Saturday, August 31, 2019

Bani Yas Island

United Arab Emirates has a fruitful history since it’s founding as one nation. This nation was originally composed of tribal groups along the territory within the Gulf of Persian the Oman Gulf. This country was converted into Islam in the year 600 A. D. Long before that, there were archaeological evidences that Christianity thrived in this Muslim nation, as shown by many relics proving that claim. One particular island named Bani Yas possesses some of these artifacts that were discovered by many scientists exploring for ancient traces.Moreover, they found out the natural beauty of the island and explored its abundant possibilities to become one of the beautiful tourist spots in the world. After that discovery, many investors were invited to see the potential of the Bani Yas Island. They market the place in its bounty with regards to wildlife and natural resources. According to these people, Bani Yas Island has one of the greatest potential in ecological tourism. The Bani Yas I sland can be located approximately 270 miles west of Abu Dhabi. It was highly regarded as one of the most prominent and greatly honored tribes in the southern part of Arabia.Its place in history began when a person named Yas Bin allowed other tribes to join their clan in order to establish more security and power. Those tribes joined Yas Bin’s tribe to secure their corresponding clans since Yas Bin’s tribe was so powerful then in term s of its military force. Because of that, Bani Yas became the largest tribe in the emirates nation. They made up of approximately 20 clans. They settled on Abu Dhabi on the year 1793. Form this tribe came the present leaders of Abu Dhabi. These people usually spent their summer with other members of the tribe by hunting pearls using boats.When winter comes, they spent their time in the desert with their camels. In addition to this, this tribe was the first to acquire valuable lands that eventually became one of the causes of many disputes of other states. In the year 1833, a prominent faction of the Bani Yas tribe went to Dubai and eventually became the ruler of that place. This leadership lineage continued up to the present day. With respect with the other subsections of the Bani Yas tribe, some clan thrived by fishing and hunting of pearls while others ventured on planting crops. Some tribes focused on the camel business or rearing goats and sheep for living.Other subsections focused on trading goods with other foreign tribes. After a certain period, many archaeologists made an exploration on the supposed location of the former tribe Bani Yas. This exploration was executed in the year 1992 where those who led the site investigation found several discoveries. They found relics of the tools used by the people of the Bani Yas tribe and other important things related to their way of living during their existence. In the year 1993, another excavation was initiated and found more relevant information about the Bani Yas people.They made more than thirty site divisions during the whole exploration process. In some of the sites they explored, they discovered that long before Islam captured the tribe’s religious association, there are traces of a Christian church built in that area. They found relics of a monastery, a clear indication that a church was established before Bani Yas embraced the Islam religion. Furthermore, they also acquired evidences of other cultures in other key sites that might have affected the norms of the people who are living in that era. The rich history of the Bani Yas can also be associated with its natural resources.In terms of its reserves, the place can be said to have plenty of such gifts from nature. The island is proliferated by mountains, which resembles the shape of a cone. Slightly inclined plains along with numerous mangroves on the sides then surround these mountains. With these, a small wharf can be found along the shoreline of the island. The leaders that have this jurisdiction over this territory developed these beautiful sights further. The island also possesses a lot of wildlife diversity within its region. Various species of animals and birds can be found thriving in the island of Bani Yas.Animals like gazelle and Oryx can be found roaming freely in that area. Before, these animals were supposed to be endangered but because of the efforts of the people responsible in the development of the area, these species has grown in number. Other species originated form other countries can also be found living in the Bani Yas island. Moreover, the island eventually became one of the homes of various migratory birds coming form other places on the planet. Birds like flamingos take their shelter in the mangroves that can be found in the island.Others thrive in lagoons and other places that these birds nests. An artificial lake was constructed also and became the primary attraction for numerous types of ducks in the area. Other species of bird s also thrives in the region, making a clear indication of its natural beauty and habitat for wildlife. Pastures are being dominated by many species of deer and other fowls like peacock and others. Attractive insects can also be found in the region enjoying the trees planted in the island of Bani Yas. Such attractive insects are responsible for more beauty in the nature and the balance in the ecosystem.As a result, more beautiful flowers blooms around the island, and fruits are also abundant in the region. From being a desert, the leader occupying the island made wondrous make over on the island, making it more attractive to both animals and even humans who visited the place. He made plantations and fruit bearing trees thriving in the island because of his consistent efforts to develop the area. With regards to the potential of the island as a tourist spot, more consistency the maintenance of the island is needed, knowing that the island was a desert before.Ecotourism is not usual f or regions particularly in the Middle East region but with this island, it would be possible to have a good resort within the region. As far as the implications are concerned, authorities should be alarmed that since the Bani Yas was a desolate place before, they should put more efforts in maintaining the ecosystem they established in the region. As far as the potentials of the island is concerned, there are a lot of prospective in the island of Bani Yas. One of its great features is that it offers tourists with the opportunities to experience safari adventures, and snorkeling.The visitors of this island can experience full recreation with nature and its benefit of full relaxation. Since its development is a clear breakthrough in the field of establishing ecosystems out of a desolated island, this place will surely catch a lot of interests for many people and scholars as well. Another key feature of the island is its richness in cultural heritage with those who once lived there in t he island of Bani Yas. As discussed on the previous statements above, people who lived in this island possessed interesting details on their way of living and their circumstances in life.Relics found on this island would surely catch more attentions on people who are inclined with digging ancient things from the people of the past. The discovery of traces resembling Christian institution in a Muslim-dominated region is another mystery that will attract more scholars and ordinary people in finding facts about the history of the Bani Yas tribe. With regards to its ambience, Bani Yas Island can offer a new outlook for those who lived in the desert for a long time. They will experience living with nature, which is not available on people thriving in the Arabian region.This will definitely give an embrace of new culture in nature’s aspect for people who would like to try living in a serene island with a sustained ecosystem in its surroundings. The developers of this island constru cted different establishments, which will provide more relaxation and recreation on the part of the prospective visitors. One particular structure that was built in the island to cater its visitors is the resort spa. The structure is intended for those who would like to avail of spa services and hotel accommodations.The building consists of more than 60 rooms for tourists who would like to stay in the island. This would offer visitors to avail of this good service while in the island, making it more exciting for many tourists that will be visiting the site. For those who want to conduct camps, group dynamics and other activities, the island can arranged these features in a better setting which is inside nature landscapes and other beautiful sites in the region. For those who love experiencing wildlife adventures, Bani Yas offers this authentic approach in dealing with these demands.Tourists can experience this interaction with animals similar to other safari sites. The developers of the island made a sanctuary for plants and animals to maintain the balance in the ecosystem. Such endangered species already found their homes in the island, a clear indication of the island’s readiness to be a wildlife sanctuary for diversified animal species. The people responsible for the development of this island also built specialized centers that focus on taking care of the plants and animals within the region.This center also conducts researches on how to improve further the current setting of nature in the island. Sustained development is also vital in the work being conducted in the center because this will ensure the good setting of the structures that were built in the island. For birds, they continually place mangroves and other habitats that can attract many species of birds to live in the island. Because of these efforts, many migratory birds have found home on this strategic place. They also established waterways, which are critical in maintaining the presenc e of various animal and bird species in the island.Another big project being established in the Bani Yas Island is the continuous research and development on building structures that will utilize renewable energies as the primary source of energy in the island. This exploration will surely provide more sustainability in the island since the power source will not depend on coals and petrochemicals. It is a given fact that utilizing these as fuels will degrade the air quality of a particular place, making it hazardous to anyone that will be exposed into it.The island developers realize the relevance of maintaining a good ecosystem by utilizing renewable fuels like solar and wind energies. Putting up solar panels in strategic locations and windmills in the island are the priorities of the developers of the island with regards to the power plant constructions are concerned. Once these renewable energy factories are established in the region, there will be a lot more people who will be i nterested in visiting the place. This would also take its place in the history as one of the beautiful places in the world utilizing green energies.The world’s recognition will also be given to the island for its effort in utilizing clean energy sources and being one of the few tourist destinations that implemented such policies in the field of energy utilization. Furthermore, there are far more expansion that should be emphasized as far as the Bani Yas Island is concerned. One particular highlight in the island is its continuing expansion in its beach resorts. This would open more spaces available for people who would want to enjoy the scenery of the beachfronts.Another development that must be underlined is its continuous expansion on the wildlife parks that will provide more rooms for other animals to roam around the area. Such expansion would encourage proliferation of more animals as well as on other species. Another highlight on the island is the establishment of its ow n safari park where various animals can interact with people who wish them to see these creatures in motion. A farm was also established and will continue to expand this structure for a more sustainable energy source for the island.In addition to that, the development of more hotel buildings which can be classified as one of the best in the Asian region are being prioritized to accommodate the needs of the tourists and even other Arab people. These would also attract prominent individuals to visit the island because of the best hotels that are being established in the Bani Yas island. Commercial establishments are also being developed and expanded like shopping malls, fine dining restaurants, campsites, and other amenities that they can offer to the people.Putting up of residential homes is also being developed in the region to provide for those who would like to stay near the beautiful expanse of the island. Such townhouses, condominiums will surely add more attraction to other pro minent people who would choose to stay in the region. For those who are fond with the excavation and explorations of ancient articles, the island also continue to increase its archaeological sites to serve the needs of those who are venturing with the study of the island’s heritage.Current development in the Bani Yas Island includes the start of wind turbine system that provides power in the area. Even though this may not be enough to shoulder the whole energy needs of the island, the developers are looking for more of these implementation to fulfill their target of having a one hundred percent dependence on the renewable energy factories. Another recent development is that the island will be open to daily visitors for them to witness the beauty of this island by the year 2009(Gulfnews, 2008). Up to now, the island is open only for hotel guests and not for just spectators or island visits only.The development of the island of Bani Yas will also generate more than 60,000 emplo yment opportunities once the operation started in full. The corresponding groups are also prioritizing coastal development in the island by carefully examining the topography of the area. This group of people provided a scale model which simulates the actual scenario of what would it be once the developed coastal shorelines are placed. They made physical modeling and wave simulation in studying the appropriate construction of the coastal lines around the island.The groups are placing a mixture of soil and textile material in putting up developments in the shorelines. According to the concerned group, this mixture of materials is better than using pure concrete in the coastal line construction in terms of its flexibility in the waves being thrown by the bodies of water surrounding the Bani Yas island. With regards to the evaluation of the benefits of the island as a future destination of many nature lovers and prominent people, it can be said that Bani Yas has the full potential in t erms of its nature expanse and established structures.Benefits can be enumerated in several ways. One of the benefits that can be provided by this island is the fact that they made a legacy for the next Arab generation. With the sustained development of the region, Bani Yas will continue to inspire other people to venture on creating their own plantation and wildlife park in the middle of a desert. Before, it was impossible to put up diversified species of plants and animals to thrive in a desert island because of its limitation in terms of water availability and soil composition.Bani Yas project made the impossible to be possible and created a lot of avenues in research about taking care of nature and its resources. Another great benefit of this project is on the tourism industry of the country. With the beauty being shown in the islands, there will be high demand for local and foreign visitors to go to Bani Yas Island. The investments done by the leader of the region will surely b ring good returns in the future considering the high potential in tourism and real state.In addition to that, the advantage of having revenues in tourism industry will open more jobs for local residents and other nationalities as well. In the near future, more profits will be enjoyed through sustained development of the island. More than pecuniary matters, the island will contribute a lot to the advocacies of many nations today to use clean energies in supplying power in their respective states. Bani Yas can serve as a role model for other communities in implementing such actions to initiate the usage of renewable sources of energy like solar and wind energy.

