Politics Matter

I love debating politics. I will willingly get into political discussions with my friends and enjoy the back and forth. But for every person that has willingly engaged in political debates with me, there have been at least two with whom this subject is off limits. The justification ranges from “You can’t change my opinion, so there’s no point,” to “Politics is just two sides arguing, and nothing ever gets done, so there’s no point.” Hopefully, after 23 posts, you can now see the flaws in these two arguments. If not, here is one last attempt to show you that politics does matter.

It generally starts with an idea, such as universal health care. Maybe this idea has been around for a while, maybe it has been successful elsewhere, maybe it’s something nobody has ever tried before. And as the idea spreads, and as people start discussing it, more potential flaws and benefits are explored. By the time it reaches the politicians, there are enough people talking about the idea that the media start to cover it. And that’s where the idea becomes deformed. Because an idea like universal health care cannot be fully explained in a headline or a 500 word article. Because bills such as the PPACA are over 1,000 pages long.  Because the amount of variables which go into something this big make it difficult for even the experts to understand.

So the media crunches it down to two sides and two corresponding arguments. Democrat and Republican. For and against. Expanded or contracted government. And this is where people who think they understand politics tend to end the debate. It becomes either a matter of “I don’t think the government should be this big period,” or “Well, the Democrats and Republicans have completely the opposite views on this issue so nothing will happen anyways.”

But what these arguments always ignore is that when it comes to politics, debate is most often followed by action. That is the purpose of the government: to govern. To adopt policies for the benefit of the people and turn them into something tangible. This is why politics matters; the debate which occurs day to day in Washington ultimately affects us. By my 27th birthday, I will have to buy health insurance or pay a fee to the government.

With such important consequences, it is imperative that people join in on the debate. Behind every single issue, there are a million factors. Which is why there can never be only two sides to a political debate, and which is why developing a policy that benefits the most people must happen. And the only way we can expect our politicians to make good decisions is if we deliberate amongst ourselves. We need to research the policies because they will affect us and many generations after us, we need to talk among ourselves to explore different viewpoints and perspectives, and we need to communicate with our representatives so they will understand what We, the People truly want.

An idea has the ability to snowball into something that affects 350 million people. And this nation has allowed our politics to be open enough that every person influence how that snowball effect occurs. Don’t stand idly behind the sidelines.

MC

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Korean Conundrum

When Kim Il Sung brought his country victoriously out of a civil war nearly 60 years ago, the world watched in horror as the Machiavellian dictator took the reigns of a broken nation. Brainwashing the population of the newly established Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, he assumed complete control of the nation, its government, and its people.

Since then, nation after nation has closed off its ports to the DPRK, enforcing the tightest sanctions ever seen. And since then, the world has waited for an impossible regime to collapse, for the people to rise up against the oppressive government, for society to understand that this sort of regime is doomed to fail. But when Kim Il Sung died, there was no glorious uprising, and the people of the DPRK welcomed their new leader with open arms. Now, Il Sung’s grandson is in power, and it doesn’t seem like any such uprising will happen. Though they have been starved, oppressed, and even tortured, the people of the DPRK continue to stand behind their new leader.

What will happen with North Korea is mostly speculation. But one thing is perfectly clear: Its survival is dependent on China. The DPRK’s powerful neighbor has been supporting the rebel country since the days of Il Sung, countering the rest of the world’s sanctions to the point where they are irrelevant (“China and North Korea: On the Naughty Step” – The Economist). And the world has been urging China to reign in the unstable country, but no drastic action has been taken by the Chinese government. Unless China enacts sanctions of their own – which seems an unlikely event – the North Korean regime will continue to stay strong. Furthermore, with fewer people left to remember a time before the war, rebellions will become more and more unlikely as generation after generation is born and educated with the same brainwashing techniques. Though most of the western world is shocked and appalled by DPRK public opinion of the United States, these opinions are actually legitimate for the North Korean people.

Since Kim Jong Un took the reigns in 2011, North Korea has been in the news for their recent nuclear activity. And according to The Economist, “Even by its own aggressive standards, North Korea’s actions over the past couple of weeks have been extraordinary” (“Korean Roulette”). Pyongyang has declared a state of war with South Korea, launched several test missiles, and continually threatens to bomb the United States. And while American public response has been largely comical – including a meme and gif campaign on r/funny – many South Koreans are living in a state of fear. I think it is unlikely that North Korea will put any action behind their words; however, if they do, there is no question that U.S. retaliation will be swift and brutal. Our alliance with South Korea compels us to protect the country, and North Korea has been a rogue nation for far too long.

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The Student Loan Paradox

“The federal lending program designed to make college education available to everyone is creating a pile of debt so large it is fanning worries that it has become too easy to borrow too much.”

While doing research for a persuasive essay on lowering the costs of college tuition, I came across the article “Federal Student Lending Swells” from the Wall Street Journal. Its first sentence, quoted above, naturally drew my attention…and my skepticism.

According to the article, the availability of federal student loans to nearly anybody attending a university is causing many people to take on more loans than they are eventually willing to pay, and putting them at risk for aggregate debts they will not be able to pay. The article made it sound like low income households, the ones who need federal loans the most, are most prone to defaulting on their loans. In the article, Jackson Toby, a retired Rutgers University sociologist and adjunct scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, “proposes that students undergo a comprehensive assessment of credit-worthiness, including how much debt they currently have, their academic history and their expected income upon graduation, given their major, before getting federal student loans.” This attitude, while economically sound, worries me, since it goes against the entire purpose of federal student loans: making college more affordable.

Modern “Higher Education” is more loans for the same degree.

What I was most curious about was the effect federal student loans have on tuition. The way I see it, the higher tuition costs become, the more people have to borrow in order to pay for college. And unfortunately, federal student loans are hiking up the cost of tuition. As more federal aid becomes available to lower and middle class students, colleges and universities raise their tuition prices to account for this aid (“In Our Opinion: Student Loans Fuel Rising Tuition Costs”). The same thing goes for federal grants as well, though economists at the Federal Reserve Bank also state there is “strong suggestive evidence” that decreases in state and local funding of public universities are linked to tuition increases, particularly since the recession (“Why College Tuition Keeps Rising”).

We are left with a paradox. The federal government is trying to make college more affordable, but colleges and universities are merely raising their tuition costs in response. The result is more student debt. Naturally, this opinion has drawn some criticism (“Why Student Aid Is NOT Driving Up College Costs”), but thinking about my own college experience, this makes sense. When I received my estimated tuition bills from the colleges I was accepted to last spring, the outlines assumed I would be accepting the loans, estimated which amount I would be able to loan from the government, and calculated my parents’ contribution from what was left. This sort of backwards logic is costing me and my family thousands, but there is nothing we can do about it.

So how can we break the paradox? Though I am usually against this sort of measure, I think the government might want to think about posing restrictions on the universities, perhaps adding a tuition increase cap. This is not at all a bulletproof plan, but something must be done, and if these articles are correct, federal student aid is not the answer.

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