Gun laws need to be made more strict than they currently are today. According to this poll, as of this year the majority of congress agrees (54%).


Another poll was taken asking if there should be a law to check the background information on gun buyers. All parties, including gun-owners themselves, agree that this should be done. Evidently the limitations that are currently in place are not strict enough because even the majority of citizens who own guns want a law to prohibit bad people (felons) from getting guns. This being said, Senator X and M should see their bills passed relatively easily. Senator N and B will have a hard time debating against the Senators X and M when the polls show that most of congress does not agree with them.

     I would recommend the field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. While being a great learning experience, it was also very interesting to see all of the trading floors and the history behind currency. Looking at the chaos of the trading floor drives you to want to understand what is going on, and is a great motivator for learning more about economics. I learned a lot about how Chicago affects the world because of our trading, and learned more about the importance behind the city. It was an excellent trip.

     How do banks make money by holding onto other peoples' money? Banks make money because of a system revolving around their Reserve Requirement. The Reserve Requirement is a law that states: A bank without a minimum of X amount of money cannot open for business. Now "X" is a percentage set by an organization called The Board Of Governors. So if I deposit 100 dollars into a bank that has a reserve requirement of 10 percent, the bank cannot open the next day unless they have at least 10 dollars (assuming I am the only one who made a deposit in said bank). The 90 dollars that are left is what is called the Excess Reserves. This Excess Reserve total is then multiplied by one over the reserve requirement, and the final total is the greatest amount of money the bank can make off of keeping my money for me.

     Check Clearing! The United States bank system consists of 12 different federal reserve banks. These banks create all the money that then gets distributed to their individual region. When you want to send money from one of the 12 regions to the next, your money (in the form of a check) needs to go through a process called check clearing. This simply means that the money from one Federal Reserve bank needs to be exchanged with the money in another Federal Reserve bank. After this is finished, the check is cleared.

     Where is all of our tax money going to? One large program that our taxes fund is Obamacare. But what's in it for us tax payers? Obamacare is a program that is made to provide everyone with health insurance, but it is not voluntary. You must pay for it, regardless of if you think you will need it or not. The results are debates over whether it is constitutional or not, businesses having a hard time, lots of money spent on a program that the majority of people don't need. To provide medical care for every citizen of an entire nation requires lots of resources, doctors, and buildings/infrastructure. Hoe long can an program like this last? Will the toll of this program accumulate to put our nation deeper into debt? Only time can tell.

     Where does all our tax money go? How does the government manage our budget? To break it down simply, they use it for mandatory and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending is spending on programs required by law, such as the Military. Discretionary spending is spending on purchases not required by law, like sending additional money to schools so they can better teach a subject such as computer science.

     Have you ever bought something that had a negative effect that you didn't expect? You could call that a negative externality, I like to focus on how the beginning of the word sounds like extra. If you buy a TV and you watch it all the time, a negative externality could be the damage to your eyes or that you become obese because of it. Everything has a externality, just think about whether the positive externality is worth tolerating the negative, you give some and you loss some.