Friday, August 30, 2019

Deconstructing redemption in The Road

â€Å"There Is no God and we are his prophets†: Deconstructing Redemption In Corm McCarthy The Road. (paper under review: not for quotation) Stefan Skirmisher The University of Manchester Stefan. [email  protected] AC. UK 09/09/09 Abstract Despite its overwhelmingly positive reception, the apparently redemptive conclusion to Corm McCarthy The Road attracted criticism from some reviewers. They read in it an inconsistency with the nihilism that otherwise pervades the novel, as well as McCarthy other works.But what are they referring to when they Interpret redemption', the ‘messianic' and ‘God' In McCarthy novel? Some Introductory thoughts from apocalypse theory and deconstruction reveal a more nuanced approach that not only ‘saves' McCarthy from the charge of such critics. It also opens up more interesting avenues for exploring the theme of redemption and the messianic in contemporary disaster fiction. Introduction Justifiably effusive praise was heaped, by t he literary community, upon McCarthy multiple award-winner The Road (2006).But perhaps the most interesting reaction came in the form of critique of the allegedly â€Å"redemptive† and â€Å"messianic† tone of Its conclusion. Michael Cabochon's celebrated review of the book argued that McCarthy appeared to insert such a tone â€Å"almost†¦ In spite of himself',l that is, out of character with his usual nihilism. Another reviewer went as far as to suggest the novel â€Å"failed† the â€Å"modernist challenge: to write about a holocaust, about the end of everything†¦ What happens Is a redemption, of sorts, arguably absurd In the face of such overwhelming nihilism. 2 One wonders how McCarthy himself would respond. Perhaps we should begin by recalling the cautionary and prophetic injunction that Nietzsche appended to one of his last works, Ace Homo: â€Å"l have a terrible fear I shall nee day be pronounced holy: one will guess why I bring out this book beforehand; it is Intended to prevent people from making mischief of me†¦ My truth Is dreadful: for hitherto the Ill has been called truth. â€Å"3 Nietzsche feared the untimely nature of the truth he came to announce to a modernity whose ‘end' had only just begun.He predicted the unpreserved of us â€Å"murderers of God† to stand up in the ruins of the transcendent â€Å"old God† of metaphysics, and an unwillingness to create our own tragic pursuit of life. God, he would later write, would simply refuse die; the task of modern man was therefore to kill him again and again. He difficult and paradoxical redemption offered in The Road is very far from resurrecting the old God of metaphysics. Indeed, I would like to argue in the following that it interweaves themes both of resistance (the refusal to die) and mourning (the passing of irreversible loss).In doing so, the novel powerfully engages the reader with the very porous nature of redemption in the context of its post-apocalyptic environment. Engaging McCarthy text in this way invites a Adrienne, deconstructive reading of the narrative of redemption in contemporary disaster fiction in general. This is cause the conversations and thought-experiments employed by McCarthy attempt in many different ways to destabilize and provoke questions of the binary oppositions involved in that very discussion of redemptive ends (indeed, of the possibility of conceiving ‘ends' at all).There are oppositions such as the saved and the damned, the lost and the retrievable; the redeemed and irredeemable futures. McCarthy provokes the question, in particular, of what meaning we might possibly attach to human redemption and the â€Å"messianic† in an ostensibly irredeemable earth. What can be hoped for, sustained, and believed in? On the one hand, therefore, McCarthy pursuit of life and lives in the scorched wasteland bears all the hallmarks of Nietzsche tragedy – the â€Å"taming of ho rror through art†4 -as opposed to a comic rendering of the apocalypse (in which the righteous are spared the calamities of the end).On the other hand, the ambiguous sense of the messianic in The Road hints at more than lyrical or existentialist responses to tragedy. By tracing McCarthy exploration of redemption alongside developments in the continental philosophy of religion, first in the form of ‘death of God theology, and second, that of indestructibility of the messianic, I hope to open up some exploratory questions about the ambiguity of redemption in this highly influential piece of contemporary fiction.Ends of The Road Michael Cabochon states that for authors attempting a move into the futuristic post- apocalypse genre, â€Å"it is an established fact that a preponderance of religious imagery or an avowed religious intent can go a long way toward mitigating the science- fictional taint. â€Å"5 And so Cabochon believes that, in McCarthy novel, the father â€Å"f eeds his son a story'. By constructing the creed or injunction to â€Å"carry the fire†, the story is infused with a â€Å"religious sense of mission† that, incarnate in the hope given to the life of the boy, â€Å"verges on the explicitly messianic†. We would do well to pause in front of the implications of this word â€Å"messianic†. Who is saved: the boy? The promise of human community? And who or what comes to save? The boys saviors at the end present a hesitant, and uncertain departure: the guarantee only that others like him are alive. The messianic here would appear to take the form as much as a threat as a promise. And yet, taken from the Hebrew term for ‘anointed one', the concept of messiah in Jewish and early Christian literature is indeed bound up closely with the apocalyptic social upheaval. Certain expressions of the messianic thus anticipate both destruction (of the old world) and rebirth (of the new). In Jewish rabbinic thought what is crucial for messianic belief is its relationship with history and historic experience. It is visionary hope in the present for the way things could be, whether these are simply restorative or utopian. 8 The tradition that emerges is subsequently one of the announcement of such a promise of the future through the voice of the prophets.Anticipating Jacques Deride, the concept of the messianic announcement is the voice of the fringe, the outside of sanctioned, homogeneous discourse: â€Å"a call, a promise of an independent future for what is to come, and which comes like every messiah in the shape of peace and Justice, a promise independent of religion, that is to say universal. â€Å"9 Whilst The Road carries its own utopian and dyspepsia prophets, however, redemption is nowhere conceived or expressed as the restoration of peace. Nor is it infused with any hope in the renewal of the earth, or even of the narrative of new beginnings for the scorched landscape.McCarthy relentlessl y refuses reassurance that any return to a golden age is possible. The novel is an exploration of the irreversible, of â€Å"things which could not be put back†. 10 In what, then, consist its alleged religiosity, its messianic expectation, or â€Å"greater The clues lie in the relationship formed between a salvation to come (framed in the metaphor of the road itself: Mimi need to keep going. You don't know what might be down the road†12) and the ambiguous sense of endings running throughout the book. The father's own life represents a refusal of the simplicity of endings.His son must not lay down and die. Or, more precisely, he may not die of his own choosing, before the Father has calculated death's permeability on his behalf. The terror of the novel is thus generated within the narrative context of this slipping away of the control over the appropriate end. The son knows neither how to die alone, nor, symbolically, the function of the pistol in his hands: (â€Å"l d on't know what to do, Papa. I don't know what to do. Where will you be? â€Å")13 In relation to a search for the messianic, we must seek the sense of redemption only within this disestablishing sense of time.The messianic takes on a perverse sort of tension between the desire for end as closure, and the refusal to end, as the resistance of death, and finality. The boys terror at the task asked of him (to kill himself) is not complicated. But this struggle between ends and beginnings in The Road also expresses the paradoxical nature of the post-apocalyptic genre in general. If we accept James Burger's account of post-apocalyptic narrative as concerned essentially with â€Å"aftermaths and remainders†, then we must also follow his conclusion that it is always oxymoron: â€Å"the End is never the end†. The modernist assumption, in Frank Sermon's celebrated study, has been that the â€Å"sense of an ending† is what gives our living â€Å"in the middies†1 5 narrative meaning. But post-apocalypse means the very unsettling of those temporal frames. It â€Å"impossibly straddles the boundary between before and after some event that has obliterated what went before yet defines what will come after. â€Å"16 Indeed, we can see the influence of this scatological tension – a concern to much modernist and postmodernist literary exploration of the nature and meaning of narrative closure.Paul Fiddles' wide ranging study of such explorations suggests that if there is a malaise in the writing of closure into contemporary fiction, it simply reflects the more general environment of â€Å"constant crisis†, replacing the sense of completion and fulfillment of history, in which we live. 17 Such a paradox also partly reflects The Road as a study of the refusal of endings, and e ipso a refusal of the redemption normally associated with the narrative end. For our fascination is drawn not to those who are destroyed, but to those who refuse to die.If McCarthy style emulates, as some critics suggest, the biblical language of Revelation, they can't have missed SST. John's vision, borrowed probably from Job, that during the scatological calamities, â€Å"people will long for death and not find it anywhere; they will want to die and death will evade them. â€Å"18 A comedic articulation of this craving crops up in the Backbitten character of Ely, echoing precisely the post-apocalyptic dilemma: Things will be better when everyone's gone. They will? Sure they will. Better for who? Everybody. Sure. We'll all be better off. We'll all breathe easier.That's good to know. Yes it is. When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days are numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it. He'll say: Where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that? 19 McCarthy is arguably concerned, like Becket, to explore the experience of the death of God as instant paradox. That is, as a source of the death of hope for some, but also of an absurd affirmation of life by others, condemning them to a life of scatological suspension – of waiting, but for what?Our encounter with the ‘post' of post-apocalypse is, then, immediately one with the challenge of making narrative and ethical sense of the life that remains, rather than he purely nihilist gratuitousness of a death that won't come. It is more akin to Albert Campus' Rebel, 20 charged with the task of making an ethics of action in the absurd condition, without resorting to a leap of faith that removed the lucid reality of the absurd itself. It is the life of Sisyphus, who has made his rock his entire â€Å"universe† of meaning. 1 All talk of redemption and the messianic must take seriously this simultaneous presence of both the ‘end' and the refusal, or undesirability, of endings. The question that emanates from The Road is perhaps this one: what does nee do, given the knowledge of a certainty of the collapse of life, which might make walking possible along the remainder of the Road? How can this search operate within the traumatic experiment of post-apocalypse, of the never-ending? Dermis's interest in the concept of ‘apocalyptic time'.For Deride can be argued to echo the refusal of the security of endings that I have suggested lies at the heart of The Road. Deride refuses the scatological language of triumphal historicist (particularly in reference to Fuchsia's ‘end of history thesis), invoking Hamlet's fearful dictum, â€Å"the time is out of Joint†22 To express this refusal. Similarly, McCarthy frames the experience of this time of the ‘remainder' not as the aftermath of the singular catastrophic event. Rather, it is the perpetuity of catastrophe itself: the uncertainty of relationships, ecology, and the possibility for human community.The thought experiment becomes one of a tortuously open future, the absenc e of referents for forging new values, new rules, and new duties. The novel thus plays on the post-apocalypse genre by creating a dissonance of temporal perspectives. Time has already run out and is yet, for the boy, opening out inexorably: nothing has really knishes. For the father, the character of the time that remains is defined by the anxiety not only of the limited time allotted to him (who is really dying) but of the dubious gift of extending the time allotted the son into the future – and who's death he will not be able to oversee.Through the tender and contradictory relationship of the father and son, then, the genre of post-apocalypse is turned on its head. We grapple not so much with the post-modern fragmentation of endless traumatic symptoms,23 but the juxtaposition of these two impossible positions in the dialogue of father and child. On the one hand there is a protection of and desire for the end: the father's desire to secure the least tortuous conclusion to hi s son's life.And on the other there is the need for a beginning: the son's overwhelming concern for who and what must lie beyond: who exists? What are they like? Who looks after them? Who will guarantee their safety in the future? Apocalyptic Time Death, or limit, is thus explored in The Road as a painful loss of control over time. This resistance to the consolation of narrative ends represents the most unique and creative aspect of McCarthy apocalyptic style. But what can we say about ‘apocalyptic' literature in general that may shed light on the ambiguity of McCarthy redemptive turn?Literary apocalypses, in Jewish and Christian interdepartmental literature, intentionally sought to trace the limits of communicable discourse. It did this, crucially, against the political traumas of history, in which an old world was thought to be dying and a new one arising, which would completely overturn reality. Through visionary events bestowed upon favored emissaries or recipients, heaven ly truth revealed, through apocalypses, the â€Å"place beyond the limits of language†25 to unanimity. What is the function of this type of limit-discourse?Implicit to all apocalypses there is an ethically loaded injunction that the truth of the world is not all that is visible or conceivable by human means. 