Fiscal cliff is the familiar expression custom to describe the challenge that the U.S. government faced at the close of 2012, when the expression of the Budget Control Act of 2011 were scheduled to go into effect. The United States Budget Control Act of 2011 was regulating to take effect midnight Dec.31th. If the Budget Control Act took affect the economy would be impacted vividly. Taxes are going to be leavened and federal expenditure will be cut, this would shorten the fiscal deficit by an estimated $560 billion. The changes that were set to take position at midnight on December 31, 2012, were namely: the end of last year’s short-lived payroll tax cuts, the termination of certain tax breaks for businesses, innovate the alternate minimum tax, a rollback of the Bush tax cuts from 2001-2003, and the prelude of taxes related to the “Obamacare” law. With the higher taxes and less federal expenditure the gross domesticated product is predicted to drop by four percent, therefore sending us deeper into a recession.
With the decrease in gross domesticated product, nonemployment is anticipated to climb by 1 percent. Reports show, over 1k of government funded programs - including the defense budget and Medicare are up for automatic cuts. The tax advances were versed as the largest overload for the economy in history. Discussions amongst the parties to avoid the “fiscal cliff” were deliberated. Democrats and Republicans negotiated on how to prevent this aspect of the “fiscal cliff”. The latest hindrance to avoiding the “fiscal cliff” is the expense of federal retirement programs. Federal programs, such as Medicare; Medicaid; and Social Security are the government’s greatest and fastest increasing (pronominal) programs. Republicans were ready to consent to raise taxes, on the grounds of, the expense of these programs were limited. Democrats were reported to have said “Republicans have yet to name their price for enacting legislation that would preserve tax cuts for the vast majority of Americans next year while raising revenue from the wealthiest 2 percent.” Wherefore, it was reported that Republicans said “that it is up to President Obama to offer a plan to restrain the cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security”. Obama designed a plan that cut $340 billion from federal health programs by command wealthy seniors more for federal programs. But this plan has met resistance from both Republicans and Democrats.
Theory of conflict is emerging with this current event topic because; the “conflict theory” emphasizes the role of coercion and power in producing social order.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service. "Editorials on the federal budget". McClatchy - Tribune News Service. 03 Feb 2010 eLibrary. Web. 18 Feb 2010.
Every time the television is turned on viewers are exposed to conflicts occurring on the other side of the globe. Technology has made it so that some struggle occurring in some distant land is simply the morning headline for the common person. As the world becomes more and more connected, once domestic conflicts soon spread to the international level. This is why it becomes increasingly important to understand how a conflict can be formed, as well as how they are able to affect a much greater population than those parties involved directly.
The fiscal cliff is known as a combination of expiring tax cuts and across - the -board government spending cuts that became effective Dec. 31, 2012. The fiscal cliff in regular terms is a combination of planned government spending cuts and tax increases, which take place in the future because temporary financial law has ended (Nitti). This should be considered a good thing because the government is generating more tax revenue while cutting spending. In the Bush administration, the fiscal cliff was able to save people about 10% of there paycheck due to tax cuts (Calmes). But even though the American people would enjoy temporary short-term decreases in deficit (the amount of something especially a sum of money is too small), the combined effect of the tax increase and reduced government spending will result in a huge fiscal contraction (Nitti). This would mean a decrease in GDP (gross domestic product), and increase in unemployment (Calmes). This is an issue because even though government spending would be down for a while the repercussions for the American people would be greater (Tuchman). ...
Allowing market participants to begin putting their resources back to work in areas they’d be most beneficial. President Obama’s fiscal responsibility summit last February indicated that he understood the urgent need for fiscal discipline. Congress’s enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and President’s proposed budget makes the goals of a sustainable budget and addressing nations longer term fiscal priorities, such as entitlement liabilities, even more elusive. The administrations recently released midsession reviews from the office of management and budget that over the next 10 years the accumulated deficits will total $9 trillion which means that the debt held by public will be a staggering 77% of GDP in 2019. If the debt level continues to grow faster than our economy, the US will owe more than it makes.
