GPHC 2019-2020

Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index shows how companies in the fashion industry are mass producing with environmental and social sensitivity and awareness, and being open about it. Especially with times changing and the defense for our environment on the rise, this index has really help ed keep companies in check. It has also helped shed light on some of the companies that need improvement. The average score of all 250 companies analyzed is a sad 23%. While it is better than last year, (which was 21%) 23% is still a very low number. Many athletic wear companies that were getting heat in the 90s are up to 70%, while certain luxury companies are below 40%.  This number means that many of these luxury clothing brands are not disclosing their manufacturing policies and commitments. Some companies choose to not disclose for the purpose of a negative effect on consumers. There are 10 brands that even scored a 0 on the index this past year. With the dr...

All the way back in 2018 the Trump Administration did away with the Obama Administration’s National Security Council which was in place to protect the US from situations such as this current COVID-19 crisis. The Council had many professionals that could’ve helped alert the US public about COVID-19 once the information was received by US intelligence that there was a highly contagious virus in China in November 2019. Instead of the Administration immediately taking action to try and prevent the arrival of COVID-19 in the US they decided to downplay the whole situation calling it a “hoax” in a campaign rally in late February which can be seen as an abuse of power. Thus resulting in a rapid spread of the virus throughout the US. Then attempted to cover up his administration’s negligence by blaming China for giving the US the virus, however they did not notify WHO about the possible pandemic when they first started showing cases; but China should not be blamed for the US government's...

Video Games and Individual Power I really enjoyed this article. I think the most important point he makes is that video game narratives are almost always driven by the player character, who often has supernatural strength. Especially in games where the player is up against a vast and powerful organization, like an evil government or criminal gang, it is usually a one versus all situation. This sort of gameplay fulfils our fantasies of power, and to tell the truth, is a whole lot of fun. But in reality, change is rarely driven by one person, but by large groups of people standing together. To be fair, many games over the years have been able to reflect the power of collective action. Real time strategy games pit huge armies against each other, civilization games deal with the affairs of world countries. At the end of the day, nonetheless, the player as an individual is in control; even if they are commanding an entire army, it is one person calling all of the shots. This is a fu...

From the beginning of time, humans have been pack animals who care for each other. Insurance is an extension of this: we all pay in so that whoever is in need can be taken care of. As Nial Ferguson points out, the more people are in on this sort of system, the better it works. But he later makes the interesting claim that insurance removes people’s incentives to work, using the example of stagflation in Japan in the nineteen-seventies. According to Ferguson, the reason for stagflation in Japan was that the social safety net (a form of nationwide insurance) was so strong that people stopped feeling the need to work! I disagree with this claim. Firstly I will discuss the argument in general, and then I will talk about the example he gave. The argument is that if a social safety net is in place that prevents people from starving, going without medical care, or dying by various other forms, people will lack incentives, and will therefore stay home. Distilled further: without the threat...

Izabella Curtis Mr. Roddy GPHC 29 April 2020 Insurance Blog Throughout the video what I found most interesting is car insurance. Actually all types of insurance are super interesting because of what is considered a key factor. Car insurance uses really interesting factors such as driving record, age, marital status, home location, the cars made, and the cars model. I understand the driving record and what type of car you have but I don't understand what age and marital status has to do with your car insurance. Car insurance relies on your driving record because if you have gotten into many accidents or have had many tickets it shows you are not a responsible driver and you will have high insurance because you are more likely to get into an accident. Age is a factor because there are many studies that show that teen drivers are irresponsible and easily distracted. Also Just being a new driver is a risk factor from the start. Married drivers are seen as more financially stable and s...

