A Brief Guide to Defining Money

The Economics Glossary defines money as follows: Money is a good that acts as a medium of exchange in transactions. Classically it is said that money acts as a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange. Most authors find that the first two are nonessential properties that follow from the third. In fact, other goods are often better than money at being intertemporal stores of value, since most monies degrade in value over time through inflation or the overthrow of governments. The Purpose of Money So, money isnt just pieces of paper. Its a medium of exchange that facilitates trade. Suppose I have a Wayne Gretzky hockey card that Id like to exchange for a new pair of shoes. Without the use of money, I have to find a person, or combination of people who have an extra pair of shoes to give up, and just happen to be looking for a Wayne Gretzky hockey card. Quite obviously, this would be quite difficult. This is known as the double coincidence of wants problem: [T]he double coincidence is the situation where the supplier of good A wants good B and the supplier of good B wants good A. The point is that the institution of money gives us a more flexible approach to trade than barter, which has the double coincidence of wants problem. Also known as dual coincidence of wants. Since money is a recognized medium of exchange, I do not have to find someone who has a pair of new shoes and is looking for a Wayne Gretzky hockey card. I just need to find someone who is looking for a Gretzky card who is willing to pay enough money so I can get a new pair at Footlocker. This is a far easier problem, and thus our lives are a lot easier, and our economy more efficient, with the existance of money. How Money Is Measured As for what constitutes money and what does not, the following definition is provided by The Federal Reserve Bank of New York: The Federal Reserve publishes weekly and monthly data on three money supply measures -- M1, M2, and M3 -- as well as data on the total amount of debt of the nonfinancial sectors of the U.S. economy... The money supply measures reflect the different degrees of liquidity -- or spendability - that different types of money have. The narrowest measure, M1, is restricted to the most liquid forms of money; it consists of currency in the hands of the public; travelers checks; demand deposits, and other deposits against which checks can be written. M2 includes M1, plus savings accounts, time deposits of under $100,000, and balances in retail money market mutual funds. M3 includes M2 plus large-denomination ($100,000 or more) time deposits, balances in institutional money funds, repurchase liabilities issued by depository institutions, and Eurodollars held by U.S. residents at foreign branches of U.S. banks and at all banks in the United Kingdom and Canada. So there are several different classifications of money. Note that credit cards are not a form of money. Note that money is not the same thing as wealth. We cannot make ourselves richer by simply printing more money.

How to Write Compelling Personality Profiles

The personality profile is an article about an individual, and profiles are one of the staples of feature writing. No doubt youve read profiles in newspapers, magazines or websites. Profiles can be done on just about anyone whos interesting and newsworthy, whether its the local mayor or a rock star. Here are seven tips for producing great profiles. 1. Take the Time to Know Your Subject Too many reporters think they can produce quick-hit profiles where they spend a few hours with a subject and then bang out a quick story. That wont work. To really see what a person is like you need to be with him or her long enough so that they let their guard down and reveal their true selves. That wont happen in an hour or two. 2. Watch Your Subject in Action Want to know what a person is really like? Watch them doing what they do. If youre profiling a professor, watch him teach. A singer? Watch (and listen) to her sing. And so on. People often reveal more about themselves through their actions than their words, and watching your subject at work or play will give you lots of action-oriented description that will breathe life into your story. 3. Show the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly A profile shouldnt be a puff piece. It should be a window into who the person really is. So if your subject is warm and cuddly, fine, show that. But if theyre cold, arrogant and generally unpleasant, show that too. Profiles are most interesting when they reveal their subjects as real people, warts and all. 4. Talk to People Who Know Your Subject Too many beginning reporters think a profile is just about interviewing the subject. Wrong. Human beings usually lack the ability to objectively view themselves, so make a point of talking to people who know the person youre profiling. Talk to the persons friends and supporters, as well as their detractors and critics. As we said in tip no. 3, your goal is to produce a rounded, realistic portrait of your subject, not a press release. 5. Avoid Factual Overload Too many beginning reporters write profiles that are little more than an accretion of facts about the people they are profiling. But readers dont particularly care when someone was born, or what year they graduated from college. So yes, include some basic biographical information about your subject, but dont overdo it. 6. Avoid Chronologies Another rookie mistake is to write a profile as a chronological narrative, starting with the persons birth and plodding through their life up to the present. Thats boring. Take the good stuff—whatever it is that makes your profile subject interesting—and emphasize that right from the start. 7. Make a Point About Your Subject Once youve done all your reporting and gotten to know your subject reasonably well, dont be afraid to tell your readers what youve learned. In other words, make a point about what kind of person your subject is. Is your subject shy or aggressive, strong-willed or ineffectual, mild or hot-tempered? If you write a profile that doesnt say something definitive about its subject, then you havent done the job.