26 At its root, then, apocalypse claims that a deeper destiny and purpose lies underneath, and is here, through text and vision, disclosed. Revealed. It is this aspect of the coding of Revelation that so attracts Dermis's attention in his celebrated essay, On a Newly Arisen Tone in Philosophy. Dermis's fascination is with the figure of John and the complex symbolism of the fragmented, yard messages of the future contained in his vision.There is, believes Deride, something primal to Western thought in John's act as the messenger, this role of being the favored dispatcher of revelation and denouncing the false' ones, the â€Å"impostor apostles†. 27 Is there an echo of this cryptic prophecy in McCarthy – for instance, the language of God who is both announced and yet uncontainable, even within the friendly woman's talk of the â€Å"breath of God† that â€Å"passes from man to man through all of If so, the crucial lesson for an apocalyptic reading of McCarthy would be that apocalypse guarantees no certainties about future realities.On the contrary, it would be to resist the â€Å"temptation† of one apocalyptic tone, and to hear instead apocalypse as an â€Å"unmistakable polytonally'. 29 There is, in a deconstructive reading, only a deeper fragmentation and disestablishing of meaning and truth. And this is precisely the concern of Dermis's critique of an ontological and ‘contemporaneous' reading of history. As Fiddles puts it, narrative can be deconstructionist in the sense that, like the book of Revelation, â€Å"[the] ending deconstructs itself, and so disperses meaning rather than [completes] it. 30 This same ins tability and impermanence of discourse is prevalent within the illegal between father and son in The Road. The meaning of words and the possibility of language itself becomes shorn of its social or ethical grounds. McCarthy even poses the problem as one of the absurdity of text in the post-apocalyptic future. From the referent-less discussion of metaphor â€Å"as the crow flies†31 (to the boy, who has never known the existence of birds) to the man's memory of pausing in the â€Å"charred ruins of some library' and experiencing absolute dislocation between the value of words and the burnt remains of â€Å"the world to come†. 2 An attempt to speak in a world where words and meanings are disappearing mirrors ruefully the attempt to invoke faith in a world in which God is increasingly absent. The God of The Road is the impossible presence, the one whose name is invoked (by the father, and by the woman at the end) but whose very existence would pose only problems, not solu tions. To Ely, the possibility of the persistence of god or gods is a fearful prospect and impedance to the task at hand (of surviving?Or dying? ): â€Å"Where men can't live gods fare no better. You'll see. It's better to be alone. â€Å"33 But the existential struggle facing both the father and Ely is precisely the realization that, in he very act of their survival, something unshakeable of the trace of God (in the book it moves from â€Å"word†, to â€Å"breath†, to â€Å"dream† in that order) is incarnate. This appears, admittedly, as a curse to Ely, whose survival the father finds incredible.The fate bestowed on any unlucky enough to carry on down the road is to carry the remainder, the aftermath of this ineffability and this absence: â€Å"There is no God and we are his prophets. â€Å"34 It is, finally, in reference to the knowledge and memory of dying that any talk of the possible meaning of redemption must orient itself: hence hat must the remaining humans carry on being humans? The man questions Ely on this point: â€Å"how would you know if you were the last man on earth? † to which Ely replies â€Å"It wouldn't make any difference. When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too. 35 The framing of post-apocalypse narrative in this context reiterates the centrality of the question of remainders, of those who might remain to remember and to hold the consciousness of humanity and the possibility of discourse (and therefore of God? ) in their very surviving. God is Dead (again) The reference to God, and God's potential for solving the conundrum of the meander (perhaps, wonders the man, â€Å"God would know' that you were the last on earth) is typically McCarthy. He is concerned mostly to problematic belief rather than to reject it or affirm it entirely through his characters.The fragmented quasi- theological discussions echo the brilliant, extended account of the preacher who does theological battle with a dyin g faith in The Crossing. 37 But, once again, a deeper examination of what sort of theistic faith such references might imply goes some way to answering those readers unhappy with McCarthy redemptive conclusions. Ells sat remark bears similarities to attempts made in the sass to articulate a faithful religious response to the existentialist current, through a â€Å"Death of God Theology'. Alongside Thomas J. J.Altimeter, The protestant theologian Paul Italics famously argued for the language of modern theology to acknowledge not only the ontological inadequacy of speaking of God's existence (since the essence of God is a Being â€Å"beyond Being†). Theology must also acknowledge the failure of human experience to allow this access in the first place. For many of these thinkers the ‘God of the theologians' had died on the battlefields of Europe during World War l. To thus define God in negative terms was not only a semantic step. It was to couch Thee-logos as the discour se of absence par excellence.And certainly through the eyes of the other religious existentialists (Aggregated, Bereave, Dostoevsky, Auber) the search for God was the reaffirmation of the absurd, its crucifixion in the mystery of human suffering, not its resolution. Another exemplar, the Catholic convert Simons Well, had expressed it through the figure of Mary Magdalene on Easter Saturday: one moves towards the tomb motivated by death, an expectation of the corpse, not an optimistic pop in life. It is human suffering that motivates our movement â€Å"towards reality', and the mystery in which God (through his absence) is to be found.Likewise, influenced heavily by Nietzsche, Italics described the true act of faith of the believer as one who does not attempt to square the existentialist crisis of despair but who has â€Å"the courage to look into the abyss of nonbinding in the complete loneliness of him who accepts the message that â€Å"God is dead†. 38 A difficult God to f ind, to be sure, since for Well, Italics and others, the problem of nihilism was not to be squared by the gift of faith. It was to be lived in the paradox of human suffering – in the seeking, not the finding, of an answer to suffering.Perhaps The Road shares some features of these attempts to grapple with the death of God. But it is only really with Dermis's exploration of the messianic and time that deconstruction, to repeat, attempts to go beyond philosophy and society's obsessions with talking of the ‘end' of thinking, metaphysics, God, politics, Marxism, etc. Deconstruction tries to counterbalance this fascination with definitive ends by announcing the end of a â€Å"electronic† crisis rhetoric itself. Deride thus highlights the err possibility of crisis discourse as the last form of meaning that one clings to, and whose loss signals a truly existential death.The true crisis is that there may no longer be a â€Å"philosophy of crisis† : â€Å"there is perhaps not even a ‘crisis of the present world'. In its turn in crisis, the concept of crisis would be the signature of a last symptom, the convulsive effort to save a World' that we no longer in habit: no more kiosks, economy, ecology, livable site in which we are ‘at home†. 39 One recalls, in the light of this, the discussion in The Road of the possibility of both knowing, and not owing, preparing, and not preparing, for the â€Å"event†, the brief glimpse of which holds an elusive taint of horror over the narrative.Ely confides in the man: I knew this was coming. You knew it was coming? Yeah. This or something like it. I always believed in it. Did you try to get ready for it? No. What would you do? I don't know. People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there. 40 This intervention into crisis thinking problematical the very status of event – its u ndesirability, its uncertain definitiveness. It mirrors Dermis's critique of an Aristotelian, favored presence of the â€Å"event† itself.Ultimately, such a critique leads to Dermis's ability to pose a distinctively Jewish opposition to this privileging of the event: namely, the reassertion of a certain messianic, a therefore mystical, mysterious return to a revelatory messianic. It is, however, a messianic â€Å"without messianic†; â€Å"stripped of everything†,41 or in other words unbounded by the specificity of this or that dogmatism, religion, and metaphysics of salvation. In deconstruction, then, we can no longer speak of the privilege of the ‘contemporary. 2 What does that concept imply in the context of McCarthy narrative?It opens out the analysis to the concept of redemption without the guarantee of the ‘event' that would guarantee salvation in the manner of the promises of institutional religion. Such a sentiment recalls the â€Å"iconoclas tic† reformulation of hope that was prevalent in post-war Jewish critical theory (particularly in Ernst Bloch). This meant a redemption without reference to the face of God; only the notion of promise itself. 43 Deride expresses a notion of the future as being not a future-present' but as something perpetually out of reach.It produces, like death, the effect of interminable non-occurrence, perhaps in the manner by which the â€Å"event† of The Road is announced: â€Å"The clocks stopped at 1 Time itself, like discourse, and like belief, is suspended; shorn of its referent. The messianic impulse that survives even a book binding to the commitment of expectation: more akin, once again, to the suffering of the waiting Vladimir and Estrogen. The apocalyptic element of The Road, then, might not be the announcement of some catastrophic event in time either in the past (since this is never dwelled upon) or the future.It is rather the revelation of traces, of remainders and re minders, of the God who might also be dying since he â€Å"fares no better† than men when men can't live. 45 The apocalyptic always appears with a hidden face, in the impossible or inconceivable encounter with the end of all things, of death itself. The consolation offered to the boy by his father is that he has always been â€Å"lucky'. 46 Beyond irony, the word â€Å"luck† seems shorn of its associations with providence, destiny, and blessedness, and more like an unhappy covenant: an unspoken agreement that the boy is bound to continue, to keep going.The continuation of life is a brute fact for the boy as much as for Ely (neither apparently aware what keeps them going). And yet the boy is very unlike Ely, not because of his innocence, but because of his temporal language. What will happen, he asks of his father, to the other boy? To the man they abandoned? To the people imprisoned in the house? The conundrum for Ely is otherwise, and framed in the time that was. Wha t has happened; did we see it coming? What were we thinking? Even if we did, how could we have been expected to choose?If there is redemption in The Road, perhaps all we can say of it is the ability o ask questions of the future, as opposed to only those of the past, of mourning that which cannot be put right. Redemption without redemption The ‘event' is indeed problematic for post-apocalypse. But it is problematic not simply because finality is put off indefinitely (as Berger claims). It is problematic for its revealing, or disclosing, our lack of control over its arrival. Apocalypse is temporal catastrophe: a disruption of our chronic desires, time we possess, can control.The future is certainly terrible, but it is agonizing particularly for our thorniness into its uncertainty. Redemption, then, if it is relevant at all, must be seen as the ability to imagine that what one sees now is not all that there is. In the book of Revelation calamities are predicted that meticulously symbolism the passing of apportioned periods of time according to divine order, not those of powers and principalities. 47 In The Road, however, the father is possessed by his responsibility to Judge the ‘right time' of his son's end, and so spare unbearable life.The crisis recalls Abraham's struggle with God's command to act out the unthinkable, here repeated in the Father's own self-doubt: â€Å"Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. â€Å"48 One passes over it easily, but by the end of the novel, the father's command to his son to leave him occurs by way of an admission of weakness; an apology for entrusting life with him: â€Å"l can't hold my dead son in my arms. I thought I could but I can't†49.Is this the conclusion thought to give some sort of redemptive lift to the narrative – a â€Å"fog leaf† to the unacceptable narrative of total disaster? 50 1 would argue cynical pe rspective, rather than the consolingly messianic one. In this view the ether's committal of the son to the future is not performed out of faith in the persistence of goodness. His commitment is, more simply, in the inability to cease suffering, to cease walking along the road. The father's sense of an open future is not hard to grasp in itself: it is the only thing left to offer his son.Yet what is the most significant imaginative turn in what follows? I would argue that it is not that the boy subsequently finds fellow travelers we are to believe are also the good guys who are â€Å"carrying the fire†. Nor even is it that they, like the woman, are also those that cosines the persistence of the divine in the world. Rather, it is an admission by all characters of a disestablishing uncertainty about that road that lies ahead. It is there in the implied pause of the man's response to the boy at the end of the novel: â€Å"He looked at the sky. As if there were anything to be see n.Yeah, he said. I'm one of the good guys. † 51 There is no evidence in what precedes this moment that any place the new community will reach can support life. Nor, I think, are we meant to intuit such a turn towards the future. One cannot ignore, in any case, the terrifying allusions that lie underneath McCarthy choice of the word â€Å"fire†. Cabochon is quick to point this out: the new hope for human community are people â€Å"carrying fire in a world destroyed by fire†. 52 But we can go further than this, since the irony recalls the central theme of another classic of the post-apocalypse genre.In William Miller's A Canticle for Leibniz, the scattered survivors of global nuclear war attempt to construct the new civilization by destroying all forms of scientific knowledge. They do this on the premise that such knowledge will lead inexorably to the same situation of nuclear terror. A secluded community of monks become the last guardians of ancient knowledge, pre serving it for such a time that knowledge will once again be responsibly applied. But the fear is vindicated by the recapitulation of humanity to a second wave of nuclear apocalypse at the novel's horrifying conclusion.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Fire in Lord of the Flies

