American Presidents And Their Economic Reforms Essay Example for Free

American Presidents And Their Economic Reforms Essay Barack Obama   One important economic reform Barrack Obama pledges to undertake is to prevent mortgage fraud and create fund to help people refinance their mortgage, thereby avoiding foreclosure. He pledges to create universal mortgage credit, provide $10 billion worth of mortgage revenue bonds and promises to close loopholes of federal bankruptcy law. Obama commits to restore fairness to the tax code and to do away with regressive payroll tax system, thereby eliminating income taxes for 10 million Americans. He assures to simplify the tax fillings procedures to save valuable man hours as well as billions of dollars of tax preparer’s fees. Obama guarantees to reform the child and dependent care tax credit by making it refundable, allowing low income families to receive upto 50% credit for their child care expenses. Obama will make college education affordable to most Americans by creating a fully refundable new American opportunity tax credit, covering two third cost of tuition. He also promises high quality, affordable health care that will save a typical American family upto $2500 a year. He will initiate double funding for federal support of after school program and set off a strategy to encourage all states to adopt paid leave systems by providing initial start up costs of $1.5 billion. His economic agenda further include reform of corporate bankruptcy laws to protect workers, protect families facing medical crisis, capping of outlandish interest rates on pay day loans and improve disclosure, to encourage responsible lending institutions to make consumer loans, create credit card rating system to improve disclosure, and to establish a credit card bill of rights to protect consumers. Apart from promising millions of green jobs, Obama also commits to strengthen retirement security and preserve social security. John McCain   Republican presidential candidate of United States John McCain believes in low, simple and fair tax structure. His tax reform plan includes tax cuts on middle class families, permanent repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), and permanent income and investment tax cut measures. McCain also pledged that he would make tax raising harder by increasing the ratio of voting majority to two third. He also vouched for cut in corporate tax, reward for saving, investment and risk taking, and would even allow first year deduction of equipment and technology investment. To sustain global competitiveness, and commitment to innovation and new technologies, McCain would seek pro-innovation tax cuts, ban new cell phone taxes and establish permanent tax credit equal to 10% of wages spent on R D. Moreover, he plans to cut retirement tax to ensure lower Medicare premiums. In order to eliminate wasteful spending, McCain will stop earmarks, pork-barrel spending and waste, reform civil service system to promote accountability, and good performance of federal work force. He plans to reform procurement program and cut wasteful spending in defense and non-defense programs. McCain promised budgetary reforms to give tax cut a fair chance and to stop damaging tax hikes. Reforming entitlement programs such as social security and medical growth for the retirees and seniors are also in McCain economic policy agenda. For effective enforcement of global trading rules, McCain will reduce barriers to trade. He plans to overhaul unemployment insurance and make it a program for retraining, relocating, and assisting workers who have lost a job. Under his national strategy for energy security, McCain plans diversification and conservation of energy source and reduce energy consumption. Hillary Rodham Clinton   Hillary Clinton announced economic stimulus package amounting to $110 billion, to tide over anticipated recession. The package include funds to deal with sub-prime mortgage crisis, to help lower income families pay for higher home energy costs, to extend unemployment insurance, and a hint at providing some tax refund. Clinton’s energy policy takes into consideration reduction of greenhouse gas emission 80% from 1990 levels by 2050, slashing of foreign oil imports by two thirds from projected levels by 2030, transforming U.S. into a green economy and provides approximately 5 million jobs from clean energy over the next decade. Clinton supports cap and trade which allows companies to trade carbon credits, and supports other conservation measures such as releasing oil reserves, increasing number of hydrogen powered vehicles, ratification of Kyoto protocol, and nuclear power as a part of energy solution. Clinton vouches for fair trade practices and welcomes U.S. Commerce Department’s call for 108.3% duty on imports from Chinese candle-makers which sought to circumvent an anti-dumping duty order. In health care front, Hillary Clinton supports incremental health care reforms which would provide federally accessed universal health care for not so well off families by subsidizing insurance premiums. Clinton’s New American Health Choices Plan include an â€Å"individual mandate† universal health care plan which requires health care coverage for all individuals and   projected cost of the plan is $110 billion annually and expected to be generated by repealing some of the Bush’s tax cuts and thereby increasing some tax to higher rates than which existed in 2000. Hillary Clinton supports retaining social security tax cap which makes income in excess of $102,000 untaxable for social security, which leaves top 6% of income earners outside the social security tax net.