Dehumanization in Slavery based on Accounts from Clotel Free Essays

string(123) " Child was copied word for word except for some insertions by the Brown to express his political views \(Schweninger 28\)\." William Wells Brown warns us that slavery does not only victimize the weak and blacks. In his novel, he points out that â€Å"no one is safe† from slavery, whether â€Å"white or black† (Schweninger 23). In the face of this fact, it seem ironic that the country that is now called the â€Å"land of the free† and â€Å"home of the brave† was once a country where slaves were sold and treated almost with cold blood (Schweninger 23). We will write a custom essay sample on Dehumanization in Slavery based on Accounts from Clotel or any similar topic only for you Order Now Indeed, no one is safe, for even a president’s daughter has been sold to be a slave. What could be more painful than to be parted from your beloved and your daughter and be sold as a slave, knowing that your daughter would be treated as ill as a servant? This is the Calvary that Clotel had to bear as a slave, though she was, by popular lore, a daughter of the president. And if it were true that she was indeed a daughter of the president (Schweninger 28), would it not be more painful on her part, knowing that she was the daughter of the most powerful man in country, yet she had to be a slave and a concubine? The very thought of this situation dehumanizes Gods masterpiece. There is a rich literature about Brown’s novel, both digital and printed. Most of them bank on the cruelty of slavery. Articlemyriad. com reminds the readers that the novel is fiction, but description of slavery with all its vividness in the accounts of the characters’ lives is true. It can be well understood how something fictitious can capture the truth behind every word and expression. The writer himself was once a slave, and in fact, the first part of the novel is a biographical account of how he escaped slavery (Analysis and Themes 1). Hence, we see slavery, not in the eyes of someone who has just seen it, but someone who had been a slave, someone who had as firsthand experience of the dehumanizing treatment to slaves. It is not, however, the hard work that Brown resents, but the fact that humans, free or slave are not to be sold (Schweninger 22). At this juncture, it is important to focus more on the historicity of the accounts in the novel. As Articlemyriad. com points out, the novel is fiction, but the accounts are real. No president of the United States would have had a slave daughter, but the experiences of the characters in the novel, from the most â€Å"optimistic† to the most â€Å"pessimistic† were not products of imagination (Analysis and Themes 3). As Clotel became a mistress, and was sold, later tried to escape and then commit suicide in despair, Brown was showing a concrete example of what happened to slaves. It was not their fault to be born as mulatto or black or yellow skin, but they faced the discrimination and social prejudice and stereotyping. One example of this stereotyping is stated in the website mentioned. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee whilst its mother stands a slave behind his chair† (Brown 55). We can see from this statement that there is something bout being a mulatto child and a slave mother. A slave, though mother of the master’s child, remains to be a slave and does not seem to have the right to be wife, and only has the right to be a mistress, a whore. If a white were mother to child of a master, then the master would have to marry her in most cases, of the master would have to face suit, but slaves had no liberty to fight for their rights no matter how disgraced they have been. Though the article points out that the novel is fiction, it gives way to Brown’s claims that the novel is â€Å"no fiction† (Analysis and Themes 2), for it is â€Å"founded in truth† (Analysis and Themes 2). The truthfulness of accounts in the novel is what the other two articles by Schweninger and Giulla, although Giulla’s accounts are rather more focused on the language of the blacks. Schweninger puts forth that in as much as the events in the novel could have taken place to slaves; the accounts in the novel were not historically accurate as far as chronology of events is concerned. She mentions several inconsistencies in the chronology of events, one of which is the impossibility of Clotel’s birth in 1798 and â€Å"have her mother witness the 1842 burning when her daughter was only 16† (Schweninger 27). Therefore, according to Schweninger, the point of Brown is not to make a accurate historical account (although he told the readers that the novel is not fiction), but to stress the inhumane treatment to slaves, especially to African Americans and the mulatto. In fact, in the preface of the novel, Brown states â€Å"Were it not for persons in high places owning slaves†¦ Slavery would have long been abolished. (Schweninger iv). And who