...The Environment and Big Business Since the rise of environmental awareness, business and industry have always considered environmentalism a waste of time, only getting in the way of profits and production. From the perspective of business, environmentalists push for regulations and restrictions on businesses which cost them more money and frequently restrict some of their practices. What business an the economy doesn't know is that they can actually save money by being environmentally responsible, while protecting the very resources they depend on . The protection of the environment not only has intrinsic value, but also economical value. Business and industry, can also benefit. These factors can lead to a newly developed economy that protects what it needs instead of destroying it. Despite historical differences between advocates of business and the environment, the fact is the two can and must utilize eachother for the future success of both. It is important, in order for the economy to see the environment worth something, to put an economic value on it. For this reason, a group of scientists for the Center for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment have developed an economic valuation for the environment. According to them, it is necessary to impute a value to environmental goods or services (Pearce et al, online). This value is necessary because the economy needs to see that the protection of the environment can prove cost worthy to business...
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...about thirteen pounds of food per week, Canada is struggling with same problem. The United States is not spared either. Food and Agriculture Organization, abbreviation as FAO says that about a third of the world produce is wasted. By 2007, FAO projected that the increase ought to have gone high by sixty percent so that the emerging wealthier generation could be fed totally. While people could focus on increasing production, it is worth noting that reducing the amount of food waste in most cases would see to the situation being placed under comtrol, albeit for a bit (Barclay, 2014). Globally, around 1.3 billion ton of food goes to waste. Food is wasted from initial agricultural production, all the way to the final household consumption. The medium and high income countries are the leaders in the food wasting melee. Food is thrown away despite being still suitable for human consumption. Low income countries have food wasted in the early period of production and less in the household. Low income countries waste less food on the consumption phase, which makes the developed and middle income countries the major focus (Braclay, 2014). Food Wastage in Southeast Asia The Southeast of Asia is estimated to be wasting about 33% of their food on a yearly basis. Along the food...
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...billion price tag on wasteful spending Our country aims at continuing to increase the quality of patient care but medical services are being overused at an alarming rate causing great concern. The health spending of this country’s gross domestic product or GDP is 17.6% which is more than any other country (Feldstein). A report from CMS in 2010 states that the total health spending in the U.S. was roughly $2.6 trillion which is twice as much per capita of the average for any other nation yet delivers a lesser amount of care. These figures translate to $8,402 per person. (CMS) The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts that this figure will reach $4.6 trillion by 2020 which translates to almost 20% of our GDP. Table 1. Health care spending as % of GDP in 2010 Source: OECD; The Economist, 2009 Out of the trillions of dollars spent in healthcare, the 2009 PricewaterhoseCooper’s report The price of excess: Identifying waste in healthcare spending estimates that $1.2 trillion is wasted. This is equivalent to more than half of what is allocated towards health spending in the U.S. and the figures are broken down in various categories. The report attributed health wastefulness in the following areas: 1. $765 billion towards issues related to healthcare reform debate (6 major areas identified below) 2. $493 billion related to risky behavior...
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...Regarded as the biggest change in the US Social Security System during the past 45 years, Obamacare has received both praises and criticises since it came into effect. Obamacare expands the coverage of healthcare in the US and its affordability, quality, and availability, which enables many low-income families to afford healthcare. At the same time, however, it has also created many new taxes, and its low effectiveness has caused huge waste of resources. Obamacare also requires everyone to buy health insurance, especially the youth, which is equivalent that the young generations pay for the old. What’s more, it makes different groups share the cost on health care, and this raises the cost of many big companies. Although Obamacare makes a great difference, it doesn’t solve the basic problem rooting in the US...
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...it was also noted that America spends 72 billion dollars on it every year. With a current debt of 19 Trillion (1:54, February 3rd, 2016), the US just cannot afford any of these programs. Welfare hurts the US and it’s citizens, because the programs hurt the economy, welfare recipients stay on welfare , and there hasn’t been a measurable change in the poverty level. Welfare hurts the economy, the numbers don’t lie.. Debt in the US is at an all time high and there’s no room for more spending. For example, Ed Feulner’s “The Spiraling State of Welfare Spending says, “Under the president’s spending plans, by 2022 we’ll be spending $2.33 on welfare for every $1 we spend on defense. Overall, President Obama plans to spend 12.7 trillion on means-tested welfare over the next decade” (Feulner). If one does the math it comes out to $1,361,673,412,700, or around 1/18 of the US national debt for this year alone. Another example described by Feulner is “According to...
