The purpose of Richard Vedder’s article is to discuss the decline in employment and the effect it’s been having on the United States during that few years. Vedder starts this article by pointing out that from the mid-17th century to the late 20th century the American economy grew roughly 3.5% a year, but during recent years it has fallen to 1.81 % annually. He reasons that the reason for this slowdown is that Americans aren’t working as much today as they did before, and says that “this trend reflects more than the recession and sluggish economy of the past few years (Vedder, 2013)”.
During the last decade the unemployment rate in the United States has gone up. Before the year 2000 there were increases in employee to population ratios, but …show more content…
He points out that if in recent years the country had the same proportion of persons of working age as it did in 2000, the U.S. would have almost 14 million more people contributing to the economy. With this the annual grow rate of GDP would be 2.2%, not 1.81%. From analyzing the information provided by Vedder, it seems that people are just becoming more dependent on the government to live like never before, as food stamps and unemployment benefits are being given out more and more. While it is not wrong for the government to help out its citizens, constantly providing for them financially is not the way to go either, as they are essentially making them dependent instead of self-independent. If the country continues to lose more and more of its working population and putting many of them on government assistance what’s going to be end up happening is that national debt is going to be increasing more and more as the government is going to have to seek out loans to compensate for the millions of dollars that their extra working population would have provided. The only way to prevent this from happening is that there needs to be serious changes to American policies so that people stop being dependent on the government for everything and start contributing more in order to help rebuild the already weak
During the last decade the unemployment rate in the United States has gone up. Before the year 2000 there were increases in employee to population ratios, but …show more content…
He points out that if in recent years the country had the same proportion of persons of working age as it did in 2000, the U.S. would have almost 14 million more people contributing to the economy. With this the annual grow rate of GDP would be 2.2%, not 1.81%. From analyzing the information provided by Vedder, it seems that people are just becoming more dependent on the government to live like never before, as food stamps and unemployment benefits are being given out more and more. While it is not wrong for the government to help out its citizens, constantly providing for them financially is not the way to go either, as they are essentially making them dependent instead of self-independent. If the country continues to lose more and more of its working population and putting many of them on government assistance what’s going to be end up happening is that national debt is going to be increasing more and more as the government is going to have to seek out loans to compensate for the millions of dollars that their extra working population would have provided. The only way to prevent this from happening is that there needs to be serious changes to American policies so that people stop being dependent on the government for everything and start contributing more in order to help rebuild the already weak