were these persons in high places? Brown identifies them as â€Å"professed Christians† who give the system (slavery) â€Å"a reputation† (Schweninger iv). Schweninger suggests that the â€Å"undercutting of the chronology of events stresses that it is not the chronology that is important in the no vel but the universality of the topic and slavery in any year or era would have been the same† (Schweninger iv). The people would have suffered just as much and the abusers would have abused the slaves just as much. And as Brown has said, slavery remained not condemned, because the people who had the power to stop it knew its evil but did not want to lose their slaves. They would be hurt in material loses. The battle cry of Brown is not for people to be freed from work. Everyone has to work, but no one deserves to be sold as a slave. Schweninger traces the story of Clotel to another popular lore called Child, where Clotel was originally named Rosalie. She attests that the story of Child was copied word for word except for some insertions by the Brown to express his political views (Schweninger 28). You read "Dehumanization in Slavery based on Accounts from Clotel" in category "Papers" For instance, Scweninger narrates, when Clotel urged the master to move from one place to another, Brown inserted some statements that would highlight the anti-slavery theme of the novel. So, in the original text from Child, the line says â€Å"the slave mistress urged her master ‘to remove to France or England (Scweninger 64)†, but in the text of Brown, there is the insertion â€Å"where both her child would be free and where colour was not a crime (Brown 85). Horatio, the master responded to this suggesting her why not reamin her mistress even after he got married. To this, Brown added a text saying, â€Å"True, she was his slave; bones, and sinews had been purchased by his gold, yet she had the heart of a true woman† (Brown 112). Schweninger also points out that Brown inserted Clotel’s consideration of remaining as a mistress a criminal act (Schweninger 28). Another important matter about the novel is the choice of places to mention. Schweninger confirms the accuracy of the accounts in the place where Currer (Clote’s mother) was – Natchez (Schweninger 29). It was a place, according to Buckingham (from Schweninger 29) where gambling and all sorts of vices were rampant, but most especially, it was a place where people were cruel to slaves. Hence, it was also the site where a runaway slave was burned. Another place mentioned that can be noted for accuracy is Richmond, where Clotel’s daughter was sold. Richmond was, according to Marie Tyler-McGraw (in Schweninger 29) the center of slave trade. It was a powerful place, then, primarily because it was the center of slave brokerage. However, there was some mistake in Brown’s choice for the time when Clotel was caught in Richmond. According to Schweninger, Clotel could not have been caught during the time of the Turner uprising in 1831, because she was mentioning names of presidential candidates of 1839 (Schweninger 30). Yet, Schweninger argues that this â€Å"misplacement† is of no importance because what was being pointed out here was the she was accused of being a part of the uprising and that was why she was hiding in disguise (Schweninger 30. ). It clear here that Brown’s intention is to show that slaves, too, are humans, capable of upholding morality, and want to uphold morality. They want to do what is right and to be in a place where they can be free, but the people who hold them captives refuse to let them do what they believe is right. Slaves are capable of love and reason, but all that the people who own them see in them is flesh and blood, not human beings with a soul, heart and mind. They were treated as properties and not as members of the society. I believe it pays to go back to Brown’s own words that the institutionalization and rationalization of slavery stated with the people on top, so to stop slavery, then the â€Å"guilt† should be â€Å"fastened† to the people in the â€Å"higher circle† (Brown iv). When Horatio got married, his wife saw Clotel as a threat so she had her sold. She tried to escape by disguising herself many times. She so got caught by the slave hunters and later committed suicide. This is seen by Articlemyriad. om as the evidence of the idea that the novel does not present optimism or pessimism in whole (Analysis and Themes 1). There were optimistic moments such as those when she was able to escape, yet she still wound up dead by her own will. However, another critique sees the disguises done by Clotel in a different way. Berthold sees every change in costume as a representation of the adversities that Clotel had to face as a female slave (Berthold 19). Guilla argues that male s were connotative for slaves then, so any woman portrayed as a slave would be something new in literature. So, in Berthold’s explanations, he points out that each time