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...America’s enormous government's debt is still growing, large earthquakes and volcanic eruptions aren’t even common, and no matter how much research the U.S. does, the force of earthquakes and volcanoes will never be able to be stopped. The U.S. government started to go into debt in 1837 after being debt free for only a year. That debt has increased to a striking 20+ trillion dollars over the course of 181 years according...
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...Virginia Mason Medical Center Mason Medical Center Did you know that "healthcare is close to a $3 trillion dollar industry and it is estimated that somewhere between 30 to 50 percent represents waste." (Erisman, 2011) This essay is a reflection of the Virginia Mason Medical Center article written by Richard Bohmer. Gary Kaplan Dr. Gary Kaplan assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of Virginia Mason Medical Center (VMMC) in 2000. The center, that consisted of 336 inpatient beds, 5000 employees and 9 locations, was hemorrhaging millions of dollars in 1998-2000. Dr. Kaplan realized that the center needed to "change or die" (Bohmer, 2010) and a new strategic plan needed to be drafted that focused on the customer (patients) and emphasize quality and safety. I believe that Dr. Kaplan was trying to achieve a paradigm shift in the way healthcare was managed and led. His vision of a re-focus on the patient, implement tools and strategies to eliminate waste, improve quality and safety. Toyota Production System The essence of this system was exactly what Gary Kaplan and the VMMC strategic plan was trying to achieve. The Toyota Production System, a system that was proven to reduce cost by eliminating waste of time, material, space, excess movement and inventory. The tools of this system had applicability into the healthcare setting; "jidoka" (Bohmer, 2010) which refers to abnormalities in processes that can equate to quality control and risk management. The tools of...
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...initial assumption is that wholesale cultural transformation is possible. I believe this is possible after having lived through the cultural transformation of women in Bangladesh. Culture, after all, is for making it easy for people to unleash their potential, not for standing there as a wall to stop them from moving forward. Culture that does not let people grow is a dead culture. Dead culture should be in the museum, not in human society. From the preface by Christopher Flavin, President of the Worldwatch Institute: ...The past five years have witnessed an unprecedented mobilization of efforts to combat the world’s accelerating ecological crisis. Since 2005, thousands of new government policies have been enacted, hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in green businesses and infrastructure, scientists...
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...plan and initiate programs that accomplish one of the purposes of the TANF program. The four purposes of the TANF program are to: * Provide assistance to needy families so that children can be cared for in their own homes. * Reduce the dependency of needy parents by promoting job preparation, work and marriage. * Prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies. * Encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families (Office of Family Assistance, 1999). On the surface, these four purposes seem very competent in promoting the idea that being on welfare permanently is not the idea of the assistance program. However, federal involvement in welfare has only made things worse, complicating matters by the waste of taxpayers' money while doing very little to solve the problem of long-term poverty. The policy pathway being proposed in this memorandum is that the federal government should remove their role in TANF and all related welfare programs and leave these programs to state governments or even better the private sector. Another policy suggestion would be to get states more involved through programs such as Beyond Welfare, which is a totally new approach to downsizing on the need for federal assistance programs through social networks. Using this policy pathway we are going to delve deeper into why these ideas and new policies are important, compare and contrast...
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...kill animals just to have the next medicine,soap, and food ingredient. My first piece of evidence: Right now there are millions of animals such as dogs, cats, rats, mice, and primates getting tortured just to get the next product of eyeliner. In a recent article by PETA they said that “More than 100 million animals every year suffer and die in cruel chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics tests”(PETA), just to see if the products work. There are some countries such as Europe are getting away from buying products that were animal tested. China is different, they are continuing to sell animal cosmetics. What are cosmetics? A product applied to the body, especially the face, to improve its appearance. In 2014 “China spent 26.3 billion dollars, just on cosmetics”(Jeanne Kim). This proves that people should not kill animals just to get the next resource. The second piece of evidence: Animals are suffering mentally and physically in the facilities where they are getting treated. In the “United States there are over 1,100 facilities” where dogs, cats, rats, mice, and primates are suffering from all of the chemicals that are getting put in there body(NHES). At the facilities they to procedures like putting a tube in a animals eye, or forcing animals to take deadly...