In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. one of the main elements of the plot is a fire created by the boys. While the fire's foremost purpose Is for rescue, It also represents other underlying symbolistic themes. Order is one ot the tlrst things established once the fire is built. The fire's initial purpose, to get the kids rescued, represents hope. Also, the very being of the fire represents the Idea of life. From the very beginning of the novel, Ralph is determined to keep a signal fire going, in case d ship passes near to the Island.That's all well and good, until the first signal ire the boys light begins burning out of control, and at least one boy is missing, As Piggy tells Jack, â€Å"You got your small fire all right† (2. 210). The fire thus becomes a symbol, paradoxically, of both hope of rescue and of destrucuon. Ironically, it Is because of a fire that Jack lights at the end of the novel†in his attempt to hunt and kill Ralph†that the boys are rescued. And It makes sense.If the boys' world is Justa symbol for the real world, then they're not being rescued at all: they're just going on to a larger scale of violence†to grow up into soldiers getting sent off to war. Hence, rescue equals destruction. The Signal Fire Is a representation of commonsense and rescue from immorality. When the signal tire can no longer be lit, because Jack stole Piggy's specs that light it, its beacon of hope and knowledge is no longer present to guide Ralph who must then be constantly reminded by Piggy about what Is right.The Fire s Relationship Towards Civilization. In Lord of the Flies, the fire is a main symbol through out the story. It represents amount of civilized strength left within the boys. When the fire burns stronger, it means that they are getting closer to society and when the fire Is not burning or Is eak, they too are weakening. The signal fire becomes an indicator of the boys connection to civilization. Throughout the book, t he fire is a key symbol that means not only rescue, but hope and civilization.Even the forest fire In the end of the story, that was meant to destroy, ended up being the boy s key to rescue. In the beginning of this book, one of the most Important parts is when Jack let the fire go outto go hunting. Although hunting Is not necessarily barbaric or a loss of clvlllzatlon, It Is still what leads up to the loss of civili7atiom When Ralph realizes the power of the fire nd admits that if everyone does not do their duty and cooperate in keeping the fire going, all hopes In contacting clvlllzatlon outside are shattered.The tire Is their only chance of survival and if it goes out, their destined to stay on the island forever As long as the fire Is well maintained, the boys show a desire to return to their civilization, but when the tire burns low or goes out, the boys lose sight ot their wish to be rescued, because they have accepted their barbaric lives on the island. Fire in Lord of the Fl ies By SgtBlackScorp In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, one of the main elements of the plot s a fire created by the boys. While the fire's foremost purpose is for rescue, it also represents other underlying symbolistic themes.Order is one of the first things represents hope. Also, the very being of the fire represents the idea of life. in case a ship passes near to the island. That's all well and good, until the first signal fire the boys light begins burning out of control, and at least one boy is missing. As symbol, paradoxically, of both hope of rescue and of destruction. Ironically, it is because of a fire that Jack lights at the end of the novel†in his attempt o hunt and kill Ralph†that the boys are rescued. And it makes sense.If the boys' world is Just a symbol for the real world, then they're not being rescued at all; they're The Signal Fire is a representation of commonsense and rescue from immorality. When the signal fire can no longer be lit, b ecause Jack stole Piggy's specs that light it, be constantly reminded by Piggy about what is right. means that they are getting closer to society and when the fire is not burning or is not only rescue, but hope and civilization. Even the forest fire in the end of the story, f this book, one of the most important parts is when Jack let the fire go out to go hunting.Although hunting is not necessarily barbaric or a loss of civilization, it is still what leads up to the loss of civilization. When Ralph realizes the power of the fire going, all hopes in contacting civilization outside are shattered. The fire is their only chance of survival and if it goes out, their destined to stay on the island forever. As long as the fire is well maintained, the boys show a desire to return to their civilization, but when the fire burns low or goes out, the boys lose sight of their wish