Clotel changes costume, there was something to show about the society and something about her personality and slavery (Berthold 19), even making reference to Brown in the 1880 My Southern Home, â€Å"Extravagance in dress, is a great and growing evil with our people† (Brown 232). For instance, most of Clotel’s disguises were as a white male, just to get out of the situation she was in. It is shown here how people are also judged by their clothing, and so goes with the stereotyping, the gender roles and the power in the gender role. So, if we look into the disguises that Clotel had, she first disguised herself as Mr. Johnson, then as an Italian or Spanish. She actually faced more danger when she disguised herself because she was wearing the shoes of someone whose roles she was not familiar with. When she disguised as a Spanish or Italian, the tension must have been great for she had to speak Italian or Spanish if ever any Spanish or Italian spoke to her. It also, then put her life in danger. Yet, the dangerous attempt got her what she wanted. However, in the end, when she committed suicide, Berthold saw this as â€Å"undisguising† herself, one that ascertained freedom for her, for she died as herself, not as anyone else (Berthold 30). Giulla sees the arrangement of the plot as a product of the author’s effort to expose the life of a community of slaves and need â€Å"to structure the fictional text around the evolution of the individual fate (Guilla 639)† and in so doing, explain the shifts from romance to realism in a exhaustively detailed depiction of slavery and the made-up â€Å"re-unions of long lost relatives and lovers (Guilla 639). If we examine the novel, the members of the family were separated because they were sold to different masters and had different fates. They must have yearned to be with each other as a mother wants to be with her daughter and a daughter with her mother, but the cruelty of slavery kept them from being together, even to the point of their death. This brings us back t o the pessimistic ending that Articlemyriad is talking about. In fact, when one is a slave, what optimism can pone really expect, but a life of hard work and subhuman treatment unless, of course one meets an extraordinary master. But even in the case Clotel, she had romance with Horatio, but the man did not consider his affair with her as something valuable, for if he did, he would have agreed to take her to France or England. We now go back to what I said earlier that slaves were seen as flesh and blood but not as humans with soul and mind. Brown’s style in writing the novel presents and extraordinary mixture of fact and fiction. The story is based on a popular lore that the people then knew, yet he gave it a different touch that made the people understand what was going on. Instead of using male slaves as heroes in the story to enable them to engage in physical confrontations and rebellions, Brown used the female slave to show the beauty and morality behind the mulatto and blacks, that though they were slaves, they had good hearts, and they were good people capable of love and ion need of love, especially in need of love. A show of rebellion could have shown what the society would be if slavery continued, but that was something that was expected to happen (although he made a novel end with a civil war). Brown deemed it more important to show, not the violence that will rise if slavery does not stop, but the impact of slavery to the lives of the people who had been being treated as animals for decades and even centuries by people who profess that they are Christians. To this, it makes a reference to the situation when Clotel disguised herself as Spanish or Italian. These people are known for their devotion in Catholicism. Here, I want to point out that the people who profess that they love God are also the ones who have been showing cruelty to the weak. They were actually hypocrites in a time when religion was strictly followed. We can see from the accounts mentioned by Schweninger that Brown had good accounts in geographical locations, but seems to have had some problems with historical accuracy. However, whether he had problems with chronology of events or he intended them to be such to stress certain points (like in the case of Clotel’s capture during the Turner uprising), his work remains to be a living testament of what happened to the blacks and mulattos in the United States. His work remains to be a loud cry during his time, transcending the boundaries of time to portray the evils of slavery. After all that the blacks and mulattos have experienced, they only deserve to have a part in the land once said to be flowing with milk and honey. The land of opportunity belongs, not only to the whites but also the clacks, and their children. Clotel is a literary treasure, not only to the blacks, but also to the world. It is a legacy, which through it history-based narrative has shown the plight of people in a certain place at a certain point of time. It can be considered a dark age of history, but it is also proof that whenever there is something wrong, the right will also shine. How to cite Dehumanization in Slavery based on Accounts from Clotel, Papers