...to be achieved, years, decades, lifetimes, conflict is intended to fulfill this need. Ultimately, conflict theory is about the struggles, ideologies, representations, and power that the haves possess and the have-nots want to exert. These concepts come into play causing conflict between the groups which ends in social change.
Today, the future of Social Security is in the news again. The reason Social Security is of such concern is that the extremely large group of citizens born in the post-World War II period—the much-discussed baby-boom generation—is retiring. The generation that will take its place in the workforce is far smaller in proportion to the number of retirees, raising fears about the sustainability of Social Security. In the past, proposed solutions to the various problems facing Social Security aroused great debate. Each time, however, the arguments were stilled, repairs were made, and the system continued to fulfill its mandate. That uncertainty about the future has resulted in suggestions for change that range from minor adjustments to complete privatization of the ...
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is an agency under The Congress that helps in synthesizing the budgetary information by providing options that are implemented and bring about savings in the initial budget. The document provides choices in the following areas: Mandatory spending apart from health-related programs, discretionary spending apart from health-related programs, and revenue other than health related programs and finally health-related programs and revenue provisions. In this paper, we shall focus defense spending and in particular the U.S. Air Force spending that falls into the category of discretional spending.
American people look at their insurance bills, co-pays and drug costs, and can't understand why they continue to increase. The insured should consider all of these reasons before getting upset. In 2004, employee health care premiums increased over 11 percent, four times more than the rate of inflation. In 2003, premiums rose 10.1 percent and in 2002 they rose 15 percent. Employee spending for coverage increased 126 percent between 2000 and 2004. Those increases were lower than expected. (National Coalition on Health Care, 2005, Facts on health care costs). Premiums have risen five times faster than workers wages, on average. If medical spending continues to rise by just two percent more than personal income, by 2040 Medicare and Medicaid would hit 18.5 percent of the gross domestic product, leading the federal deficit to be 20.7 of the gross domestic product. (Melcer, R., 2004, St Louis Post-Dispatch, Rising Costs of healthcare pose huge challenges).
“The Budget and Economic Outlook : Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020.” Congress of the United States
Conflict theory holds that power lies at the core of all social relationships and is unequally divided and that the powerful maintain their control through the
Falk, Julie. “Fiscal Lockdown.” Dollars & Sense. July-Aug. 2003: 19+. SIRS Researcher. Web. 24 Mar. 2011.
By definition, conflict theory basically sees the society as a pitch in which inequality thrives in order to generate conflict and change. For instance, this theory emphasizes on the purpose of coercion in generating a social order that’s often ch...
Social conflict is as old as human history (Ho-Won Jeong, 2008), it’s dynamics, process and solution has been a subject of inquiry among early thinkers—Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau etc. Concived by Coser (1968) as “struggle over values or claims to status, power, and scarce resources, in which the aim of the conflicting parties are not only to gain the desired values, but also to neutralize, injure, or eliminate their rivals” (cited in Onyia 2005, p. 17). Efforts at understanding causes and dynamics of social conflict have yielded various typologies. While some of which—corelate of war (COW)—focused on inter-state related wars, thus defined conflict as “involving at least one member of intersate system on each side of the war, resulting
Power and conflict, important structures in society, clarify difficult concepts in society; although this can be considered an obvious assertion, many different sociological theories attempt to comprehend the centrality of power and conflict and apply it to everyday life. Max Weber
Usually the strong keeps their power by limiting the weak’s already limited power by way of legitimations that are used to make the way things are appear natural. Legitimations can be blatant for example Jim Crow laws legitimated the racism in the early 20th century or subtle like in language for example mailman instead of mail person. Contrary to what many think conflict theory is not entirely about hostility between groups but really about shining the light on the more inequalities between different groups hostel or friendly. This macro-level theory is best utilized on the national and international