Prior to the Regan administration, the US economy experienced a decade of rising unemployment and inflation; conflicts in the middle east threatened America’s supply of oil as economic growth also stagnated. A central part of Regan’s 1980 election bid was to lower marginal taxes across the board and continue the deregulation that had been started in previous administration [9]. The plan drew some critics from politicians at first but the plan saw widespread support from Americans, as he won the 1980 election by a whopping 440 electoral votes. Regan’s economic policies, largely influenced by the works of economists such as Robert Mundell and others, has been continued by every president since. The irresistible idea of economic growth by lower
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The “Occupy” movement sought to advance social and economic justice by bringing to light and “fighting against” the ways that the global financial system perpetuates social and economic inequality on a worldwide scale; the slogan “We are the 99%” directly makes reference to the astronomical disparities in wealth and income among “the 1%” and everybody else. The 2016 presidential primary campaign of Bernie Sanders acted as another major drive for change in the status quo; he brought to light a lot of the issues with the current economic system and amassed a large political following, especially among younger voters. These events are signals of more change to come, but while they were successful in sparking interest these issues and motivating a powerful drive for change, there still more to be done to curb this problem, as realistically speaking, the problem hasn’t quite improved under the Obama …show more content…
While it is commonly thought that imposing a minimum wage higher than the equilibrium (market) price results in a surplus of workers, a meta regression analysis of the raw data of 64 US minimum wage studies indicate that there is “little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages and employment” [12]. The data of 1,474 estimated elasticities from these 64 studies indicate that the employment elasticity (ei) is -0.010; although this number is statistically significant, it “has no meaningful policy implications” [12] according to the authors, as such a 10% increase in the minimum wage would only cause a 0.10% decrease in employment, while still growing the economy. Raising the minimum wage only tackles a part of the problem though; actions must still be taken to amend the changes to the country’s tax code and financial regulations.
As we look to the future, it is especially important to consider all of these potential solutions and take a research based approach firmly rooted in the foundation of microeconomics to make changes to the country’s economic system in order to better provide equitable opportunities to all. “Trickle-down economics” has proven itself to be ineffective on both the national and global scale. At its heart,
The “Occupy” movement sought to advance social and economic justice by bringing to light and “fighting against” the ways that the global financial system perpetuates social and economic inequality on a worldwide scale; the slogan “We are the 99%” directly makes reference to the astronomical disparities in wealth and income among “the 1%” and everybody else. The 2016 presidential primary campaign of Bernie Sanders acted as another major drive for change in the status quo; he brought to light a lot of the issues with the current economic system and amassed a large political following, especially among younger voters. These events are signals of more change to come, but while they were successful in sparking interest these issues and motivating a powerful drive for change, there still more to be done to curb this problem, as realistically speaking, the problem hasn’t quite improved under the Obama …show more content…
While it is commonly thought that imposing a minimum wage higher than the equilibrium (market) price results in a surplus of workers, a meta regression analysis of the raw data of 64 US minimum wage studies indicate that there is “little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages and employment” [12]. The data of 1,474 estimated elasticities from these 64 studies indicate that the employment elasticity (ei) is -0.010; although this number is statistically significant, it “has no meaningful policy implications” [12] according to the authors, as such a 10% increase in the minimum wage would only cause a 0.10% decrease in employment, while still growing the economy. Raising the minimum wage only tackles a part of the problem though; actions must still be taken to amend the changes to the country’s tax code and financial regulations.
As we look to the future, it is especially important to consider all of these potential solutions and take a research based approach firmly rooted in the foundation of microeconomics to make changes to the country’s economic system in order to better provide equitable opportunities to all. “Trickle-down economics” has proven itself to be ineffective on both the national and global scale. At its heart,