Rapid Growth in Global Population free essay sample

Rapid Growth in Global Population by Yoshie Kikuchi Introduction The rapid growth in global population is not caused by any single reason. The frequent appearance of the subject in different United Nations Conferences such as the Conference on Environment and Development and the International Conference on Population and Development reflects the complexity of the problem. Population growth is so intricately intertwined with international economic imbalances and environmental degradation that none of the problems can be solved individually without improvements of the others. Therefore, keeping the situation in mind, it is ecessary to stabilize the population growth in order to achieve the common goal of human survival. Background Through most of human history, the worlds population remained below 300 million. Sometime after the year 1600, it slowly started turning upward. Accompanied with the improvements in agriculture and other technologies, and then with the Industrial Revolution, the world population grew faster than before through the eighteenth century. It took the earth eighteen centuries to reach the first one billion inhabitants. The population increase continued into the twentieth century at a much faster pace, nd since the end of World War II, the earth has been experiencing the steepest population growth in human history. Today the earth holds about 5. 7 billion people. According to United Nations predictions, by 2050, the world will probably have at least 7. 9 billion by the low variant projection and 9. 8 billion by the mid-range projection; and the largest fgure predicts the population will grow to be 12 billion. More than 90 percent of this projected growth will occur in developing countries. South Asia, which includes India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran, will have the largest numerical increase, from 1. 2 billion today to 1. billion people by the end of the century. Africa will experience the greatest percentage increase-38 percent-from 650 million today to 900 million by the year 2000. This population growth matters because it has enormous impact on human life. The more people the world has, the more natural resources the earth has to supply. In Just 20 years, the world will need to feed a population 40 percent larger than todays. Some experts also estimate that around two-thirds of recent tropical deforestation can be related to the population growth, largely through its impact on the demand for more agricultural land for food roduction. Furthermore, the tropical deforestation is known to be one of the major causes of greenhouse effects which also have significant affects on human life. Although nobody has come out with an estimate of the exact limit of the earths life supporting capacity, there is an increasing concern that the worlds population will exceed the earths carrying capacity sometime in the future. In order to achieve early and Development was first held in Bucharest, Romania in 1974. At the conference, the issue of how to slow the population growth was divided into two sides by developed nations and developing nations. Developed nations argued that the only way developing countries could get runaway population growth under control would be to institute family-planning programs. The developing nations responded that little could be done about population until economic and social conditions were improved. When the second International Conference on Population and Development was held in Mexico City in 1984, most developing nations came to understand the need of family-planning to solve the population problem. When Cairo hosted the third Population Conference in 1994, participating nations endorsed a ew strategy for stabilizing the worlds population, mainly by giving women more control over their lives. The Conference also adopted the final draft of the World Population Plan of Action, which included policies to stabilize population growth. Current Issues Family Planning In order to stabilize the worlds population growth, it will be necessary to balance birth and death rates. To do so, the access to safe and effective family-planning services for needy people takes a crucial role. One of the best examples of a family- planning success story is Thailand, where the fertility rate has dropped from more than 6. births to 2. 1 per woman in 25 years through the use of contraceptives. The Thai government concludes that lowering the population growth rate enhances the prosperity of the nation. Also, individuals in Thailand have realized that having fewer children enhances the prosperity of their families. Beside Thailand, nine other nations with successful family planning were announced at the Cairo conference. Those countries were Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. In Indonesia, a Southeast Asian nation with the worlds largest Muslim population, the birth rate has dropped from 5. births per woman to 3. 