This assignment is much better when it’s an election year. But the election wasn’t that long ago. This is your chance to demonstrate an understanding of government, as a topic of current events and as a boring economics. This assignment focuses on applied knowledge only. There’s no creative skill whatsoever.
In this assignment, you must choose an official candidate’s position (and NOT a commentary about their position written by someone else), and explain how the candidate’s position relates to the lessons we have learned in class. Because this is a microeconomics class, you would be best off choosing a topic that is very specific. If you write your report about generalized promises such as “lowering taxes” or “creating jobs”, you will not be able to relate them to a microeconomics lesson. Be descriptive and demonstrate how the candidate’s position relates to concepts we have learned in class. All identified concepts must be contained in your source…do not talk about externalities if your source does not describe an externality.
You must also describe why you agree (or disagree) with the candidate’s position on that topic. Your opinion does not need to be consistent with the ideas in the book or classroom discussion, but you should demonstrate that you understand the perspective given by the candidate and the prevailing economic theory. All of these political ideas have some economics inside of them…it’s just hard to find sometimes.
The Internet Archive saves entire websites for the future. It’s at (https://www.archive.org/), and you can go there and look at one of the political candidates’ websites from before the election. After the election ends, most politicians’ websites change to a “Thank you message”. In order to see their positions on political topics, you will need to choose a date from before the election.
Requirements
Length: The writing assignment must be at least 900 words long. It can be more, if you need more. If the writing assignment comes up short of 900 words, the grade received will be a percentage that corresponds to the percentage of the length of the assignment. For example, if the writing assignment is only three hundred words long, the grade received will be reduced by 66%.
Grammar: The “Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level” readability statistic must be at or above the ninth grade when entered into a Microsoft Word document. If you do not know what or how this is measured, long and detailed explanations are readily available on the internet. Any writing assignment with a Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level below ninth grade will receive a score of zero.
Citations: A full bibliographic citation of your source is required for this assignment. If you need to cite something from your textbook (for this or any other assignment), feel free to do so without including a full citation.
Submission
Submission Date: April 28, 2018. 11:59pm
All students must turn in their writing assignment before the deadline. There is only one way to
submit this document:
• You may submit your assignment only to the Laulima Dropbox. Your submission must be in rich text format or plain text, which is possible from any word–processing program. The filename should read:
wa02ref#name.rtf (writing assignment two, your four–digit reference number, your first name or nickname, then “rich text format”. For example, mine
would be “wa029601jerm.rtf”. My reference number is #1!).
Early Submission Checklist
As a reward for preparing your assignments ahead of time, I will offer an incentive for early submission. Any written assignment turned in by the early deadline will only need two–thirds of the word count that is written on the front of this sheet. For example, if the writing assignment is required to be 900 words long, an assignment that is turned in by the early deadline (and conforms to the requirements below) will only need to be 600 words long.
The early submission deadline for this writing assignment is April 24 (11:59pm).
For students who will turn in their assignments according to the original due date, this rough draft
checklist is due (in the Laulima discussion board) April 21 (11:59pm).
Any writing assignment that is turned in early and are embarrassingly out–of–touch will be returned to
the student. Just resubmit a better version by the regular deadline.
Electronic file name of your writing assignment (this is the name of the file that you put in the dropbox, NOT the subject line of your email: ________________________________________________
Number of sources with complete bibliographic citations (a number, like “0” or “1”): ______ Who is this writing assignment about? __________________________________
What is the topic of this writing assignment? If it’s super–specific, such as raising or lowering one specific tax or changing one government program, it’ll be good. If it’s overly–general, like lowering ALL taxes or “helping people”, it’s going to be terrible. Why does someone always choose “helping people”?
__________________________________________________________________
Did this person win? YES NO
Where did you get information about this person’s views?
? From the campaign website (or an archived version of the website)
? From the government website (this is OK, especially if the candidate was elected) ? From an article written by a reporter about this candidate (this is bad. Don’t do this)
Which economics concepts are you going to describe in this writing assignment?
(circle all the concepts you include in your writing assignment. Discussing more than three or four of these terms is NOT suggested and will likely result in a very bad writing assignment. Also these are not all the terms. If you use other terms, write them in.)
PUBLIC GOODS COMMON RESOURCES PRIV A TE GOODS
NA TURAL MONOPOL Y EXTERNALITIES DEADWEIGHT LOSS
ABILITY TO P A Y PRINCIPLE BENEFITS RECEIVED PRINCIPLE PROGRESSIVE / REGRESSIVE T AX PROPORTIONAL T AX
A VERAGE / MARGINAL T AX RA TE
PRICE CEILING PRICE FLOOR
Which official definitions will you include in your writing assignment?
(name all of the official definitions you will include in your writing assignment. If you are including a term above that has an official definition…put it in your writing assignment)
Did you include your opinion about this politician’s views? _____ (this is part of the assignment)