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Business Driven Information Systems Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Business Driven Information Systems - Term Paper Example As the report discusses the University of La Verne is faced by a threat of new universities within California which are providing competitive programs. In addition, supplier power for educational and research material has become a threat to the brand identity of the university which ranked among the top institutions of higher education in California. This paper declares that the University of La Verne is mandated to employ proper management and institutional strategies that will help it to overcome the threat of new entrants into the higher education sector and education service delivery. In addition the university must be sensitive to the power of the buyer who comprise of its students who purchase educational services. This would be achieved through affordable and high quality education which meets the needs of the students for competitive advantage. The threat of substitutes is a business challenge for competitive advantage. It is in this sense that the University of La Verne should employ proper business strategies such as marketing so that it can overcome the threat of other research centers. IT success within the University of La Verne’s can be measured in terms of its congruency with the goals and objectives of the institution. Effective adoption and implementation of information technology is must be in line with t he goals and objectives of an organization or institution such as efficiency of operations and activities.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Compare and Contrast Liberal and Realist Views of International Law Essay

Compare and Contrast Liberal and Realist Views of International Law - Essay Example This view led to creation of international law which provides a framework that guide international relationship. International relations theories address various concerns of countries. This paper intends to compare and contrast realist and liberalist views of international law. Political realists argue in favor of their nation in terms of its security, social reconstructions, and moral concern while political liberalists argue in favor of international cooperation (Claude & Weston, 2006:122). Security concern is a factor that affects national interests and international interests. It is apparent that political stability of a nation depends on the security measures in place. An instant of insecurity drag political gains and economic endeavors of a country. However, debate on security drags both realists and liberalists into explaining their views to international laws. Realists believe that a state has to strive to achieve state security through all possible means (Claude & Weston, 20 06:126). For instance, during the 9/11 bombing realists gave their response to international terrorism by arguing that the state should refocus on probable sources of its insecurity and that the state should handle non-state actors who are violent as proxies for national interest (Portmann, 2010:70). In this view, high state organs believed that non-state sponsors had a role in creating the infamous attack. In response to the attack, the realists focused their security actions to states they perceived as rogues i.e. nations that supported the actions of the insurgent groups (Portmann, 2010:69). Realists felt the threat posed by these countries and decided to wage war on terrorism in these countries. This justified the move made by United States to wage war on Iraq and Afghanistan. Liberalist contrasts the realist view of international law by favoring the interest of non-state actors (D’Aspremont, 2011:6). It is evident that liberals endow non-state players with agency and aut onomy. For instance, liberals believe that distribution of power does not only remain at state level, but also embeds it to entities such as NGO and international institutions (D’Aspremont, 2011:12). Liberals have taken a centre stage role in advocating for independent groups as forces that need recognition in the international politics. At the international scene, liberals argue that power is a multidimensional tool in which emphasis should be on soft power in addition to economic and military power. This argument makes the liberalist support international activities in contrasts to the interests of the realists. The use of soft power intends to eliminate conflicts, which drag international politics. For instance, the adoption of dialogue as a means of seeking a lasting solution to conflicts is a manifestation of using soft power in brokering interest of various countries. In the international politics, recognition of political realism is a concept of interest vested in term s of power (Neack, 2003:77). The motive behind each state behavior is power, which is either military power or potential power (assets). The means used by states to seek power vary because some states are weak while others are strong. However, power change from time to time. For instance, French military power dominated continent Europe in the early 1800s, but shifted in 1814 following the defeat of French military (Neack, 2003:78). Largely, realist perspective looks at state as

Social Justice Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Social Justice - Research Paper Example From a broad point of view, the concept of social justice advocates the equality among the individuals who comprise the society. The above mentioned equality might be perceived from different points of view. For example, socially, it means that all the citizens will be able to enjoy the same kind of treatment. In terms of economic status, they all will have access to financial resources that are irreplaceable for the well being. The most important point here is that the people who have excessive financial funds will be urged to distribute the extra among the needy. Speaking of the political aspect, one might point out that the interests of all the classes will be equally represented in the political process. It would not be an exaggeration to point out that a considerable number of different institutions promotes the notion of social justice, but the United Nations Organization is the one which adopted the most modern version of it. It envisions its application through the specific laws that will be adopted in all the countries all over the world. It would be quite interesting to analyze the benefits as well negative aspects of implementation of the above mentioned notion in various areas. Thus, from the social point of view social justice will ease the tension between the strata. However, it will also contribute to the dissatisfaction of the upper classes that would feel that their portion in the contribution to the overall welfare is exaggerated. As for the economic aspect of the notion with regard to current issues, one might point out that it is likely to fight one of the biggest global problems, namely poverty which is the basis for other issues, such as hunger. However, keeping in mind the weak economic of different states which rely heavily on the loans from different political institutions, one would have to point out that the achievement of it is not possible in the foreseeable future. Finally, there is also the political aspect that

Monday, August 26, 2019

The Effectiveness of Different Lidocaine Combinations Research Paper

The Effectiveness of Different Lidocaine Combinations - Research Paper Example In an attempt to increase the effectiveness of lidocaine delivered through inferior alveolar nerve block, several experiments combining lidocaine with other substances have been conducted. Yet these studies have conflicting results. Nevertheless, the decision on using a particular lidocaine combination should lie on the validity and reliability of the experiments that support the use of such preparation because the effectiveness of anesthesia is very critical in delivering quality dental care. The study conducted by Kanaa et al. (2009) employed a randomized controlled double-blind cross-over research design to test the hypothesis that supplementary articaine infiltration is more effective than lidocaine inferior alveolar nerve block alone. The subjects were selected from a group of volunteers aged 18 years and above â€Å"with a vital mandibular ï ¬ rst molar, ï ¬ rst or second premolar and lateral incisor† (Kanaa et al., 2009) on either side and who were able to complete the trial experiment. Those who were pregnant and unhealthy such as those with the allergy to amide local and those with bleeding and neurological disorders were excluded in the study. This resulted to a sample size consisting of 36 participants which is big enough considering that an earlier published and reviewed study indicated that this sample size had 90% power to detect a difference with a 21% success rate given a 5% signiï ¬ cance level and a 0.5 correlation between responses from the same participant (as cited in Kanaa et al., 2009). However, the subjects were predominantly from the university and some are even dental students which do not necessarily reflect the actual population. This can also result in biases since the subjects have knowledge of the procedure is done; thus, their expectations may influence the result of the study.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Social networking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Social networking - Essay Example According to Gabler, the fact that Facebook exists, and that people make friends on this social networking site, does not mean that they make real friends. Indeed, because of the development of virtual friendships between individuals who are not in any way related has created a situation where there is no interpersonal relationships that have traditionally defined friendship. In arguing his case, Gabler goes as far as stating that Facebook offers what he terms as ‘friendship lite’ where individuals who claim to be friends do not have any personal relationships or any shared history that they can look back upon. There has developed a tendency among many individuals to want to become famous through social networking. This has been through their having more friends on these social networking sites than others, making having these friends a sort of popularity contest. The need to be popular within social networks has come to be termed as being pathetic because of the belief that individuals have ceased living a real life and have instead gone virtual. The fact that these individuals have chosen to live a virtual life has been detrimental not only for their own social development, but for individuals who have their own families, it has had an adverse effect on their children as well (Daly 480).

Saturday, August 24, 2019

The Troubled History of the Airbus A380 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words - 2

The Troubled History of the Airbus A380 - Essay Example The results of the analysis show that the role of systems and operations management at Airbus is underestimated, and, as a result, not properly integrated into the business. This drawback, through the poor organizational structure, inefficient HR practices, and weak organizational culture and leadership, has lead to lower productivity of the employees, and, as a result, financial losses of the company. Six Sigma or business process re-engineering approaches to improving business processes have been identified as the most effective to be used by Airbus. At the same time, radical changes of BPR approach seem to be more appropriate - the faster Airbus introduces innovations, the faster organizational efficiency will improve. Communication channels and strategies, as well as leadership and organizational culture within the company, should be improved in order for the changes to be effective. Technological advancements in form of management information, transaction processing systems, dec ision support Systems and Executive support systems should be used by the company in order to make its business processes more effective and efficient. In this context of systems and operations management is one of the keys to helping a company in its attempts to improve and strengthen its positions in the market. Therefore, the given report is an attempt to determine and analyze how in particular systems and operations management, as well as its integration within the business, works for supporting and improving organization’s business efficiency. Furthermore, the role of Soft Systems Methodology will be determined in relation to analyzing and defining the business requirements. People, technology, and organizational issues will be analyzed in order to define how in particular they contribute to the improvement of company’s operations. All the above-presented purposes of the report will be drawn upon the example of an existing company with relatively long and comparat ively successful history of operations – Airbus. Airbus’ practical experience and operations outputs will be used for analyzing and making recommendations regarding the effectiveness of the company’s systems and operations management. Operations management itself, according to Slack, Chambers, and Johnston (2010), is a set of activities aimed at effective management of the resources needed for production and delivery of services and products. Information systems, in their turn, are aimed at gathering, processing, storing and distributing data required for making decisions and controlling an organization (Laudon and Laudon, 2007). As such, information systems are to optimize the working processes within the organization by means of structuring data and automating certain processes for them to become more effective.