0 between 1971 and 1991. In Colombia, a Catholic country, the total fertility rate has dropped from 7. children for each woman to 2. 9 in past thirty years. These countries prove that birth control is becoming more widely accepted than before by the Muslim, Catholic, and Buddhist countries. Abortion The international community does not consider abortion as a part of family planning, however, peoples ideas toward abortion have been changed a little in the past twenty years mostly because of the serious economic and social pr oblems people have been experiencing in each nation. At the Bucharest Conference in 1974, abortion was not mentioned at all. The Mexico City Conference in 1984 alluded to abortion only once. At the Cairo Conference, even though the Vatican and Islamic fundamentalist groups still objected the abortion issue, the Conference achieved the biggest breakthrough by approving the text of paragraph 8. 25 on abortion, which states, In circumstances in which abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe. This measure will help to prevent unnecessary deaths of women Status of Women The Cairo Conference put the womens issue in the center of the discussion. Two spects of the situation of women which have received major attention, particularly in the context of population policy, are education and labor force participation. (Review and Appraisal of 19) In many parts of the developing nations, women are still spending most of their time working on farms and collecting natural resources and they cannot afford education. Those women tend to have a large number of children because they still think that children are the only source of status and eventual old-age security. The Cairo conferences final document provides population policies which include the empowerment of women. Those policies will give women and their partners the ability to limit the size of their families, and provide women better health services, better educations and equality with men. People need to know that the large unplanned size of family aggravates many of their social and economic problems. International Migration The increasing size of international migration is one of the consequences of the rapid world population growth. The resettlement of undocumented immigrants has become a controversial issue in immigrant receiving nations of Europe and North America. In order to control illegal immigration and prevent its continued increase, easures, including more careful border controls, stricter admission requirements, steeper penalties for traffickers and employers of illegal immigrants and regularization schemes have been proposed in numerous countries. The migration of labor will probably escalate as long as the population growth continues. Cost Estimates say that the amount of spending on population policies will need to increase more than threefold by the year 2000 from its current $5 billion to some $17 billion. Of that amount, some $5. 7 billion would come from the wealthy donors and the rest from the poor recipients. These payments will be extremely difficult for the developing nations who have huge debts already. The distribution of the money for family-planning is complicated and the channels vary; through nongovernmental organizations, international agencies, and agreements between governments. Questions Who should pay for family-planning? How should the money for family-planning be distributed? How can voices from poor nations be heard ? Do they have any role in making population policies ? Is it appropriate to make the access to family-planning available to adolescents ? If yes, should the family-planning agencies have special programs to pproach them? How can the consciousness level of the people in the developed nations towards the population issue be heightened ? Should developed nations have stricter restrictions to prevent the in-flow of immigrants ? Should abortion be considered as a part of family-planning ? How will the worlds aging population affect the population growth problem ? Can the earth sustain its present rate of population population issues still need to be addressed? Why rapid population growth is a problem Population growth remains rapid in many poor countries. For example, the population of West Africa is expanding at an annual rate of 2. % and is expected to more than quadruple in size by the end of the century. The projected addition of one billion people to the regions current population of 320 million is an obstacle to development and makes it difficult to be optimistic about the future of this and other regions with similar demographic and socio-economic conditions.