Indebted Eight-Year Olds

Indebted Eight-Year Olds

Peyton Stanley
Personal Finance

It used to be that one of the main initiations into adulthood was opening up a checking account in your late teens or early twenties. All those years of begging your parents for their spare change so you could buy a soft pretzel at the mall with your friends or pestering them to make the payment for your annual summer camp were now gone. Like cell phones and other maturing privileges, the timeline to receiving a debit card has been sped up as well. Now, companies across the country are extending their services to children of all ages. With this early start to banking, parents and bankers are also faced with unforeseen risks as children begin to swipe their cards.

The World at Our Fingertips

The World at Our Fingertips

Jasmine Rawson
Technology

The average human attention span is 8 seconds. The amount seems minuscule, especially considering that the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. However, this was not always the case; in 2000, the average human attention span was 12 seconds (Stefanski 2020). It seems that people are unable to concentrate without multitasking or being distracted. It may be easy to simply accept this fact as inevitable human nature, but it’s worth considering how this decline in attention span came to be. It’s no coincidence that this substantial change in average human attention span occurred from 2000 to 2013, exactly matching the exponential rise in technological growth. Over the past few decades, devices have provided over 4.93 billion people with the ability to access countless websites and apps (Broadband Search). Even more recently, social media has risen to prevalence as the most popular apps for teens and adults alike. Despite the overabundance of information available on the internet, people seem to have become lazier and unable to focus for more than a few seconds. However, laziness has driven the growth of innovations such as artificial intelligence that have automated simple tasks and revolutionized the world.

Fixed Foreign Exchange Rate Regime

Fixed Foreign Exchange Rate Regime

Vincent Z. Yu
Finance

There are two major types of foreign exchange regimes: fixed exchange rate policy and floating. As its literal meaning on appearance, a fixed exchange rate is a regime in which a country’s currency exchange rate is tied to the currency of another country or the price of gold. A floating exchange rate policy, instead, gives the currency a much wider range to float without predominant regulatory control. The price of a particular currency in this scenario is almost purely driven by the relative supply and demand of the currency in the foreign exchange market. We will define the exchange rate in our discussion as the rate at which a domestic currency can be converted to one unit of U.S. Dollar, the value of which is assumed unchanged, we will now proceed with our discussion of the fixed-rate system.

The Lottery Curse

The Lottery Curse

Jasmine Rawson
Personal Finance, Microeconomics

In March 1995, a used car trader named Lee Ryan won the lottery for £6,527,880. At the time, he lived in public housing built by local authorities in Braunston, England with his girlfriend and their three children. After getting married that summer, he spent £1 million on a country mansion and a variety of cars including a Bentley, Ferrari, Porsche, and BMW. He also bought two Ducati superbikes, a £125,000 plane, and a £235,000 Bell JetRanger helicopter. His entire life had been turned around. He had “prayed to God to make him a millionaire” while he had been serving a prison sentence for stealing cars, and it seemed that his desires had come to fruition. However, his life of joyful lavishness later faded as he and his wife split in 2003, and he lost about £2 million in failed business ventures and property investments. After countless losses, he eventually chose to reside in a rented flat in South London with homeless lodgers. In regards to the lottery, he claimed “the money was cursed” (Charlton 2014).

The Need for Teaching Financial Literacy

The Need for Teaching Financial Literacy

Bobby Markus
Finance

The educational system has failed millions of people for years by not implementing a personal finance class that will adequately improve the financial literacy of our future. Teaching kids from a young age, even as early as elementary school, what money is, its value, how to save, invest, and spend will provide future generations with a better future. As we age, our financial decisions become increasingly frequent and complex, so it is important to stress the necessity of developing one’s financial literacy skills before they enter the real world.

El Salvador: Land of Volcanoes, and… Crypto?

El Salvador: Land of Volcanoes, and… Crypto?

Mauricio Ramirez
Business Current Events

For many, the roots of economic disadvantage among countries are related to not being able to have a currency that is strong in the international markets. In modern times the American dollar is the prime currency used around the world for international trade and even as a store of value for people who distrust their local currencies. Latin America has been at the mercy of the dollar many times throughout modern history. The 80s are known in Latin America as the “Lost decade” or “La decada perdida”. Many Latin American countries suffered a severe crisis due to the first OPEC-Related rise in oil prices in 1973. A second increase in the price of oil in 1979 and the U.S Fed driving up interest rates caused many Latin American countries to end up with large current account deficits and accumulated foreign debt (Frenkel, R., & Rapetti, M). El Salvador seems to be trying to break the circle of dollar dependency by switching to Bitcoin. But it could be just a reaction due to the U.S pulling resources from El Salvador due to the fear from U.S lawmakers of President Bukele going towards an authoritarian path.

Where Do We Fit In: Robots and Humans

Where Do We Fit In: Robots and Humans

Ciera McFarland
Technology

Robots have been inspiring both negative and positive impressions ever since they were first conceptualized. On one hand, you have a fear of the unknown. People may see a humanoid device with powerful abilities and give in to the fear perpetuated by decades of movies and language that love to show robots as villains. Classic examples of this include I, Robot and The Terminator, both famous movies that perpetuate the idea of dangerous robots. In a more practical sense, there may be concerns about people losing their jobs to robots. An example of this would be self-driving cars uprooting the traditional trucking industry. Despite these ideas that can circulate in efforts to impede change, many people are excited to have robots in their lives. A 2008 study (C. Ray, et al) showed that many people in their survey group were happy about the prospect of domestic robots. Participants were especially excited about robots capable of verbal communication. Over ten years later, with devices like the Amazon Alexa in our homes, it’s easy to see how these early desires led to the creation of what is now a common interactive piece of technology.

The Roots of Math Anxiety

The Roots of Math Anxiety

Darcy Harris
Mathematics

It is a common feeling found in people of all ages. Math anxiety. People feel nervous and worried regarding math. They consider the subject to be a nightmare and will go out of their way to avoid it. Not enjoying math is so normal, that those who do are considered strange. Of all U.S.-American adults, 93% claim to have some form of math anxiety, and it is estimated that about 17% of the U.S.-American population have high levels of math anxiety (Luttenberg 2018). It becomes a strange occurrence when people are very casual about their math performance. Performance in other subjects is regarded as being serious, but a negative math performance is something that can be shrugged off, since it appears as if everyone is bad at math.

Load More