CPERRELLI BLOG

Young Quinn is getting ready for his first day of high school. He’s only 9 but he is very intelligent. He starts off by getting dressed in his button-down with suspenders and a bowtie. He then gels his hair and combs it very particularly. It has to be perfect for his first day. He then goes and eats raisin bran cereal.  He chews each bite the recommended 14 times just to be safe. He brushes his teeth for the recommended 2 minutes and puts on his leather shoes. He double knots them so they don’t come untied. He climbs into the car slowly, fastens his seatbelt, and is ready to go.

On his way to school, he keeps a close eye on the speedometer to make sure it doesn’t go above the speed limit. When he gets to school, he hugs his mom goodbye and walks to his first class. He chooses to go slow because he is a small child in a big school. In his first few classes, he has no problems other than the occasional weird look. He gets to lunch and sees the chaos that surrounds him. He takes himself and his lunchbox to an unoccupied corner and begins to eat his pre-cut, no crust boloney sandwich. He eats using the recommended 14 bites. He then eats his apple sauce slowly making sure not to choke. When lunch is over he waits for everyone else to leave and then follows the crowd to his next class.

Finally, at the end of the day, he walks into math class, his favorite subject. The teacher starts by calling the roll and handing out get-to-know-you assignments. One question that troubles Quinn the most is “what is your greatest fear?” The thing about little Quinny is that he is afraid of his own shadow pretty much. He decides to write something generic and puts down heights, spiders, the dark, bugs, insects, drowning, blood, needles, small spaces, snakes, flying, strangers, thunder, lightning, cats, and elevators. He feels that is a sufficient answer. He gets to the back of the page and is delighted to find some math questions. He sharpens his pencil to avoid having to press down so hard and maybe slip. He gets to work on answering the questions and answers them easily. When the bell rings he turns in his paper last and goes outside to find his mom. He climbs in slowly, fastens his seatbelt, and leaves to go home.

Should college athletes be paid? This is a question that many people have argued over and try to act on. There is a great amount of public concern and fear about what would happen if athletes were permitted to get compensation or kickbacks. Many people are opposed to it and many people are for it. Big celebrities like Lebron James and Draymond Green are for it. The president of the NCAA is against it though. The question of should college athletes be paid or not is a difficult question to answer.

California has passed a bill that allows college athletes to earn money from the use of their names, images, and likenesses. This bill had gained national attention. There are many people for it and against it. Lebron James tweeted that. “College athletes can responsibly get paid for what they do and the billions they create”(@KingJames on Twitter). People who support the bill say similar things.

Right now college athletes aren’t allowed to do anything that could make them money. This means that they can’t promote their social media, model athletic wear, promote an autobiography, and things of that nature. The NCAA has stripped athletes’ name, image, and likeness away from them. Athletes are not university property and they are their own person.

Even though there is a lot of good with passing the bill there are still some fears of what could happen. If the bill become law it would obliterate the crucial distinction between college sports and professional sports. The schools in Californa would have an unfair recruiting advantage. The schools would be able to offer monetary incentives to athletes that other schools outside the state would not be able to. Those schools would not be able to compete in NCAA competitions because of the recruiting advantages they have.

The bill being passed could hurt the athletes. NCAA rules forbid the players from getting paid in whatever way. The bill creates local differences that would make it impossible to host fair national championships. Californa schools would have to be expelled for the willful breaking of NCAA rules. So instead of trying to help them get their identity back, it is putting them in jeopardy. Californa has to be very meticulous in how they implement the bill.

There is a bill that is being given to the governor of California that would restrict the NCAA to penalize universities for compensating athletes. The bill makes it so the NCAA is impervious to affect athletes receiving compensation. The bill would begin on January 1, 2023. This gives the NCAA a feasible amount of time to make changes to their rules and gives California time to introduce future legislation if changes are needed to make sure schools are not penalized. The NCAA and the Californa government needs to make sure they are not cursory with their actions.

Many people scrape by on less than minimum wage. The minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour. Tipped workers like waitresses have a separate minimum wage. The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 per hour. There is a law in place where if servers don’t get to the minimum wage that employers are supposed to make up the difference. Restaurant owners use insidious ways to not have to pay the remainder. The law is also hardly enforced.

This tentative pay puts a lot of stress on tipped workers. What they make in a day depends on if people want to come to their restaurant or not. It also depends on if people order more or less expensive things. Another factor is if people tip 20% or if they even tip at all. Opulent people don’t have to stress about where their next paycheck is coming from.

The minimum wage for tipped workers hasn’t budged since 1991. This causes a problem because of inflation. If I bought something for $10 in 1991, that same thing would cost $18.84. Inflation happens because the demand for goods exceeds the amount of goods companies produce. To sum it all up, inflation means that the worth of money declines.