Charlie McGill Mr. Roddy GPHC 4/29/2020 Coronavirus and Medicare for All As you all know, I am a proponent of Medicare for All in the United States. This is for many reasons, which I will briefly explain now. First, and most importantly, Medicare for All saves lives. Yale researchers published a study in The Lancet  on February 15 which stated that Medicare for All would save around 68,000 lives per year if enacted. The second reason I support Medicare for All is because it would cover the 37 million Americans who have no health insurance and provide better and more thorough insurance to the 41 million Americans who are underinsured. The third reason is Medicare for All's cost effectiveness. Conservative estimates state that the average American family pays $12,000 for health insurance annually; under Medicare for All, that cost would be eliminated and the increase in taxes to cover single-payer health insurance would average at around $500. Along with that, our current he...

In this episode of The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson discussed the rise of insurance and how people handle risk. Hurricane Katrina was mentioned as an example of a time that insurance failed. St Bernard Parish, New Orleans was completely inundated by Katrina in a mere 15 minutes leaving only 5 houses out of the 26,000 unflooded. Over 2,000 people were killed because of the hurricane and subsequent flooding, 148 in St. Bernard alone. Following Katrina, New Orleans suffered a huge financial crisis because people couldn’t live there anymore since they were unable to insure their houses. I chose to further research how a single natural disaster had such a large financial impact. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana wrote a total of $13 billion in homeowners insurance premium and received $1 billion in profit over the course of 25 years. When Katrina hit, homeowner insurance carriers lost $8 billion. Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donleon claims Katrina was “the worst insured loss ...

This chapter of the Ascent of Money talked about insurance, different types of insurance and the history behind it. Scotland was the first country to have insurance and that type of insurance was life insurance. It was created primarily for widowed women because at the time women were not as often a part of the workforce. Life insurance allowed these women to be financially stable if their husband passed away. Life insurance considers many things in order to calculate the amount of money and profit. Things like age, gender and occupation were all factors.  Life insurance was the first, but there are countless types of insurance. From flood insurance to car insurance, anything can be insured really. In its essence, insurance is something you can buy to protect yourself from losing money. One type of insurance that has had a massive effect on my life is flood insurance. Flood insurance is a type of property insurance that deals with property loss during a flood. From the time I wa...

While researching insurance, I found a lot of articles discussing healthcare and a potential healthcare bubble. 17.7% of the US economy is based on healthcare. Many healthcare experts suspect that there is a healthcare bubble that could burst at any moment. We cannot be certain that there is a bubble because it has not popped yet. However, many people suspect there is a one because healthcare services and medication are so expensive that most people cannot pay for them without insurance. Therefore, health insurance companies have to consistently pay for check-ups, procedures, and medications for each of their clients. Because of this, health insurance is very expensive, and many Americans do not have sufficient coverage. This leads to a lot of debt that has to be paid by the general population and insurance companies. Some claim that the reason medical prices are so inflated is because health insurance companies work differently than most other insurance companies.  For example,...

As someone who has just started driving, I’ve been reminded countless times how high my insurance will go up if I get into an accident. This has caused me to wonder how much does car insurance actually cost and how much would it go up depending on how we mess up? I asked my parents how much my car insurance cost, and although they would not give me an exact number, they said the average teenage car insurance is around $6,000 per year, for a girl at least. On average, car insurance for a boy is 14% higher than what it would be for a girl, as statistically boys get into more accidents than girls. After a single accident where you are at fault, your rate can go up 46% which is crazy! Hypothetically one day I had a friend over, and as the friend was reversing out of my driveway, she hit my car and dented it pretty badly. SO hypothetically if she had filed the accident under her insurance, her rate would have gone up a crazy amount. But, if in this hypothetical situation her mom had hit m...

Insurance & Katrina Something I found interesting in this chapter of Ascent of Money was how insurance companies dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Insurance was a huge part of why it was so hard for Louisiana to recover from Katrina because according to the book, getting insurance for a house in low-lying areas of New Orleans that were most affected by the hurricane is nearly impossible. Because of this, getting mortgages on houses also next to impossible. Hurricane Katrina was a really expensive disaster: there were 1.75 million property and casualty claims, and the insurance losses were estimated to be $ 41 billion.  Because of Katrina, we were able to see the defects of an insurance system where responsibility was split between private insurance companies and the federal government. Private insurance companies were responsible for protecting against wind damage, and the government was in charge of protecting against flooding. A big problem arose when in...

