Legal Drinking Age

Drinking alcoholic beverages has always been the talk around the world. In the United States of America the legal drinking age is twenty one years old. However, there have been many debates on whether the drinking age should be lowered or raised?  People wonder, why raise or keep the drinking age if people under the age limit will find a way to either get alcohol or consume it. Think about this; at the age of eighteen a person is considered an adult and can vote, so why is it the drinking age is twenty one? This is a very controversial topic that is discussed almost every day by citizens around America.

According to Alexander C. Wagennaar’s work Effects of Minimum Drinking Age Laws: Review and Analyses of the Literature from 1960 to 2000, “Issue: establishing a legal drinking age of 21 is unconstitutional age discrimination” (Wagenaar). Discrimination is defined as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. According to laws it is illegal to discriminate against race, gender, age, and religion; so it should not be okay to set the drinking age to twenty one. According to the article Should Drinking Age Stay at 21 written by Malito Href located on ABC News’ website, “The most recent national study on youth risk behavior… found that half of the high school students aged between 12 and 16 who participated in the survey had consumed alcohol in the 30 days prior to the survey”(Href). No matter what people under the legal drinking age will find a way to consume alcohol, there is no ifs ands or buts about it.

 

Another thing according to Wagenaar’s book, “As a result of research evidence indicating that traffic crashes among youth increased following lowering of the legal age…” (Wagenaar). Lowering the drinking age will cause more car accidents. In Wagenaar’s article it is saying that if the drinking age were to get lowered then there are going to be more alcohol related car accidents by people who are under the age of twenty one. However, what people do not understand is that there are just as much alcohol related accidents in people over the legal drinking age. Another thing, some people believe that adults are more responsible to not drink and drive than people who are under the age of twenty one. That assumption is false. In the news almost everywhere there are adults who are either getting arrested or killed from drunk driving. In the book The Great American Football written by Douglas E. Foley says, “Consequently, a multiple-system-of-dominance was used to explore… class, gender, and racial practices… and in a way dialectally related…” (Foley 112).

 

To sum this entire essay up, lowering the drinking age has been a very controversial topic in today’s world and it still is. Some people will disagree and say that it should be lowered and others will say that is should remain the same. Before getting into a debate about this think about this, people that are between the ages of eighteen and twenty one are considered adults. People at eighteen are allowed to vote, get married, own a gun, but they cannot buy beer? Everyone has their own opinion on this and it still has not been solved nor will it ever be solved.

 

Foley, Douglas E. The Great American Football Ritual. Sociology of Sport Journal. 1990. Print.

Href, Malito. Should Drinking Age Stay at 21? ABC News. 01 June. Web.

Wagenaar, Alexander C., and Traci L. Toomey. “Effects of minimum drinking age laws: review and analyses of the literature from 1960 to 2000.” Journal of Studies on Alcohol, supplement 14 (2002): 206-225.

 

Minimum Wage: Should it be Increased or Decreased?

People start their career lives by working at a low paying job and then work their way up into a higher paying one, it is normal. As a teenager and a person who can only get a job that pays minimum wage, the increase in minimum wage is a good thing for the fact that they are getting paid more. People in this category find that the increase in minimum wage is a good thing because not only are they getting paid more, but they are helping support their families. Some people, like mentioned above, think it is a great thing to have minimum wage go up, but little do they know there are some negative effects that come from increasing, which some do not see. An increase in minimum wage not only means an increase in taxes and consumer goods, but it also means an increase of layoffs or unemployment.

 

 

 

According to Levin-Weldman and Oren M.’s book The Minimum Wage: A Reference Handbook: A Reference Handbook, “Those who support the minimum wage claim that it helps the working poor” (Weldman 57). What Weldman is saying is true, but others need to realize at a broader perspective. For example, if minimum wage increases then the fairness of this paying action would not exist anymore. Say for example, a construction worker gets paid sixteen, almost seventeen dollars an hour and a person who works at a fast food industry like McDonalds gets paid ten, almost eleven dollars an hour. If minimum wage is increased little by little then that person that is working at McDonalds, flipping burgers or taking orders, will soon be getting paid roughly the same as a construction worker, who is out in the heat working really hard.

