Instructions: For the following response, respond thoughtfully. Just saying “I agree” or “I disagree” does not constitute a thoughtful response. They need to be substantive to promote further discussion, new ideas, or questions and are at least 75-100 words and meaningful sentences that are also professionally written. State your opinion. Do you agree with them? If so why or why not?

RESPONSE 1

“We should make a distinction here between money and credit. Money is what we use to pay for goods and services. Credit is available savings that are lent to borrowers to spend. If you use your Visa or MasterCard to buy a shirt, you are not buying the shirt with your money. You are taking out a loan from the bank that issued the credit card in order to buy the shirt. Credit and money are different. Money is an asset, something you own. Credit is debt, something you owe.“ (Ch. 12, pg. 255)

As the number of unemployment rises, debt also increases. A number of people do not generate income due to layoffs and most people in America owns a credit card. In tough times like this, people turn to their credit cards to keep themselves afloat in this trying time. It is very understandable yet very dangerous as well. In the statement above, credit cards are debts and will never be and asset. You can go deeper in debt if you are not careful with it. The interest rate of most credit cards are substantially high. Money is an asset and needs to be utilized wisely by saving, creating a plan on how to spend your money or a budget and being frugal most of the time.

RESPONSE 2

“Unemployed workers who are looking for a job choose a reservation wage, the minimum wage that they are willing to accept. They continue to look for work until they receive an offer that equals or exceeds their reservation wage.” (Ch. 14, pg. 314)

This is one of the struggles that unemployed workers go through. It is hard enough to look for a job already let alone a job that pays no less than what they are willing to settle. This impacts the unemployment rate as a huge number of unemployed workers do not want to settle for less and continue to be unemployed for a period of time. As we have seen over the last couple of months or years, a lot of people think that the minimum wage is far less than the inflation rate and the cost of living. We’ve seen today that with the assistance of EDD, a huge number of unemployed workers are getting money more than when they were still employed. With that said, it is important for the government to create a plan that improves the minimum wage to encourage unemployed workers to seek employment.