Ascent of Money 4: Insurance The overarching theme for this episode of Ascent of money focused on insurance and how we as people do everything in our power to overcome and/ or avoid risk. One event that the author focussed on in order to stress why insurance was crucial but also complicated was Hurricane Katrina which was a violent hurricane that took place in 2005. This event really caught my attention and I found it extremely concerning. Insurance failed both during and after this disaster and was unable to help citizens in the way it should have after the entire city of New Orleans was ruined. Insurance groups were claiming to not have the power to help citizens and were telling families excuses such as "read the fine print." People were unable to insure their homes after the crisis, and insurance companies completely refused to pay up on insurance claims after the hurricane. Because this was such a terrible disaster and would have cost insurance companies so much, the...

The one thing that I found interesting about this episode of AoM was the idea of the welfare state. While Niall Ferguson criticizes it, I think that it in theory doesn't sound that bad. He uses Japan as an example of why it can't work, but I feel like most of his argument as to why it didn't work was based around the country's demographics issues. However, would that mean in a country with a less top heavy population a welfare state would work better? It just seems to me like a welfare state could still feasibly work, and that it just runs into problems like every other economic system. The other thing that interested me was hurricane Katrina and Louisiana, and how the area became effectively uninsurable. I think that it is important to us as Houstonians considering that many of us were affected by Harvey, and now getting flood insurance might be more difficult. I remember reading an article about some of the affected people, and many of them didn't have any kind o...

In part of of The Ascent of Money, it is discussed the effect Hurricane Katrina had on the insurance industry in New Orleans. And while I know that the damage there was caused primarily by issues with the levies meant to protect the city, the natural disaster aspect made me think about a related issue that is very pressing right now, climate change. Specifically, seeing how the insurance industry reacted to this natural event made me think of a concept we recently learned about in economics, predictive markets. In economics we looked at how markets can sometimes be some of the best predictors of things that are typically very difficult to predict. An example we received was how the yields of grape crops are very temperature sensitive, so weather has a strong effect on their market. We looked at a case study where researchers realized that if they wanted to predict seasonal temperatures in California, watching trends in the stocks of California grape companies was actually a more consis...

I've talked to my parents about our finances before, but for the purposes of this blog, specifics really don't matter. What truly matters is exactly what these specifics will entail for the future. We're in a pretty secure spot right now; college finances aren't really an issue, and we do not run nor invest in businesses that could potentially be negatively impacted by the global pandemic that we all know is occurring at this very moment. However, this wasn't always the case. The reason my father moved to the city of Houston from Berkeley, California (my birthplace) in the first place was for businesses opportunities with his sister, who was already here. This ended basically an entire lifetime of living in the Golden State for him, which was pretty significant. Things were going well with he and his sister's real estate ventures when the late-2000s Great Recession hit. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this caused a great deal of stress and panic for my parents an...

John Mazziotti Mr. Roddy GPHC April 28th, 2020 AOM 4 Insurance Blog The fourth episode of ‘The Ascent of Money’ discussed the creation and rise of insurance. The main example of insurance in America that was shown in this episode is New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina. During Hurricane Katrina, many private insurers had coverage for floods caused by rain, but not for the storm surge and flood that was a result of the levee system. The result of this catastrophe not only destroyed many homes, but it also allowed the insurance companies to jump through a loophole that in this case caused many individuals to become financially unstable or even bankrupt. Furthermore, parts of New Orleans and coastal Mississippi that were hit hard by Katrina, are now considered by most insurance companies as “uninsurable”. Insurance in my life whether it be health or car insurance is something that I’m very grateful to have. There’s a lot of ‘insurance inequality’ throughout the United States, ...

