today was a special day: a day in the middle of the week where tommy and i got absolutely no work done!
no wait, it was more than that. barack obama came and spoke at nc state and i stood in line for a few hours yesterday to get two tickets, so tommy and i both got to go hear him. i figured that it was a rare opportunity to have the president come speak at your school while you're a student there, so it was worth the hours of waiting. go wolfpack!
(yes, we were sitting behind him. but we actually had really decent seats, although you can't tell with this sad horribly-zooming-in camera that we have. we were sitting with a friend who said he'd send us his much better pictures, which i'll share with you if i ever get them!)
obama came to talk about his new american jobs act that he recently came up with. and i must say, it was really interesting listening to his speech as an english teacher who's been talking about rhetoric the first few weeks of class. i was taking notes the whole time, writing things down i could talk with my students about his use of rhetoric and his reaching out to his audience, etc. it was awesome.
my opinions on the job act: i have no idea if the dang thing will work. i'm not an economist, and i don't understand how recessions and unemployment problems get solved. both parties say the EXACT SAME THING--"this act will/will not give people their jobs back! the american people deserve to have jobs! we need to get congress/the president to do something to make more jobs!"--which makes everything convoluted. and nobody KNOWS what type of legislation is going to work to fix this economy anyways. so i refuse to have an opinion on economic stuff because i just do not understand it.
(he did say something i don't necessarily agree with though--he said there was something in the bill that would make companies hire people who had been unemployed for more than six months. not sure how that's going to work, or why that's going to solve the depression, when that just means someone else will be unemployed longer. and also, why not just have people hire the most qualified people that apply for the job?)
but heck--it was really cool to hear and see him in person! look at the lucky people who got to shake his hand!
another tidbit to prove how charming nc state is: in the fight song (which i heard today for the first time--i don't have much school spirit) are the words "Go to hell, Carolina." (duke fans say the same thing. apparently we're not big unc fans around these parts.)
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing...love the pictures.
that is super cool Alyse... check that one off your list!
Yeah, I'll leave most of MY economic opinions about Obama out, but the one thing that any economist will tell you is that forcing a company to hire the people who have been unemployed longer will produce NO economic benefit or growth, rather, it is simply an appeal to those unemployed or underemployed who want to see Mr. President DO something. And do he may, with future ill consequences to be paid later... by us. That's the issue with it, a momentary political gain is usually always followed by a future economic price, if the gain is involved with artificial manipulation. If anything, it seems like firms will be stuck with lesser quality and lower skilled employes (those are generally the ones who are facing longer unemployment), so economic growth is bound to suffer. Quite possibly there would be less hiring under a mandate like that, as firms would rather give more work hours to their better and more efficient employees, or they would reduce wages for the new hires. There are always trade-offs. But, that is enough of a rant. A little bit of pride and excitement at the visit of our national leader surely must be of some positive value. Let's leave it at that.
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