The Legal Classification of Men and Women :: Social Justice Legal Essays

Usually sex classifications were challenged by women who felt they deprived of equal legal treatment, but they were also challenged by men who felt women were given unfair legal protection. Originally, most of the gender specific legislation in the United States was passed because stereotypes regarding women pervaded the mentalities of many of our nation's lawmakers. Slowly the government realized that women had been sealed into the domestic sphere and attempted to reverse this discrimination by giving women special compensations. In some instances the treatment women received was leftover from old notions of role typing, while in others, laws directly tried to remedy harmful effects of the past. In both cases, men claimed their equal protection rights were violated by laws which separated women from men. In Stanley v. Illinois 1972, Peter Stanley challenged an Illinois statute which "automatically conferred custody on a married father and on a mother, married or unmarried, and automatically denied it to an unmarried father" after the death of a parent (Goldstein 196). Stanley claimed that his equal protection right, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, was violated because other parents who were similarly situated, that is, women and married men, were given a benefit which he was denied. A constitutional law must demonstrate a clear goal of the state, and represent the "least restrictive means to achieve those ends" (Mezey 16). In this case, however, the Supreme Court observed "that the State registers no gain towards its goals when it separates children from the custody of fit parents" (Goldstein 199). Clearly this law is a remnant of the past when women were thought to be the only caretakers of children. The underlying motive for this law was "the theory that an unwed father is n ot a "parent" whose existing relationship with his children must be considered" (Goldstein 198). While it is common for the state to defend their stereotypical legal relics on the grounds of "administrative convenience," the Court now identifies these laws as problematic (Reed v. Reed 1971, Frontiero v. Richardson 1973). "Procedure by assumption is always cheaper and easier than individual determination(,) but when the procedure... explicitly disdains present realities in deference to past formalities... it cannot stand" (Goldstein 200). Thus, the Illinois law which automatically awarded women the custody of their children, but not similarly situated men, was declared unconstitutional, because it was grounded in outdated stereotypes. Leon Goldfarb, in Calfifano v.