Tipped workers aren’t able to live off of their wages. Even though they make the same amount, the worth of their money is not as much. This means that they need to rely on other things to help financially. Some things that help tipped workers is health care, food stamps, and subsidized housing.

In a Time magazine feature about the unfortunate situations of tipped workers, the authors use Christina Munce’s story to spread awareness. She is a bereft tipped worker who is also a single mother. She is on food stamps and Medicaid. She also lives in a subsidized two-bedroom apartment.

Munce’s story is a story about sympathy. The authors present her as barely scraping by on what she makes in order to interest the audience. She usually ends up making below the federal minimum wage. She does all she can to provide for her daughter.

The authors are trying to raise awareness for tipped workers. They also present solutions for the problem. One major solution that makes sense is to raise the minimum wage to correspond with inflation. If the minimum wage had risen with inflation then they would be making $6 an hour. If the government did this there would be trade-offs. The government would repeal the law that states restaurant owners must make up the difference if tipped workers don’t make it to the federal minimum wage. If the government deploys this solution it could help tipped workers not have any tentative pay anymore. Another solution everyone can participate in is to always tip. The only reason you shouldn’t tip is if the server is terrible. Instead of not tipping, you can tip a smaller amount.

America is graying. This means that more people are getting older. The Week Staff introduced many different pieces of evidence to support this. The “77 million-strong are moving into old age,” The Week Staff reports. The rate of them turning 65 is about 9,000 a day. All of them will turn 65 by 2030.

So 2030 is a very significant year. It is when the dependency ratio will surpass 70 percent. This has many impacts. With the dependency ratio being this high, the 2.9 trillion reserve for Social Security and Medicare will be drained by 2035. Social Security is a government program that gives financial assistance to the retired, unemployed, and disabled. Medicare is another government program that financially helps retired and disabled people with hospital costs. If the reserves for the two programs are drained, then the programs would have to close down. The only way to turn the tide of this drainage would be to increase taxes or cuts benefits.

Increasing taxes or cutting benefits has a lot of side effects also. One big effect would happen to businesses. If businesses had to pay more on taxes then employees’ wages would be lowered and the price of products would rise. People will lose their jobs if businesses go bankrupt after not being able to operate once the government takes higher taxes. With higher taxes businesses will have to discontinue products so they can try to stay in business. Businesses will also have to fire people to keep up with higher taxes.

People will also feel significant effects with the higher taxes. When taxes increase people will not be able to live off of their income. This leads to a higher poverty rate. With a high poverty rate more people will turn to crime to feed their families. The higher taxes will also cause people to lose their home. Mortgages and rental contracts will cost more and people will lose their house and get evicted. Many people will become homeless if they don’t have a backup plan.

Now, I know none of this might mean anything to you. I felt the same way. Sooner or later though we will be adults and have to face the graying of America. The government will have to take action. Those action will have a negative impact on our everyday lives. Cities will have to make adjustments to accommodate the surge of elderly. We will either be taxed more or our benefits will be cut. This will effect us in many ways. They graying of America will be an era that has yet to be seen.

The bystander effect is social physiological claim that people are less likely to help if there is a group present. There are many examples of this. In the article “Why Do People Film Others in Distress Instead of Helping Them? It’s not as simple as ‘people are the worst'”, Angela Lashbrook uses evidence and reasoning to inform the readers about the bystander effect. There is a video of an older man gettin pushed to the ground by a surge of water on a New York City subway platform. In the video water keeps coming and he is struggling against a gush of filthy water. A person is recording and watches while the old man gets pushed down by the water. At the end of the video it appears that a person is walking past the person who is recording and is going to help the old man.

The bystander effect can apply to a lot of different scenarios. There is a myth about how a woman, Genovese, got st abbed in front of a crowd of 38 witnesses. In actuality there was around 12 people who heard suspicious noises. Two people called the police and one elderly woman held Genovese while she was dying. There are many different factors in scenarios like this. People are more likely to intervene when the situation is clearly an emergency. People are also less likely to intervene when there is a crowd. Everything changes though when a camera is involved.

Filming an incident can let people come to grips with whatever is happening. It also gives people of a sense that they are helping. Instead of just standing there they record the events that are happening and can give that video to officials to help out. Also when cameras are involved people feel like they should help out because the people feel accountable. People are more likely to intervene when a camera is around. Another thing is that when people are talking on the phone or things like that they are less likely to help people. Being on the phone fulfills people’s need to belong and it already has their attention. Also if someone feels that they aren’t physically capable to help then they are less likely to intervene.

The bystander effect has many different effects. People are less likely to intervene if there is a crowd. If there is a camera present then people are more likely to intervene. If people are talking with someone on their phone then they are less likely to help because their phone call gives them a sense of belonging. If someone doesn’t feel physically capable to help then they are less likely to intervene. The bystander effect is a fickle thing. There are many different ways people will react to people who need help.