Friday, August 23, 2019

The American Nursing Association Department of Policy and Nursing Essay

The American Nursing Association Department of Policy and Nursing - Essay Example This functions as the organization’s guideline to its internal decisions on policy, in addition to affecting the world, by contributing valuable policies in the field of nursing. The American Nursing Association also has an impact on the comments that are presented to the federal government. This shows American Nursing Association’s views on the effect of proposed federal policies, guidelines, or regulations on the patients and nurses. The government has cracked the whip on Medicare abuse and fraud. The government is to investigate any claim of fraud, and even a mistake that is honest may lead to a person being charged. APRNs and nurses should be informed of the situation and take the required action to desist from abuse and fraud. On the other hand, American Nursing Association advocates for immigrants to have quality healthcare access, and insurance (American Nurses Association, 2001). This will help reduce the cost of healthcare provision. Health reforms widen access to treatment by giving coverage to those who lack and providing protection from abusers of insurance to those who have. The law provides tremendous additional resources to enable coordination of quality, prevention, and primary care. The new plan will synchronize nurses’ deployment and effective development. The profession, education, and skills of nurses make them crucial contributors to the realization of developing patient-centered models of health delivery that are successfully implemented. Health homes, health clinics managed by nurses, and Accountable Care Organizations are the various methods of care that are coordinated. The key to the realization of innovative and new patient-centered model of health delivery is health reforms (American Nurses Association, 2010).  

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Death is my best theme Essay Example for Free

Death is my best theme Essay Death is my best theme, dont you think? (Williams). Explore the varied uses Tennesse Williams makes of death and dieing in A Streetcar Names Desire Referring to A Streetcar Named Desire, I completely agree that death is Williams best theme, closely followed by sex. There are many references to death as well as imagery and symbolism. He also uses many varied points on death. The first major speech about death is when Blanche is talking about her losing Belle Reve Blanche: All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldnt be put in a coffin! This is the first thing that Blanche says that has any power and real feeling behind it and the topic is death. This is showing that death is going to play a large part in the feeling in and behind the story. Blanche: You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths-not always. Stella is being associated with the funerals and Blanche with the deaths. This is showing Stella being quiet and Blanche being louder and more highly strung as that is how she has described the difference in her speech. Although on the outside this speech made by Blanche may sound like she is just talking about the deaths of all her family members but it is also relating to the death of Belle Reve and how the two are connected Blanche: How in hell do you think all that sickness and dying was paid for? Death is expensive, Miss Stella! She describes death in quite a lot of detail in this speech; it is showing that death is going to become an important topic in this play. A lot of the deaths seem to be because of the men and their gambling and this could be a view of Williams. Blanche: Honey-thats how it slipped through my fingers! Which of them left us a fortune? In A Streetcar Named Desire a lot of the times when death is being discussed, sex seems to come into the conversation to. There is a strange relation between sex and death here. I let the place go? Where were you. In bed with your-Polak! This is not the strongest reference to death and sex combined although it is a slight one. A much stronger one is Blanches speech about her late husband- Blanche: Then I found out in the worst of all possible ways. By coming suddenly into a room that I though was empty-which wasnt empty, but had two people in it. Blanche: Hed stuck the revolver into his mouth, and fired-so that the back of his head had been-blown away! Seeing her husband have sex with another man and then blow his head off within the time span of two hours causes a strange equation and connection between sex and death. The way he killed himself could also be perceived as a homosexual reference sticking the gun in his mouth. A vendor comes around the corner. She is a blind MEXICAN WOMAN in a dark shawl, carrying bunches of those gaudy tin flowers that lower class Mexicans display at funerals and other festive occasions. Here, the woman carrying the funeral flowers is symbolising two things Death and Blanche. It is ambiguous whether or not any of the other characters can see or are aware of the presence of the Mexican woman except from Blanche. Blanches thoughts seem to be provoked by the Mexican woman and it almost seems as if the Mexican woman is a representation of Blanche herself, and the Mexican woman is walking around celebrating death which shows the death within Blanches past and presence. Mexican Woman: Corones para los muertos. Corones Blanche: Legacies! Huh. And other things such as blood-stained pillow-slips You can really see Blanche going mad in this scene as she is almost talking to herself rather than to Mitch and this symbolises the dying of Blanches mind. She also has fragmented speech patterns here and if talking about incoherent memories that only she can really understand. Blanche: -and on the way back they would all stagger on to my lawn and call-Blanche! Blanche! The deaf old lady remaining suspected nothing. But sometimes I slipped outside to answer their calls. Later the paddy-wagon would gather them up like daisies. the long way home. Another view on death Tennesse Williams uses is the death of Belle Reve. Shown using Blanche and Stanley, there is a clash between two worlds and the Belle Reve world is dying communicated by Stanley taking power of Blanche and bringing her into their world and getting rid of her airs and graces. He breaks her and makes her realise that her old way of living is dead and that she has to enter the real world. In A Streetcar Named Desire the conflict between two ways of life is concentrated within the battle between Blanche and Stanley. The old civilisation vested in Blanche is demonstrably decadent; her only means of survival in the modern world is to batten onto someone else and live off their emotional, physical and material resources, like a decorative fungus. (Commentary). Blanche: I will die with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ships doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. Blanche: And Ill be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard-at noon-in the blaze of summer-and into an ocean as blue as (chimes again) my first lovers eyes. Blanche brings the equation of sex and death together again here as she is planning of dieing with a man by her side. This speech made by Blanche nearing the end of the play also has a slight reference to Othelia in Shakespeares Hamlet. Othelia died in water and that is what Blanche is dreaming about doing. Queen: One woe doth tread upon anothers heel, So fast they follow. Your sisters drownd, Laertes. Laer: Drownd? O, where? (Hamlet). In conclusion Tennesse Williams uses a lot of different views on death, the connection between sex, the death of other things except people like the death of Belle Reve and Blanches mind, and the death of people who happen to all be someone in Blanches Past. Williams uses different angles to express the theme of death, symbolism of the death of Belle Reve, the Mexican woman symbolising the death of Blanches mind, and the outward talking of real death of people. This makes it an important topic as it depicted in so many ways. Death is defiantly in the running for Tennesse Williams best theme in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Role of Compromise in Delaying the Civil War Essay Example for Free

Role of Compromise in Delaying the Civil War Essay Most of the time, compromise helps stop a fight from starting and is generally a way to end a fight. However, the Civil War was only delayed by compromise because both sides didn’t want to give anything up. Compromise’s role in delaying the Civil War was keeping both the North and South happy, but it didn’t help. The Missouri Compromise was a good plan in theory. It made one state a slave state and another state free. It alternated between the two to keep it even. The Missouri Compromise made Missouri a slave state, and made Maine a free state. Eventually, they split slave states and free states along the 36-30 parallel, which divided the states into North and South. The North became free states and the South became the slave states. The Missouri Compromise helped keep things neat and even but split the states. The Compromise of 1850 was made to settle issues between North and South about territory and slavery that was caused by the Mexican-American War. There were five bills made. The first bill was that California was a free state. The second state was that Texas would be paid compensation by the government for giving California and New Mexico up. The third bill was that New Mexico was a new state without any specific prohibition of slavery. The fourth bill was that there would be no slave trade in Washington DC. The fifth bill was that if a slave ran away, people would have to chase after it no matter what. Even though this was a compromise, the North and South didn’t really like it that much. Texas especially didn’t like it because they lost a lot of territory. The Kansas-Nebraska Act created two new states, but they were voted upon using popular sovereignty. Rather than having them be free state and slave state by the Missouri Compromise, it was decided that the citizens would vote on it. This was known as popular sovereignty (voting on whether or not the state would be free or slave state), and people from the north and south came up to vote. This compromise wasn’t even that well planned, and was only made so a railroad could be put down. It lead to Bleeding Kansas where many people died due to differentiating options on slavery. The Missouri Compromise split the North and South on terms of slavery. The Compromise of 1850 caused Texas to give up property and get rid of slavery in Washington DC. The Kansas-Nebraska Act introduced popular sovereignty to the states, and also caused Bloody Kansas. From all of this, it’s easy to see that the compromises were supposed to keep the states happy, but it only lead to the states separating into North and South and fights breaking out.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

