle at hand, and then ask why it is happening?  Over a crop, a race?  It hardly seems worth many thousands of lives, and that is what the artist is trying to portray here.  That the Civil War, and possibly even war in general is pointless if you juxtapose what is lost and what is gained.  Also, that maybe if the prideful people put all the effort that is being put into war into something more important and productive, then we would be better off in the end.  

Is Global Climate Change Really a Problem?

Recently on TV, in magazines, and on the radio there has been an extensive amount of discussion on global climate change and whether or not it is truly a problem worth adressing or if it is even a problem at all.  I have brought up this topic before, but never gone into much detail and have not presented the proper evidence for my opinion on the global climate change crisis.

Take a look at the graph above and analyze what you see.  Surprisingly to most people, what you will find is that in the year 860 earth's average temperature was actually higher than in the year 2007.  Yes it is 2009, and the average temperature is still lower than that of the Middle Ages, so why is it that all this commotion about greenhouse gas emissions and the human race creating global climate change still lingering?

For anyone to deny that greenhouse gases raise earth's temperature is ignorant, because they do, but to say that we are going to end up causing the ice caps to melt and a global flood or any of those theories is just as bad.  Notice after every up slope on the graph there is a down slope, and the opposite as well, so why is it that we are making a big deal about it.  Earth has fixed itself in the past, and will continue to do so.  It is illogical to say that all of a sudden the earth will stop doing what it has done for millions of years just out of the blue.  Honestly, I believe we should worry more about the next downslope and possible ice age that may follow where we are more than the current upslope.  Anyways, what if the ice caps did melt?  All that would happen is maybe an increase of about 8 inches in the total water level of our oceans.  That would hardly cause any damage, maybe a little, but not enough to constitute our exceedingly high level of concern in the topic.

What we really need to be doing is keeping an eye on the temperature, while focusing on more important problems of the present like the economy more than the environment.  There could possibly be a point when our average temperature does get too high, but that time is not now; all that is to high is our national debt.  

A Solution?

In my economics class we recently discussed fiscal policy and how the federal government uses it to influence the economy.  Although we just moved onto a new unit, I thought it might be interesting to actually try and create a solution or an exit strategy from the current recession.

The first thing that must be known is that any plan of action will take time, and probably more time than predicted.  My idea, was to utilize expansionary fiscal policy to help pump money into the correct places of the economy.  Expansionary fiscal policy is basically allowing for more government spending on programs like social security, Medicare,  Medicaid, and education, which will soon take up most of the federal budget, and create more tax cuts to give people extra money and hopefully pump it back into the economy.

This will work because by giving Universities and Colleges the ability to award bigger scholarships to people in need, allowing banks to have the money and confidence to provide appropriate loans to those who can afford them, and subsidizing businesses to expand to the proper utilization of their resources, more jobs will be created along with people to fill the slots.  On top of that, with tax cuts people will be able to buy more things and increase demand along with the GDP.

The thing to keep in mind is that the economy is a frequently changing system, and although the current situation is melancholy to say at the least, the economy has and always will fix itself.