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...The United States’ economy has gone through many changes since the Coinage Act in 1792. This act was used to fix the dollar to a set amount of gold and silver, which started the Bimetallic system. Money was then either made of gold and silver or backed by it. Fluctuation of metallic worth then caused either silver or gold coins to disappear from the circulation of currency. One year after the Civil War began, the Legal Tender Act was passed, which then allowed paper money, called greenbacks, to circulate. This started the Fiat Standard where money was only backed by the faith of the federal government. The system did not work the way it was intended because of debt and inflation, so the economy then switched to the Gold Standard. After the Gold Standard was installed there was panic among the banks. In 1913, the Federal Reserve Act was signed by Woodrow Wilson so that forty percent of paper money had to be...
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... |total: 36.9 years |Median age: total: 35.5 years | | |male: 35.6 years |male: 34.9 years | | |Female: 38.2 years (2011 est.) |female: 36.2 years (2011 est.) | | | | | |Gross Domestic Product (GDP) |$14.7 Trillion (2010) |$5.74 Trillion | |Actual GDP |$14.58 Trillion | | |Per Capital Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) |$ 14,660,000,000,000 |$ 10,090,000,000,000 | |(in dollars) | | | |GDP worldwide rank |2 |3...
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...During economic hardship, many “sensitive” topics, such as tobacco, drugs and alcohol are always on the table for debate; since they influence and impact our personal lives, people’s beliefs and the economy. As the United States of America continues on its present path of accumulating a deficit, many political opinions and justification will be voiced to clarify the excessive funds allocated to aid various tobacco, drugs and alcohol programs/budgets. These programs includes, but not limited to: education and awareness; local support groups; rehabilitation centers to medical finance assistance for care and medication. The programs listed above can easily be justified by local, state and/or national government bodies, but how about monies that are being missed used and/or irrelevant in helping society, which I like to, refer them as “scam expenses”. Tobacco products in the United States have influence two major problems in today’s economy. First, in recent years, numerous state governments have enacted higher tax rates on cigarettes. The governments overall explanation of higher tariff of tobacco products would hopefully lead to a decrease smoking rates. However, some disagree and different publications note the increase in taxes was solely for the purpose of increasing revenue. Overall state tax revenue from tobacco sales have dwindled in recent years in states like New York, which presently has the highest state tax on cigarettes in the United States. At first glance, people...
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...Felicia Feliciano English 101 Ms. Lonon Argumentative 3/12/13 9/11 was an inside job. September 11. 2001 was a tragic day for all American people, the unimaginable just happen, and too many lives were lost. It is a day that will never be forgotten. After the ciaos very slightly began to settle, the American people need answers, answers that still till this day have never been answered. Four hundred and forty two days have the attacks finally there was some sort of “answers” through the 9/11 commission report. The way the described the day is question still left a lot of people confused, with confusing comes the search for real answers and from the tat the question raised, who was really responsible on our nation. From this question stems the ultimate argument, can it really be possible that our own government can be involved. I struggles with this question constantly, it bothered, and I knew I had to do my own research. With y search for the truth, I have to admit, I believe in some way our government either knew, or had a helping hand in the destruction. I argue these points whenever the subject comes up and many just really can’t believe our government would ever to conspire against us. I don’t know if these people are scared to know the truth or they are just too ignorant to see the evidence and fact supporting my dispute. Instead of using any critical thinking skills they just believe anything the government feds to...
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...book stores. These bags have been used since the early 1850’s. One trillion plastic bags are produced each year, yet billions of these bags have ended up in landfills or on the streets and in the ocean. They are wasteful, destructive, and uneconomical. Plastic bags should be banned to protect ourselves and our environment. To begin, plastic bags are dangerous to children and wildlife. Every year, 25 children in America die due to suffocation from these bags. Likewise, many animals have died from plastic bags as well. Some bags float into the ocean and resemble jelly fish. Then, the bags enter the animal’s digestive system. In addition, the bags litter the streets and producing them pollutes the air. Many cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have already banned plastic bags. However, plastic bags should be banned everywhere to help our children, animals, and environment. Furthermore, plastic bags waste numerous resources. They are made from a non-renewable source, petroleum. 12 million barrels of oil are used to produce these bags in the United States. In addition, fabric-made bags can be used numerous times, so factories do not have to produce as many. We are wasting many non-renewable sources by producing plastic bags instead of fabric bags. Banning plastic bags would save many of these sources for other products. Also, living without plastic bags would save numerous amounts of money. So why waste money and resources when we can use fabric bags instead? Although...
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