The Macro Economic Policies Of Australia

The Macro Economic Policies Of Australia Australian governments over precedent decades have conventionally aimed towards including triangular objectives of financial growth, domestic poise, and external poise within framework of single economy. (DORNBUSCH, Rudiger, 2006) Collectively, these trio set of objectives aim towards sustaining nationalized financial growth while retaining inferior inflation as well as limiting the mass of overseas debts and liabilities. Several researches conducted in concerned field have revealed that there is no consistency in level of economic growth though; it is influenced greatly by fluctuations of international business cycle. (DORNBUSCH, Rudiger, 2006) A governmental macroeconomic management is referred as an attempt to minimize the impact of international business fluctuations by controlling demand to facilitate sustained growth together with inferior inflation and unemployment. In the last decade macroeconomics policy in Australia has been directed at controlling inflation as it would be associated with macroeconomic stability and growth. Following on from the GFCs the governments main emphasis of macroeconomic policy has been trying to avoid a recession. Contrast these two phases of policy. Explain how macroeconomic policy objectives, targets and instruments have differed. Explain how macroeconomic policy objectives, targets and instruments have differed. Outline the experiences of the Australian Economy over the last 10-15 years making use of macroeconomic aggregates these may be presented in summaries of tables and/or graphs. Stress should be placed on the challenges facing policy makers at present and likely challenges. Before the global economic crisis (GFC), the Australian economy has seen significant growth in terms of GDP ignoring various crises that have affected the global economy such as the Asian financial crises (1997-1998) and the United States (US) dot com bust (2000) (reference). Throughout this time, Australian macroeconomic policy (MP) has primarily been directed at controlling inflation to maintain stability and growth. MP refers to the structure, performance, behaviour and decision making of a whole economy. (Reference) states that MP is associated with the study of aggregates such as gross domestic product (GDP), price indices and unemployment rates to examine how the economy functions. Macroeconomic Policy The continuance of a steady economic environment in Australia post GFC has proven to be a difficult task, with the surfacing of undesired inflation and external account pressures (Treasury, 2008). According to Treasury (2008) acts of policy to tackle such pressures has consistently contributed to short-term downturns and, unavoidably, constrained the prolonging of economic growth. The basis of the issue, however, is the policy failure which permitted the pressures to appear. Nevertheless, the resulting changes in the economic outlook would affect the self-assurance of businesses and consumers and their readiness to engage in the process of structural change. Moreover, disparity in fiscal policy and hesitation about inflation predictions has lead to higher real interest rates, discouraging investment and distorting investment patterns. In the last few years substantial progress has been made in addressing inflation and to a lesser extent current account deficit constraints (RBA, 2009). The current cycle has been characterised by low inflation, with monetary policy being carried out on a more strategic basis with the desire to keep principal inflation consistent with the Reserve Bank of Australias (RBA) average target range of 2 to 3 per cent over a yearly cycle. Last year the Government introduced a new framework for the conduct of policy, clearly recognising the Reserve Banks role and endorsing its inflation objective. The clarification of policy responsibilities, and recognition of their observance in practice over time, together with an accumulating record of low inflation, is likely to have a continuing positive impact on lowering inflation expectations and creating confidence in a sound investment environment. Australias large structural current account deficit reflects both inadequate national saving and inadequate investment returns overall (ABA, 2009). On the saving side, the principal cause is a deficiency in public saving especially at the Commonwealth level. The Government through its fiscal consolidation program is addressing this problem and has put in place a policy framework that will maintain the adequacy of the Commonwealth contribution to public saving. Statements 1 and 2 spell out in detail the fiscal strategy, including improved transparency and accountability practices, and implementation of the strategy in the years ahead. The benefit of a more soundly based fiscal policy is likely to be seen over time in the capacity of the economy to sustain faster rates of growth than would otherwise be the case. While it is too early to be able to point to any concrete results with confidence, the 1997-98 economic outlook presented in Statement 2 suggests that higher saving in prospect next financial year will help to constrain the current account deficit. Before the global economic crisis of 2007 the Australian economy sustained increased economic growth of approximately 8% per annum except for the year 1997-1998 (Asian financial crisis) (The Australian Year Book 2008). This resilience reflects on well-timed monetary and fiscal policy responses; strong demand from various major trading partners, such as China; increased population growth that aided demand in the domestic economy; and the robustness of the financial sector (The Australian Year Book 2008). More generally, Australias strong economic performance can be commended by decades of economic reform in economic policy, regulatory frameworks and governance. These have increased the flexibility of the economy, and strengthened its ability to withstand unforeseen circumstances. Dungy and Pagan (2007) suggest that aggregate behaviour exists between fiscal policies and is connected Since 1997/98 the federal budget has been in surplus continually, apart from a very small deficit in one year. The governments net debt has been retired. Gross debt on issue is maintained at a small size in order to facilitate a functioning bond market so as to allow efficient risk pricing more generally. As with monetary policy, there is a medium-term framework for fiscal policy emphasising balance over the business cycle. There is much less inclination today than there once was to use fiscal policy as a counter-cyclical stabilisation tool. Significant fiscal challenges in the long-term include health spending and responding to population ageing, as the very important work by officers of the Australian Treasury has made clear. Macroeconomic policy has a supportive and complementary role in providing a stable economic environment conducive to sound investment decisions by business and to encouraging workers to invest in upgrading their skills to take advantage of new employment opportunities. Macroeconomic aggregates are: Aggregate behaviour: relationships between economic aggregates such as national income, government expenditure and aggregate demand. For example, the consumption function is a relationship between aggregate demand for consumption and aggregate disposable income. Models of aggregate behaviour may be derived from direct observation of the economy, or from models of individual behaviour. Theories of aggregate behaviour are central to macroeconomics. Aggregate demand: aggregate demand (AD) is the total price for demand for final goods and services in the economy (Y) at a given time and price level [1]. It is the amount of goods and services in the economy that will be purchased at all possible price levels.[2] This is the demand for the gross domestic product of a country when inventory levels are static. It is often called effective demand, though at other times this term is distinguished. It is often cited that the aggregate demand curve is downward sloping because at lower price levels a greater quantity is demanded. While this is correct at the microeconomic, single good level, at the aggregate level this is incorrect. The aggregate demand curve is in fact downward sloping as a result of three distinct effects; Pigous wealth effect, the Keynes interest rate effect and the Mundell-Fleming exchange-rate effect. Aggregate expenditure: is a measure of national income. It is a way to measure the GDP or Gross Domestic Product (A measure of the level of economic activity). It is defined as the value of planned goods and services produced in an economy. GDP is calculated by the formula C + I + G + NX and I = Ip + Iu (planned + unplanned investment), Aggregate Expenditures is defined as C + Ip + G + NX, where: C = Consumption Expenditure (Also can be written as CE) I = Investment G = Government spending NX = Net exports (Exports-Imports) Aggregate supply Aggregation problem Effective demand: Saving Government Macroeconomic goals: High and stable economic growth rates Low unemployment Low inflation Stable and manageable Balance of Payments RBA article: RBA uses short term interest rate as its operating instrument for implementing monetary policy. RBA sets target level for its cash rate. RBA has two options It can target particular level of bank reserves and accept the resulting outcome for short term interest rates It can seek to achieve a particular target level for short-term and supply whatever quantity of services is demanded at the target rate. For a given demand curve for reserves the RBA will need to alter the supply of bank reserves to implement a change in the stance of monetary policy. While banks continue to hold reserves with the RBA these reserves are associated with settlement in the payments system. In addition the RBA pays interest on reserves which is linked to the cash rate. An important effect on the current operating procedure is the relationship between the quantity of reserves and the level of the policy rate. Monetary policy operating procedures is based on the supply of and demand for some measure of the money supply. Systematic changes to the stance of monetary policy need to be implemented by changing the supply of bank reserves. Central banks can influence the stock of bank reserves by undertaking open market operations either directly with the banking system or with the non-bank public. A central bank is unable to independently determine both the quantity of bank reserves and their price. To understand how the RBA achieves its target for the cash rate it is necessary to consider the operation of the payments system in Australia and the overnight cash market. In Australia the major players in the payments system are the nonbank public (households and firms), the private banks, the RBA and the federal government. The trend in unemployment in the most recent decade has generally been downward. Following a rise of a percentage point in the economic slowdown in 2001, it has fallen to the lowest levels since the mid 1970s. The long expansion, with occasional temporary pauses, has done a lot to foster lower unemployment. But the changes in labour market arrangements over the past 20 years or so have also been very important. Indeed, I would argue that they are a key contributor, not least because they have facilitated the longer length of economic expansions. http://www.bis.org/review/r080516b.pdf?noframes=1 Firstly, as is widely accepted, tax systems must be fiscally sustainable across the economic cycle. Secondly, while monetary policy is the principal instrument of macroeconomic management, it is still necessary to remain mindful of the short-run liquidity effects of fiscal policy The challenges associated with an aging population identified in the Intergenerational Report have prompted the Howard Government to establish a long-term strategy to put fiscal policy on a more sustainable footing. Central here was the creation of an independently managed Future Fund in 2006 to help meet the costs associated with Australias aging population. The primary goal of the Future Fund is to accumulate adequate capital to meet the Commonwealths unfunded $91 billion superannuation liability so that it does not burden future generations. The Future Fund has been capitalised from a number of sources including asset sales, special seed funding (designed in part to preserve sovereign debt markets) and budget surpluses from the governments cash account. While the Future Fund is primarily about fiscal sustainability rather than stabilisation per se, it is important to note that the structure of the Future Fund and the allocation of surpluses to it do have some important implication s for the stabilisation debate. The significant point here is that the Future Fund represents an innovative vehicle in which cash surpluses can be invested without stimulating short-run consumption. Overall recent Australian fiscal policy has been consistent with the objectives set out in the Charter, in that fiscal policy is clearly being conducted on a sustainable basis with significant financial resources now being invested in the Future Fund. What is less clear, however, is the impact of this policy on the goal of macroeconomic stabilisation and whether the challenges currently confronting the Australian economy may require more careful consideration of the impact of fiscal policy on short-run economic activity. Given the political sensitivity of the issue and the RBAs understandable reluctance to speak outside its official mandate, the central bank has not been willing to provide the government with explicit advice on fiscal policy. Indeed the new RBA Governor, Glenn Stevens, attempted to down-play the issue at a February 2007 Parliamentary Committee hearing when he stated that it was unlikely any election spending spree would have enough short-term impact to enter into the RBAs interest rate calculations (Wood 2007). Activist fiscal policy of the Keynesian golden age may well have passed, with monetary policy now established as the primary instrument of macroeconomic management. Yet this does not mean that we can completely ignore the stabilisation function of fiscal policy which Musgrave described almost half a century ago. This is especially so when, as in the case in Australia at present, key sectors of an economy are running at close to full capacity and inflationary risks are building. Under these circumstances fiscal policy must not only be sustainable, it must also be sensitive to its potential to stimulate demand in the short-run. Fortunately, for the Australian economy it seems that there is an awareness of the need to exercise a degree of fiscal restraint in the prevailing conditions with both major parties. http://eprints.utas.edu.au/3970/1/3970.pdf Challenges: Australias