Insurance seems to be worthwhile especially as you get older. It protects us from major catastrophic events.  However, insurance is also expensive.  Many companies offer insurance such as medical, life, long term care, disability, etc.  The bigger the company, typically, the less expensive the insurance.  The cost of insurance is also an example of an item that is more available for those who have, than those that do not have.  Many people cannot afford insurance.  I think the question one should ask before getting insurance is, is can I afford it or can I not afford it?  I think one should weigh the risk of having the insurance versus not having the insurance.  For example, should everyone have medical insurance?  If you are young and healthy, do you really need it?  Do I need long term care insurance for when I get old?  When should I get life insurance?  These are all questions that need to be answered by whatever your situ...

One thing that I found interesting in episode 4 was the bias I noticed in how Niall Ferguson presented the history. It prompted me to start wondering about how the way we learn about history and economics might be influenced by a pro-capitalist, anti-socialist bias in some ways as we live in a very strongly capitalist country. I did a little digging and found that in general, economists often come to conclusions that correlates with their political ideologies, likely due to the subtle influence of implicit bias. I also looked more specifically into Niall Ferguson's ideology and criticisms of him. He is an amazing scholar and historian, but as I look at some criticisms of him, I take great interest in wondering about which criticisms are simply more emotional responses, and which are more valid and fact based. Ferguson has been dubbed a "neo-conservative" and I think that recognizing his stance is important to take into account when seeing how he interprets history. He has...

       I think what we can all take away from this is don't live in Louisiana. But there are other things that could be learned about insurance and housing as well. Being Houstonians, we can easily relate to the dangers of hurricanes and needing flood insurance. My own house was built more than 5 ft higher than it needed to be, just to avoid it being flooded. Because almost 95% of homes were flooded in Hurricane Katrina, insurance companies are more than cautious about insuring these homes. They might have better luck selling flood insurance to people living in Colorado.        One thing that I took away from this is that it's very important to do research before you decide to buy or rent a house/apartment. Houston is a great example of this because we live in a large flood plain. I think it's pretty common for realtors to leave out information about the houses they sell pertaining to flooding and past disaster events. Especially in Houston, I've...

       This past J-Term I had the privilege to be in Dr. Ott's Personal Finance class. One of the few things we focused on the most was the stock market- how it works, how people make a living off of it, and how to invest in it. Dr. Ott especially loved the story of Enron, it's a true Texas story. I just can't believe people would think it was a good idea to invest in a company that was only showing their future earnings, none of which later showed to be correct. It's true that one could try to predict the future of the stock market, but this is generally not very possible. For instance, in our modern past 4 months, we have all been shown the possible volatility of the stock market.        I'm not necessarily well versed in the stock market, so please bare with me. Because of our international pandemic, many of the facets of our economy have been considered non-essential. Things you'd pay for like haircuts, that cute dog sweater you know Fido nee...

In the video it discussed Hurricane Katrina and how many people were denied their insurance claims after the storm. I found this very interesting, and I've always thought that the events of Hurricane Katrina were fascinating. My whole family went to school at Tulane, so New Orleans has been apart of my life for a while. My parents have distinct memories from the hurricane that they've shared, and they had friends who lost their homes, and much of their livelihood due to the storms impact. It took so long for the city to build itself back up, which it is still in the process of doing, even after all these years, and I think insurance has something to do with that.  One of the main reasons why people were denied their insurance claim was because the insurance companies would look for loopholes in their agreements to get out of paying their customers. Many homeowners were left with nothing on their properties besides the foundation after their houses were swept away. The ...

