When Dr. Fonash was talking about the issue brief, the issue that immediately popped into my head was nuclear power. As you can tell, I am pretty passionate about nuclear power. However, I think nuclear power policy would be pretty hard to talk about in the issue brief. The policy in place is not necessarily restricting nuclear power, it is primarily the public opinion on nuclear power that is holding it back. Therefore, I need another issue to focus on. Nothing stook out to me while I was thinking but I got a couple ideas floating around.
The idea that I think I like the most right now is talking about minimum wage. This mainly comes from the fact that I saw a TikTok last night about minimum wage and rent. Right now, if you work for federal minimum wage, (which happens to be the same and PA’s minimum wage) you don’t even make enough money in a month to pay rent, let alone any other expenses. That is in comparison to 1980, in which a minimum wage worker would use about half of their monthly income on rent, which is much more reasonable than not being able to pay rent. I worked minimum wage for a summer and it was terrible so I can relate to this topic. I would probably write to PA policy makers, maybe the governor.
Another idea that I have is about public transportation. I think public transportation needs to be more prevalent everywhere but mainly in big cities. This would cut back on car-centric infrastructure, reduce carbon emissions, and allow people to get to wherever they need without buying a car. I think as it stands right now, public transportation needs to be improved in one way or another. There are multiple routes I could take with improving policy. I think I would write to mayors of big cities, specifically Pittsburgh because that’s where I grew up.
One last idea I had is about changing county lines. In the past, county lines were basically manipulated to be political sections. So some county lines separate two areas with different political ideals, letting one party dominate those counties. It shouldn’t be like this but it would not be very feasible to change county lines. If I choose to go further with this idea, I’m going to need to do some research into options.
That’s all for this week. Next week, I will list some pros and cons of nuclear power and let you make your own decision on nuclear power’s viability for alternative and clean energy.
I really like the idea of adding more public transportation in cities. Large cities like New York and Chicago are notorious for their congestion during rush hours; the huge number of cars in these cities contributes to the congestion. I’m always in favor of using public transportation when needed. This idea could also be expanded into making cities more walkable in general. You have some great ideas!
I love the idea of minimum wage. It could be narrowed down to just Pennsylvania which would help focus your research. This would be an easy-to-debate topic since there is a lot of debate over it right now. All of these topics are great!