Construction workers working on a highway

 

Flipping Burgers

 

According to an article written by Francis Heylighen The Newtonian World View, “At best, economic science has managed to avoid the problem by postulating the principle of rational choice, which assumes that an agent will always choose the option that maximizes its utility” (Heylighen). This piece from the article can relate to this controversial topic because it is saying that the government also leaves the voting to the people. According to the article LA minimum wage increases to $10.50 and $12 per hour on Saturday located in the Los Angeles Times written by Elizabeth Chao, “Under the city’s minimum wage law, the larger businesses were also required to begin offering six days of paid sick leave”(Chao). Not only does an increase in minimum wage mean that workers will lose their jobs, it also means that businesses are required to have their employees take paid sick days.

 

 

Minimum wage has been a very controversial topic for a number of years, but has not yet been set in stone at what pay should minimum wage be. It has been said that minimum wage will soon be up to fifteen dollars by the year of two thousand and twenty.  People need to realize that if minimum wage is increased then not only taxes increase, but there will be an increase in unemployment and layoffs as well. The increase of minimum wage may have some positive effects to it, but the majority of it is negative.

 

 

Chao, Elizabeth. LA minimum wage increases to $10.50 and $12 per hour on Saturday. Los Angeles Daily Times. 30 June 2017. Web

http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20170630/la-minimum-wage-increases-to-1050-and-12-per-hour-on-saturday

Heylighen, Francis. The Newtonian World. Principia Cybernetica. 19 April 2006. Print.

Levin-Waldman, Oren M. The Minimum Wage: A Reference Handbook: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO, 2015.

 

Plastic Bag Ban: Keeping the Environment Safe?

When it comes to the topic on protecting the environment by banning the use of plastic bags, people everywhere across the United States seem to ignore it, the question is, why? When people think of the environment they think about everything that is surrounding them. A huge debate in the year of 2016 was if plastic bags should be banned or if they should remain in grocery stores. When traveling to certain beaches along the beach there are numerous of plastic bags just laying there waiting for innocent animals, both from the ocean and land, to come and pick them up. People do not realize that the environment affects human life in one way or another, without it life on earth would not happen.

 

In the 2016 election, located on the voting ballet was a section talking about if California should do away with plastic bags. The proposal passed obviously due to the fact that less plastic bags would help make the environment a little safer not only for ocean life, but as well as for life on land. If a person were to go out and ask other citizens about their view on the ban of plastic bags it would probably be a negative side because some find it frustrating of paying ten cents for a plastic bag. Little do they know that ten cents that is being paid is not only going towards California, but as well as the environment.

In the Environmental Journal one of the articles mentions everything that has to do with the plastic bag ban. The article, Doing Away with Plastic Bags: International Patterns of Norm Emergence and Policy Implementation written by Jennifer Clapp and Linda Swanston, discusses how plastic bags are bad for the environment. This interesting article mentions in the beginning, “Over the past decade, a remarkable number of local, sub-national and national governments have passed legislation to ban or severely restrict the use of plastic shopping bags (Clapp and Swanston 1). It is said in the article that the discussion and debate on banning plastic bags is not something that is new to the world, although hatred towards this topic grew rather quickly.

 

 

According to an article written by Taryn Luna, located in the Sacramento Bee, Californians Say Farwell to the Plastic Bag, The pro-ban campaign cast plastic bags as an ecological nuisance that ultimately end up in rivers, streams, oceans and other waterways (Luna). This article is saying that plastic bags can end up in places where humans and other living organisms get their drinking water. There have been problems in the past where people would just throw plastic bags on the floor and not realizing where they might end up. Research has been done and it is said that plastic bags decompose a lot slower than other trash that have been littered, therefore causing a problem everywhere that they are.

 

 

According to Edward Said’s novel Orientalism in chapter one, “… the fact that knowledge- no matter how special it is- is regulated first by the local concerns of a specialist, later by the general concerns…” (Said 56). The use of banning plastic bags and protecting the environment can relate to what Said is saying by the fact that concerns grew about the environment and the safety of it. The reason plastic bags were brought up in conversation is because plastic has been a major problem for our environment. Although the plastic bags have been banned other sources of bags have been used to replace the true plastic. According to the article, California Statewide Plastic Bag Ban Legislation, “… to certify the alternative bags to be: paper made from recycled material; plastic bags that contain at least 20 percent recycled material and are manufactured to withstand over 100 uses; or made from compostable material” (Biocycle).