population is projected to reach nearly 36 million by 2050 an increase of around 14 million The first challenge is that an ageing population implies slower economic growth. As the proportion of the population that is of traditional working age falls, the labour force participation rate is projected to fall (from above 65 per cent today, to below 61 per cent over the next 40 years), dampening workforce growth. Population dynamics explain one-half of the 0.4 percentage point gap between annual growth in GDP per capita over the next 40 years relative to the past 40 years the other half being due to a technical assumption relating to productivity growth. The second challenge is that working Australians will need to support an ageing population that, in part due to continuing technological advancements, is likely to be living longer. Men aged 60 in 2050 are projected to live an average of 5.8 years longer than someone aged 60 today, while women aged 60 in 2050 are projected to live an average of 4.8 years longer. This is great news for Generation Y, but a sobering statistic for future budgets. The greater publicly funded health, aged care and related expenditures to support Generations X and Y in their retirement years will need to come from a relatively smaller number of workers than we have today. On a no policy change basis, a significant fiscal gap is projected. The intergenerational report shows how the Governments fiscal strategy to constrain real expenditure growth contributes to reducing, without wholly eliminating, the projected fiscal gap. The third challenge identified in the intergenerational report concerns the impact of climate change on ecosystems, water resources, agricultural production and weather patterns. Against these challenges, there are three topics I want to say something about today: Promoting economic growth by improving productivity and workforce participation; The implications of a growing population, particularly for infrastructure investment; and Medium-term prospects for capital flows required to finance national investment. For obvious reasons, I wont be saying anything about climate change on this occasion. Discuss the concept of instruments and targets in macroeconomic policy and assess how this concept of instruments and targets in macroeconomic policy and assess how this concept might be applied to the current policy framework in Australia. A number of people have asked me for clarification on instruments and targets as referred to in assignment 2. Here is what I mean: These refer to macroeconomic policy. INSTITUTIONS make policy. Examples would be the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Treasury. These institutions set policy TARGETS. An example of such a target would be an annual inflation rate of no more than 3%. Policymakers then use policy INSTRUMENTS to meet the targets. Typical instruments include the RBA cash rate or government spending. Show how the economic theory you have learnt can be used to explain current macroeconomic policy. How is inflation measured? GDP Deflator Consumer Price Index: an average of the prices of the goods and services purchased by the typical urban family of four. Producer Price Index: An average of the prices received by producers of goods and services at all stages of the production process fiscal and monetary policy The tools the Australian government controls to smooth short-run fluctuations in the economy inflation, unemployment and external trade The causes and effects of inflation, the link between inflation and unemployment, Australian trade with the rest of the world Fiscal policy: Fiscal policy is the government operation of government spending (G) and taxes (T). Typically we consider the problem of how the government can manipulate G and T so as to control economic variables such as output, inflation, interest rates, etc. Issues: how fiscal policy can stabilize the economy? what about government borrowing and public debt? Budget deficit: the budget deficit is the extent of overspending by the government Budget deficit = G T Expansionary fiscal policy: increasing the budget deficit (Gà ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ or Tà ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Å") usually in a recession. Contractionary fiscal policy: decreasing the budget deficit (Gà ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Å" or T à ¢Ã¢â‚¬  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ) usually in an economic boom. Budget deficits and surpluses If the government spends more than it brings in in taxes, what happens? (G > T) The money has to come from somewhere. For developed countries, this means borrowing (issuing government debt or public debt) from domestic residents or foreigners. If the government is spending less than it brings in in taxes, the government can reduce public debt. The Australian government has followed this policy in the last 10 years. Types of fiscal policy We differentiate two types of fiscal policy: Discretionary fiscal policy: This is fiscal policy that comes about from planned changes in G and T that the government brings in response to the economic situation. Non-discretionary fiscal policy: This is fiscal policy that comes about from the design of spending and taxes. There is no government official actively determining these changes. Non-discretionary fiscal policy Certain parts of our spending and taxes automatically increase demand in a recession (when AD < potential GDP) and decrease demand in a boom (when AD > potential GDP). Welfare spending and unemployment benefits are part of G and increase in a recession and decrease in a boom. Income and company taxes are part of T and depend on GDP, they increase during a boom and decrease during a recession. These act as automatic stabilizers on the economy, reducing the variability of the economy. Cyclically-adjusted budget deficits The automatic stabilizers raise the budget deficit in a recession and lower the budget deficit in a boom. This fact means that we can not just look at the budget deficit to determine whether the government is overspending, we also have to take into account where we are in the business cycle. Adjusting the budget deficit for the point we are in the business cycle is called cyclically adjusting. We would expect even a sensible government to be in a deficit in a recession. Discretionary fiscal policy Discretionary fiscal policy is the manipulation of G and T by government officials typically to reduce the severity of shocks to the economy. It sounds like a good idea, but how does it work in reality? There are many problems and limitations to the use of fiscal policy to reduce recessions and booms. Problems with discretion Scenario: Imagine a train driver that has only one control- an accelerator/brake that he or she can push or pull on to control the train. This is exactly the same situation as the government faces with fiscal policy. Now what limitations can the train driver face? Problems with discretion Limitations: Correctness of data: Is the train driver seeing the tracks correctly? Or Does the government get the right data about where the economy is? Timing of data: Is the train driver seeing the tracks with enough time to react? Or Does the government get the statistics quickly enough to do anything? Decision lags: Can the train driver make a decision about the correct action before the train reaches the problem spot? Or does the government have time to design the correct fiscal policy? Problems with discretion Administration lags: If the driver pulls on the control, how long will it take for the brakes to start to work? Or New spending and taxes have to be passed through parliament, which takes time, even after a decision is made. Operational lags: If the brakes start to work, how long before the train slows down? Or New government spending and taxes take time to affect the economy. So even the best-designed fiscal policies can go wrong if they are in response to the wrong data or if they take too long to affect the economy. Political considerations There are further concerns we might have about the operation of fiscal policy. Politicians have to remain popular. No one likes taxes, and everyone likes new spending on themselves. Will a politician make an unpopular decision that may result in them losing the election if it is the best decision for the economy. Electoral cycles: Governments have to be re-elected every 3-4 years. So a politician would love to engineer a boom right before his or her election. Crowding out Another problem with fiscal policy is that an increase in G may increase output but at the expense of other components of aggregate expenditure. Y = C + I + G + NX Since the economy returns to potential GDP over the long-run, an increase in G must come at the expense of either C, I or NX or all 3. If an increase in G reduces investment spending over the long-run, this could lead to lower future growth in the economy. Crowding out How can this happen? An increase in G shifts the AD curve to the right. This results in higher Y and higher P. The increased government borrowing in the market for savings raises the interest rate. Higher interest rates lead to lower investment spending so I drops, shifting AD left. Higher interest rates leads to an appreciation of the A$ (as foreign investors put their money in Australia), so NX drops, shifting AD left. Crowding out- I and NX Government debt One problem that economic commentators always point to is the level of government debt- Our debt is too high. How do we evaluate the level of government debt? How do we know is it is too high. Government debt is like any other form of debt. You evaluate the debt relative to the income/wealth of the person incurring the debt. A $500,000 debt might be high to you and me, but it might mean nothing to Kerry Packer. Government debt So we need to evaluate government debt relative to government income. But what is the appropriate form of government income, as the government doesnt earn or produce anything. Generally we use the income of the country as the comparison, since the government is free to tax or claim any part of GDP. Government debt So our criterion for too much is debt (B, since typically government debt is issued in government bonds) over GDP (Y): B / Y Banks would make much the same calculation when considering whether to issue someone a home loan. In general debt is growing at the rate of interest each year, r, while GDP is growing at the growth rate of the economy, g. Monetary policy Firstly, monetary policy uses the level of interest rates to influence the economy in the short to medium term. Its major goals are to stabilise demand and inflation in the medium term and inflationary expectations and to achieve the governments objectives of sustainable growth with underlying inflation of about 2-3%. Source: Chapter 12 of the book plus second part of Module 3. Monetary policy is the government operation of the money supply and interest rates. Typically we consider the problem of how the government can manipulate monetary policy so as to control economic variables such as output, inflation, interest rates, etc. Issues: how monetary policy can stabilize the economy? how will monetary policy affect interest rates or exchange rates? Who operates monetary policy? The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is responsible for monetary policy. The RBA was given 3 goals when it was created: Maintain low inflation Maintain low unemployment Maintain value of the A$ The RBA was only given one policy tool- the money supply to achieve 3 goals. In the mid 1990s, the RBA was simply told to have one aim: Maintain low inflation. Definitions The RBA implements monetary policy through its control of the cash rate. Cash rate: The cash rate is the rate the RBA charges bank for loans within the RBA reserves system. The cash rate is the base interest rate for the economy, and all other interest rates are derived from it. Easy monetary policy: When the RBA lowers the cash rate to stimulate AD. Tight monetary policy: When the RBA raises the cash rate to cut off AD. Interest rates As we saw in the Investment section, the profitability of investment projects depends on the nominal interest rate. The lower are interest rates, the more projects will be profitable, so the higher will be investment spending. Since the RBA controls the cash rate, and since all interest rates depend on the cash rate, the RBA controls I, and so can shift the AD curve. How monetary policy works Cause-Effect Chain of Monetary Policy: Money supply impacts interest rates Interest rates affect investment Investment is a component of AD Equilibrium GDP is changed Monetary policy and the open economy Net Export Effect Changes in interest rate affect the value of the exchange rate under floating exchange rate. An increase in interest rate appreciates the currency, resulting in lower net exports A decrease in interest rate leads to currency depreciation and a rise in net exports So an easy monetary policy is enhanced by the net export effect. Quantity theory of money There is a nice, simple model of money which explains many features of money supply and demand. This model is called the quantity theory of money. If we imagine that money is needed for all of the purchases made each year, then demand for money is the vale of purchases: PY. The supply of money for purchases is the amount of cash in the economy. But each piece of money in the economy can be used multiple times during a year in transactions. We call the number of transactions the velocity of money v. Quantity theory of money So the total supply of money for transactions in a year is v times M: vM. So demand equals supply requires that: PY = vM So if Y goes up, but nothing else does, then average level of prices must fall. The QTM is good to use for thinking about money and inflation. Unemployment A person becomes unemployed: Job loser Job leaver New entrant or re-entrant into the labour force He or she is no longer unemployed: Hired or recalled Withdraws from the labour force Labour force participation rate Unemployment rate Types of unemployment Three main types of unemployment: Cyclical unemployment Frictional unemployment Structural unemployment Cyclical unemployment Associated with the ups and downs of the business cycle Takes place due to insufficient aggregate demand or total spending- reflects shifts in AD curve. High during recessions and low during booms. Fiscal and monetary policies can reduce cyclical unemployment policies are relevant. Frictional unemployment Associated with the period of time in which people are searching for jobs, being interviewed and waiting to commence duties. It is inevitable and always exist Fiscal and monetary policies can not reduce frictional unemployment macroeconomic policies are irrelevant. Policies that make it easier to find new jobs will affect