The Dow is a stock market index that tracks the daily price of shares of stock of 30 large publicly-owned companies sold on the US stock exchanges. The Dow is also one of the most commonly followed equity records. For the last year, the market has had an interesting curve. It was an upward trend before dropping earlier this year. The market seems to have peaked on February 13th this year before majorly dropping a week later. From about February 20th all the way to around March 20th the market continued to drop further and further. But come March 23rd the market has been rising. It is not yet where it was before the drop but it seems to be continuing to rise. Taking into account the video we recently watched for The Ascent of Money and what we have learned about the stock market, we can't be too sure if this upward trend will continue or not because the stock market is constantly surprising us. We know COVID-19 is the main driver behind this drop because this is a worldwide issue an...

AOM 4 Blog Sarah Laskin This chapter talked about insurance, different kinds of insurance, and the history behind insurance. Scotland was actually the first country to have insurance (well, insurance companies). The book explained that the first type of insurance was actually life insurance, and it was made for widows, as back in that time women didn’t really work, or if they did it was not nearly as much as their male spouses. So, if their husbands died suddenly, the household would have no way to make money. The life insurance was calculated based on a variety of things to get the most profit: after all, there has to be money gained. Age, health, gender, and line of work were among things considered when first coming up with the ideas for life insurance.  Now, there are many types of insurance, which you can get for almost anything. From floods and other natural disasters to life, virtually anything can be insured. Insurance companies make money by having the customer...

I recently did a lot of research on insurance, specifically health insurance, for my math IA. This was a very interesting project, and as a student considering a medical field, health insurance has been a topic of interest for me for a while. Another type of insurance brought up in The Ascent of Money that I know very little about is life insurance. I found it very interesting that, according to the book, life insurance was the first type of insurance. I wanted to do some more research on the evolution of life insurance from this early form to what it is now.  Just like other types of insurance, modern life insurance comes in several shapes and sizes. A plan depends on how much money you want your beneficiaries to receive, how long-term you want your life insurance to last, how old you are and any underlying health conditions, what you want the money for, and etc (Nerd Wallet).  According to AIG Direct, the idea of life insurance dates back as far as ancient greece. P...

The DOW Jones has seen its biggest drop ever in the last month. This is because there's a global pandemic that's preventing us from existing in close proximity to each other, an activity that's pretty central to the economy as we've built it. I don't really know what the DOW drop means. The DOW number, even at its lowest point following coronavirus, was higher than its peak before the 2007/2008 market crash. Then again, maybe population growth and raised costs of living mean that comparing the DOW number at two times doesn't serve as a relative measure of how well things are going at both. I don't think I have a strong enough grasp on how things work to take a guess at how the next sixth months will play out. As we live through one of the more notable disasters of modern history, there's people pointing to the fallout as evidence current systems don't work, while others say current systems are the only reason it isn't much worse. There's a lo...

Callista Wilson Mr. Roddy Global Politics and Historical Contexts Peoples’ instincts to reduce monetary risk through insurance, welfare, and hedge funds, strongly relates to how they perceive and handle other risks in life. There are always things we can control, and cannot control. The things we can control determine our identities in more subjective, human ways, whereas events or situations beyond our control determine our motivations, bodies of experience, and overall resilience. In finances, risk is natural and unavoidable. People can try to predict the future, however uncertainty still remains to varying degrees depending on what is being predicted, and depending on peoples’ confidence; which can sometimes change without clear explanations. Countries which implement welfare programs such as the United States and Japan help those experiencing hardship or exploitation by ensuring base-level support at a minimum. Although welfare reduces risk for individuals, it can hurt nat...

The DOW, otherwise known as the Dow Jones industrial average is a stock market index which measures the stock production of 30 big companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States of America. Due to the coronavirus pandemic the DOW market has had a very large drop in value. In February 2020 the Dow was at a high of training points ($29k) but it has recently dropped to $18k due to COVID-19. Stay at home orders and social distancing are one of the main reasons why there is a large dip in the DOW. My sister read an article to me published by Harvard stating that social distancing will continue for two years. While I hope this is not the case, the DOW market will not be going up for a while.  However I have heard of some states opening up restaurants again and getting rid of social distancing. If this is the case I feel like the DOW will drop even more than it has dropped now because people will continue getting more sick. Maybe people will learn how to adapt to social distanc...