There are different opinions about this topic, but the people that do not agree need to realize that if the world continued to use plastic bags the environment may not end up as healthy as it should. So, the banning of plastic bags should benefit in keeping the environment not only looking better, but also keeping it safe.

 

California Statewide Plastic Bag Ban Legislation. Biocycle, vol. 55, no. 6, July 2014, p. 12. EBSCOhost.

Clapp, Jennifer. Doing Away with Plastic Bags: International Patterns of Norm Emergence and Policy Implementation. 2009, Sept. 24.

Luna, Taryn. Californians Say Farewell to the Plastic Bag. Sacramento Bee. 2016 Nov. 10. Web.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books, 2004. Print.

 

Gun Control

There have been a lot of arguments about whether if guns cause an increase in murders or if they are a good source of protection. According to the book More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control written by John R. Lott, “While concealed-handgun laws raise the risk of committing murders with guns, murderers may also find it relatively more dangerous…” (Lott 100). Lott is trying to say that even though the law about concealed handguns may increase murders, it can still protect people who happen to be the victims. There are arguments towards Lott’s book however. Zimiring and Hawkins’ argument The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the NRC Report: The Latest Lessons for the Empirical Evolution of Law it is said that gang related activity; drugs, robberies and other crime related scenarios are still going to be present, therefore increasing violent crimes. The argument discusses the fact people who are involved in crime related activities know that people may have a concealed weapon, but that will not stop them from pulling another type of crime, like breaking into houses when people are not home.

 
As early as the 1500’s gun control was always the main topic in conversations. As the years started to go more into the modern day world, talk about gun control started to be brought up more in conversations due to the amount of terrorism. In news broad castings there were more stories about gun involving incidents, then there were other stories. The question in the world today is, if people who have permits to carry a gun, can carry it anywhere they want to. Everyone deserves to feel safe, but others do not see it like that.

 

Worldwide guns themselves have been known to be the enemy, but what some people do not see in greater depth is who the real enemy is. The main cause for gun related situations is the people who are holding the gun. If people were not allowed to carry a concealed weapon, even though they have a permit, what would they do in order to keep themselves safe?

 

A number of Americans have received concealed weapon permits in order to be safe out in the world, due to the amount of violence that goes on around America. In Frantz Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth it says, “The intellectual who, for his part… is prepared to fight so that colonist and colonized can live in peace in a new world” (Fanon 9). Anyone is prepared to fight for the safety of themselves. In the Second Amendment of The Constitution of the United States of America it says that everyone has the right to bear arms, meaning that everyone in America has the right to keep them and their families safe. The NRA, National Rifle Association, is an association who has their own website and has strong beliefs that gun control is in fact not a necessary thing. According to an article written by, the president of the NRA Pete R. Brownell, Second Amendment Belongs to All Americans Regardless of Race Creed and Gender it states, “The freedom secured by the Second Amendment cannot be put asunder by any conceivable element of discrimination—not by color, race, age, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political ideology or national origin”. Brownell is saying that every American is protected under the Second Amendment, no matter what they look like, and that no one shall reject them when they are trying to not only protect themselves and their families, but other civilians. Some people need to realize that owning a concealed weapon can be a positive thing.

 

This is a very controversial topic and still has not yet been determined if one side is greater than the other. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, some will agree that carrying a concealed weapon is good, and others will disagree.

 

 

Brownell, Pete R.. “Presidents Column| Second Amendment Belongs to All Americans, Regardless of Race, Creed or Gender”. National Rifle Association. 27 July 2017. Media. https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2017/7/27/president-s-column-second-amendment-belongs-to-all-americans-regardless-of-race-creed-or-gender/

Donohue, John J. and Aneja, Abhay and Zhang, Alexandria, “The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the NRC Report: The Latest Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy”. 27 July 2012. Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 430. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2118893

Fanon, Frantz.” The Wretched of the Earth”. Grove Press. 1961. Print.

Lott, John R.. “More Guns Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control”. University of Chicago Press. 1998. Print.