At what cost?

“Earth Day should encourage us to reflect on what we are doing to make our planet a more sustainable and livable place.” -Scott Peters

Although Earth Day was yesterday, I find it necessary to acknowledge the importance of our planet on every day of the year. As it is commonly debated how old our home is, I find it crucial to determine how much longer it can live.

Over the years, our constant innovation and upgrading has made the world a much more convenient place for human beings. However, what is the cost of all of this convenience? With each new factory, our carbon footprint grows larger, shortening the lifespan of the earth. Can decreasing the lifespan of our home be justified by the inventions that were made? I do not think so, yet I allow these inventors to plead ignorance, depending on when these inventions arose.

It was recently brought to my attention that since the Notre Dame had burned down, various wealthy people have given over one billion dollars to help rebuild the historic structure. Although this is a fine deed of them to do, that amount of money is more than enough to clean the oceans of the garbage that we have put in there. Although I do not have any sources to back that claim, the latter would have been a much more valuable investment. To this, I wonder at what cost would prolonging the life of our planet seem reasonable?

Although we have millions of people working to reverse the effects of global warming, those who possess more resources have the most say in whether we prolong the life of the Earth or cut it shorter and shorter. To this, I wonder what the wealth in the world wish for. They obviously possess absurd amounts of money, yet they grow hungrier for more. I may be wrong, but I believe that the much more worthwhile investment would be to leave a legacy, such as saving the Earth.

If the rich do not assist in extending our planet’s life, than the more important thing to focus on would be for the common people to address what their actions do to the environment. If each person reduced their carbon footprint as much as possible and had more plants inside or outside their home, we could easily begin to slow down the process, allowing for more time to find a solution. Anyways, I’ll cut this one short because I am beginning to rant, but if you have thoughts, please share them.

Those are my Thoughts for Food.

Race?

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” -Martin Luther King Jr.

Throughout our entire lives, we have been taught about the history of our nation, including the parts about racism, segregation and prejudice. We learned about race and the differences between different races. We also learned that we should take pride in the race that we belong to, encouraging positive stereotypes and avoiding negative ones. However, instead of embracing our ‘race,’ why don’t we embrace our ethnicity or our nationality?

After completing a semester in an introductory sociology course, I would not consider myself an expert on the topic, but I learned much information concerning inequality and differences between peoples. One major section of the class was that race is a social construct. In other words, it is a concept that society created to organize people into categories. This is similar to religion or marriage. It is a way of differentiating between peoples, but this way of identifying people became much different after slavery occurred, making certain races stereotyped as superior and others as inferior.

I strongly believe that it is important to know your history, regardless of how bad it was. However, instead of teaching children to embrace their race, which is completely determined by the color of their skin, why can’t we embrace our ethnicity? By knowing which specific country we come from, we can embrace those cultures and not think of ourselves as superior or inferior to other people. Instead, we can understand that different people have different traditions and come from different cultures. However, if one does not know where their family came from or they are such a mix of things that it is hard to determine, embracing America would not necessarily be a bad thing either. I think that by embracing your roots or embracing the country you live in, we could limit the amount of racism in the country, but something has to change.

The color of our skin should not determine what traditions we follow or define our personality. Everyone is different and has different traditions. The concept of race and the history that accompanies it has only led to discrimination from all ends and hurtful interactions between all groups. By not encouraging the concept of race, we can turn race from a reality to a page in a history textbook.

Those are my Thoughts for Food.

Why is there so much interest in loans?

It is obvious that money is what contributes to most things in the world. We need to live and grow and protect ourselves. Some of us even have enough money to treat themselves here and there, but what is up with the interest on loans?

I understand that money is a necessity in this day and age, but over the years, interest rates in the bank have gone way down and interest rates on loans have gone way up. This just doesn’t make any sense and I am just trying to make cents, you know? Student loans have become a regular thing that people take out when they go to college or graduate school. If people want more interest on their savings, they have to invest it in a mutual fund or in the stock market, neither of which are risk-free. I believe that with how much money the bank is making off our money, we should be getting at least 1% of our money in interest right? I have been needing to take out loans lately and I am seeing interest rates of 5-20%. Imagine taking out a loan that you must start paying back immediately, but you are a student who makes less than 5,000 every year. That seems ridiculous. I think that if a college student is working while studying full time, they should be making more than they do already.

With the gap between lower class and upper class widening, it is important to try and take every advantage that you can in this world to make it to the big league. A wise man once told me that you should not take out more loans than you expect to make in your first year in the workforce. Sounds reasonable. Another large component to all this debt that America has is credit cards. Honestly, I understand a need for a credit card sometimes, but the interest on those things are insane. I think that in the school system, it should be mandatory to teach children good behavior when it comes to money. For example, how to pay bills, how to pay taxes, how to calculate what you can afford to put towards loans, how to live more like a minimalist after school. These skills would help us pay our loans back much faster than we do now.

Those are my Thoughts for Food.

Potential Solution to Tuition?

After attending private school for my entire life, I have seen that tuition plays a large role in determining someone’s financial situation. With tuitions rising every year, this widens the gap between the upper class and the lower class, forcing the working class to work harder than they already do in hopes of earning a degree.

With college degrees being advertised as a cure for financial instability, there is a twist that is not observed. As one struggles to pay for tuition, hoping that one day they will get paid a lot more, they end up falling deeper into debt because of how much this degree costs. The cost of a college degree does not match the value it has in the long-run. If one can earn a degree without taking on more debt than they expect to make in their first year of work, then I would suggest that they still go for a degree. For the rest of us who expect to pay for most of tuition using loans, I would evaluate other options. However, I think there could be a solution to this problem.

If most college tuitions were lowered using tax dollars, we would be able to send more people to college and America would be able to develop further in more areas than they currently do. Although many don’t want their tax dollars to go to these areas, it would benefit our country as a whole. Another possible solution would be if large corporations helped their employees pay for college. These huge corporations and name-brand companies have so much money that, if they dedicated even 2% of their cashflow to providing scholarships for employees, then more people would begin working for the companies and we would have more people able to go to college. This is a win-win situation. Helping lower-class students go to college would improve our country and bring the social classes closer together.

Those are my Thoughts for Food.