Stock market blog Sarah Laskin The coronavirus epidemic has made the world’s economy change drastically in a short period of time. Because of the corona epidemic, citizens have to stay 6 feet apart at all times and wear masks. Healthcare and safety has hit all major countries hard, affecting production of all goods and services.  The coronavirus started in China, a top producer of goods due to the cheap labor laws and not as many safety laws. It spread quickly, especially in rural areas due to lack of education and prevention techniques. Then, once it hit factories it spread even further and eventually globally due to infected goods being sent out from compromised workers.  The price of oil has dropped drastically since the outbreak, and gas prices followed in suit. Some market analysts predict gas prices to go down to as low as 1.25/gallon.  Now, our workforce has to change drastically to compensate with the health regulations. Stores and gas stations hav...

The Dow Jones average is a way for those unfamiliar with the stock market to see it's current status without having to manually look at the individual corporations. Looking at it now, well, it ain't lookin' too great. It hit it's ultimate low around March 23, compared to simply a month earlier, it dropped about 10,000. As of now, it sits at a relatively low 23-24K. If it was not obvious, this is caused by the coronavirus. The entire world is in a panic as of now, at least most of it, due to the pandemic, businesses that thrived off of people being outside are suffering, though most of the stock market crash is not due to the companies failing, but rather due to the number of people that believed the market would crash. The coronavirus was and still is, very threatening to investors, most of which are over or at the risky age. This causes them to be scared of the virus and sell all their stocks. Because of this, the stock market began to crash, as the pandemic got worse ...

Dow Market The Dow Jones Industrial Average, better known as the DOW, is a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 30 large companies. Recently, the Dow market has seen a very significant decrease in value. Although, this February, the Dow was at a quick skyrocketing high of 29,551 points and just as quickly dropped to 18,591 points by the end of March. Now this is due to the coronavirus pandemic. As of the current state of the Dow market remains as low as 23,475, and this is due to the economy unexpectedly forced to close non-essential businesses and consumers forced to stay home and not contribute to society. Now that Americans can no longer contribute, spending is at an all time low because of social distancing. Also the fact that a large amount of citizens are currently unemployed and are no longer being paid many people are losing their homes, going bankrupt and simply cannot be considered contributors. Something that is driving this drop in the Dow is that ...

The Dow Jones Industrial average is an index that measures the stock values of some of the largest publicly traded firms in the United States. It has had a rough year, largely because of the coronavirus. The threat posed to businesses by the virus is straightforward: people spending more time inside leads to less consumption. If people can’t go outside, how will restaurants stay open? If people have no need to drive, who will buy gas? When everyone stays home, money in the economy ceases to change hands, and the Dow, at least to some extent, reflects this. Its lowest point was March 23rd, which was over 35 percent down from the all time-high. Since then, however, it has slightly recovered. This is primarily due to governmental relief, which has been especially generous to big businesses.  This brings up questions and issues of power. Boeing, for an example, which has spent exorbitant amounts on stock buybacks in recent years, has received a hefty sum from the federal governmen...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has seen a significant decrease in the value of the stock market. Just this February, the Dow was at an all-time high of 29,551 points and then subsequently dropped to 18,591 at the end of March due to the increased severity of the global coronavirus pandemic. Now in late April, the Dow Jones remains at a low of 23,475. Uncertainty and public fear surrounding COVID-19 is a huge factor behind the current state of the Dow market. The economy has fallen to unprecedented levels as people are being forced to stay home and all non-essential businesses are being closed for the time being. Americans are spending less because they are confined to their houses and many of them have lost their income. The US government is responding by bailing out bankrupt corporations and releasing stimulus packages to citizens in hopes of restoring confidence in the stock market. The Dow will not be able to rise again until the coronavirus is controlled, ideally with the develo...