Policy and Performance of Indian Education Essay

In terms of demographic profile, India remains one of the youngest nations in the world with 38.2% of its population in the 0-5 year age bracket. This translates into the Indian Education system being one of the largest educational systems globally with a network of more than 1.2 mn schools and around 31,000 Higher education institutes. Education, being one of the important determinants of human welfare of any nation, the GoI has accorded priority for the promotion of education especially primary & secondary education in India. Correspondingly, the government’s spend on education as a percentage of GDP stood at 3% while accounting for 11.3% as a proportion of all public expenditure. However, the GoI is faced with several hurdles in terms of penetration across all education segments viz: Pre- school, K-12, Higher education etc as well as reaching out to the students in tier-III cities and rural areas. The GoI has therefore emphasised on Public Private Partnership (PPP) in education so as to augment the literacy rate from 74% as per the Census 2011. The educational segments i.e. Pre-school, K-12, Information & Technology (ICT) in schools and Higher education form the important constituents of the Indian education. Of the same, the Pre- school market in India still remains largely unorganised and under-penetrated. However, the ease of setting-up of pre-schools as well as the growing acceptability of pre-school concept in India augurs well for the industry. The K-12 institutes in India largely remain governed by the GoI accounting for 80.2% of the total 13.5 lakh schools in India. Of late, with greater interest evinced by the private corporates/ trusts / educational societies etc, the share of private institutions in the K-12 space has grown from 18.9% in FY07 to 19.8% during FY11. The scope of ICT in schools has also gained prominence in recent times through GoI’s programmes such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), ICT @ Schools etc. The penetration of ICT in schools however remains low especially owing to the slower pace of such roll-outs in the government owned or aided K-12 schools. In case of Higher education institutes, the ‘not-for-profit’ mandate coupled with the requirement of  affiliation from multiple regulatory bodies such as UGC, AICTE etc proves to be a roadblock for the entry of private institutes. However, in view of the rising enrolments in higher education coupled with the growing variety of educational streams, the private sector participation is expected to grow to catch in the growing penetration levels. CARE Research expects the size of the Indian Education System at US$ 102.1 bn with CAGR of 11.2% during FY11-15. Apart from the growth of educational segments as mentioned above, CARE Research expects the other trends such as GoI’s orientation towards PPP, entry of corporates and foreign educational institutions (especially in K-12 & Higher education), growing focus on the Distance education mode of learning and growing acceptability of the vocational courses to remain the key drivers to the growth of education in India. Introductory: Beginning with a brief statement on the educational situation on the eve of independence, In spite of all that had been achieved under the British Rule, we began our Freedom on a fairly low level of attainment in education in almost all respects. We then had 17 universities and 636 colleges (With a total enrolment of 238,000 students), 5,297 secondary schools with 870,000 students, implying that not even one youth in every twenty in the age-group 14-17 was in school, 12,843 middle schools with two million pupils and 1,72,661 primary schools with fourteen million students (which implied that only one child out of every three in the age-group 6-11 was in school). Vocational and technical education was but poorly developed, both at the school and university stages, and the supply of high level trained scientific man-power was very limited. Educational inequalities were very large, especially between one region and another, between urban and rural areas, between men and women, and between the advanced and intermediate castes on the one hand and the scheduled castes and tribes on the other. The standards of education were generally unsatisfactory, especially at the school stage, with too much of emphasis on English and too little stress on mathematics, science or the Indian languages. The percentage of literacy was only about fourteen and the total educational expenditure was just about Rs. 570 million or less than half a per cent of the national income. It was this challenging situation which the nation was called upon to reform whenit kept  its first tryst with destiny in 1947. The modern school system was brought to India, including the English language, originally by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay in the 1830s. The curriculum was confined to â€Å"modern† subjects such as science and mathematics, and subjects like metaphysics and philosophy were considered unnecessary. Teaching was confined to classrooms and the link with nature was broken, as also the close relationship between the teacher and the student. POLICY The Uttar Pradesh (a state in India) Board of High School and Intermediate Education was the first Board set up in India in the year 1921 with jurisdiction over Rajputana, Central India and Gwalior. In 1929, the Board of High School and Intermediate Education, Rajputana, was established. Later, boards were established in some of the states. But eventually, in 1952, the constitution of the board was amended and it was renamed Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). All schools in Delhi and some other regions came under the Board. It was the function of the Board to decide on things like curriculum, textbooks and examination system for all schools affiliated to it. Today there are thousands of schools affiliated to the Board, both within India and in many other countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Universal and compulsory education for all children in the age group of 6-14 was a cherished dream of the new government of the Republic of India. This is evident from the fact that i t is incorporated as a directive policy in article 45 of the constitution. But this objective remains far away even more than half a century later. However, in the recent past, the government appears to have taken a serious note of this lapse and has made primary education a Fundamental Right of every Indian citizen. The pressures of economic growth and the acute scarcity of skilled and trained manpower must certainly have played a role to make the government take such a step. The expenditure by the Government of India on school education in recent years comes to around 3% of the GDP, which is recognized to be very low. â€Å"In recent times, several major announcements were made for developing the poor state of affairs in education sector in India, the most notable ones being  the National Common Minimum Program (NCMP) of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The announcements are; (a) To progressively increase expenditure on education to around 6 percent of GDP. (b) To support this increase in expenditure on education, and to increase the quality of education, there would be an imposition of an education cess over all central government taxes. (c) To ensure that no one is denied of education due to economic backwardness and poverty. (d) To make right to education a fundamental right for all children in the age group 6–14 years. (e) To universalize education through its flagship program such as Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and Mid Day Market Overview India has the world’s largest population in the age bracket 5 to 24 years of about 450 million. It also has around 500 million in the 25 to 59 age bracket which constitutes the working population and is expected to continuously increase even as the world’s working population ages and diminishes. This phenomenon will make India a supplier of workforce to the entire world. In the wake of this reality, the Indian education system should therefore be able to produce a workforce which is globally competitive and thus reap its demographic dividend. Literacy in India is one of the key deterrents to socioeconomic progress of the country. The Indian literacy rate currently stands at 74% compared to 12% at the end of British rule in 1947. Although there has been a six fold growth, the level is well below the world average literacy rate of 84%, and India currently has the largest illiterate population compared to any other nation in the world. A quick look at Exhibit 1 below provides an insight into the current literacy levels of Indians. Therefore, as India moves ahead on the path of globalization, it needs to overhaul its education system to meet the future demands. Enrolment Levels Despite having the largest Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K- 12) population globally, India has a low enrolment rate in schools, especially at the senior secondary level. The enrolment percentage has fallen from 113% at  primary to 81% at middle school and then to 31% at secondary & higher secondary levels. Low enrolment and high drop-out rates are caused by low availability of schools in rural areas, low awareness, and prevalence of child labour amongst lower income strata. The enrolment percentage is calculated as the ratio of total numbers of students enrolled in specified grades to total number of children in that age group. At the primary level this is upwards of 100%, as even children greater than 11 years of age are enrolled in Grades 1-5. This is largely a rural phenomenon prevalent in Govt. schools across the country. Key Segments The Indian Education sector can be segmented under four broad heads, namely, Schooling, Higher Education, Vocational Education & Skill Development and Ancillary. The Exhibit 3 below provides an overview of the various education segments and their respective subsegments. Schooling Segment The schooling segment covers the largest population of our society as compared to any other form of education. The segment is also the largest education segment valued at USD 44 billion in 2011 and is expected to reach USD 144 bn by the year 2020. The market size of its various sub-segments with growth rates and projections for the year 2020 is mentioned in Exhibit 4. Out-of-School Children: The number of out-of-school children has declined from 25 million in 2003 to 8.1 million in mid–2009. The most significant improvements have been in Bihar, Jharkhand, Manipur and Chhattisgarh. The percentage of out-of-school children in highly populated states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar remains a cause of concern. Social Inclusion: Although there have been significant improvements in the proportion of children from socially disadvantaged groups in school, persistence gaps remain. Girls are still less likely to enroll in school than boys; in 2005, for upper primary school (Grades 6-8) girls’ enrolment was still 8.8 points lower than boys, for Scheduled Tribes (ST) the gender gap was 12.6 points and 16 points for Scheduled Castes (SC). In addition, ST and SC children are less likely to access their right to 8 years of schooling; the drop-out rate for ST children being 62.9% and 55.2% for SC children compared to a national average of 48.8% leaving school before completing Grade 8.

When Wwii Was Coming To An End The Allies, United States,

When WWII was coming to an end the Allies, United States, United Kingdom, French Republic and the Soviets, where coming together to figure out Germanys post war boarders and who would occupy each of the zones. It was also made clear that there would be equality of treatment for the German population throughout Germany no matter who is occupying the zone. 1 President Roosevelt never made it to Potsdam for the meeting he died in April 1945. President Truman took his place as president. In his few short weeks as Vice President Mr. Truman was not in on the loop about the development of the atomic bomb or any of the various difficulties that was evolving with the Soviet Russia. President Truman told the press, I felt like the moon, the†¦show more content†¦Churchill and many others knew that they need to contain or stop the spread of the Soviets control and communism in Europe. To help counter soviet expansion, President Truman came up with a policy in 1947 known as the Trum an Doctrine. In this plan Truman says we should support and aid countries that are trying to be a free people. This particular address was to aid Greece and help them survive as a free nation.4 In Truman s address to Congress he wanted to aid Greece and Turkey by providing them with free gifts of funds, and military/civilian resources to help build their economy and reconstruction of their cities.5 This would ultimately push out any Soviet control. This doctrine consequently became the groundwork for American foreign policies. Later in that year the European countries were hit with a harsh winter that cause an abundance of issues from famine to the stop of coal production, and the factories closing. This caused great concern for US official s as they feared a people who were hungry and in need would be easily persuaded to follow an uprising of a communist regime as seen in the previous war with Hitler. The Secretary of State at the time General George Marshall came up with a plan that we should aid countries in dire need. He wanted to the assist hurting countries to the return of economic health, which he says without it there could be no political stability and no peace. In Marshalls Speech he stated OurShow MoreRelatedThe Battle Of The World War II1414 Words   |  6 Pagesof the United States of America changed forever. At the time, the global conflict known as World War 2 had been brutally raging on for over two years. American forces had managed to stay out of the war. However, when the Japanes e bombed the naval base in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, the Americans could no longer hold out. On December 7, 1941, the United States of America entered WWII (â€Å"Origins of the Normandy Landing†). Before the Americans entered the war, Winston Churchill and the Allies (BritainRead MoreThe Battle Of The War II1414 Words   |  6 Pagesof the United States of America changed forever. 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