Freakenomics

In the movie Freakenomics, the most interesting segment in my opinion was the name section. They did many different polls and questioned many people, to see what they thought of the impact a name can have. While it proved to be true that the names did have a racial effect in the application for jobs world, overall the names did not predict how a person will end up living their life. Another reason I liked this section is because I can relate to it. My name was going to be Zeek, but when my mom looked up what that name would make me become, she changed it to Zachary. Zeek means an uneducated, toothless, hillbilly, so for obvious reasons, I was not allowed to be named Zeek.

Externality in Supersize Me

The main externality in the movie, Supersize Me, is the negative effect that the fast food industry has on a persons health. While McDonalds is selling food for a relatively cheap price, the negative effects the food will have on your body is terrible and will end up costing you more money in the long run. The definition of externality is the effect something will have on the surroundings. McDonalds is a very good example of a negative externality, it negatively effects the people's health.

Externalities in Super Size Me

An obvious externality in the movie Super Size Me are the health risk involved with fast food and over processed food. But we another externality involved with fast-food chain restaurants are the low wage jobs that they provide. While reading Nickel and Dimed, the importance of low wage jobs is just as important as the role of higher paid jobs. There has to be a balance in our society in the case of jobs, and companies such as McDonald's and Wal-Mart are some of the largest employers. People protesting the role of these businesses in our society should also consider the many jobs these businesses provide. Maybe fast food restaurants should offer healthier options but consumers do not have to eat the unhealthy options, it is all a personal choice.

Down Size My activity

I enjoyed watching super size me because it was a very eye opening experience. I was surprised how much i learned about our society and how are obesity is becoming a problem. One things that i found very interesting was the fact that George W. Bush was also a major factor in child obesity. When George W. Bush decided to put forth the no child left behind program he took away needed time from physical education. This in return took away children begin able to be active during the school year. Although it helped children in the educational system receive more attention to education, it also left them without any kind of activity to keep them healthy. This shows how little attention people were paying to our weight problem in America.

Super size me!

To start off, I recently saw a stat that stated that Mcdonald's burgers are 15% real beef while the other 85% was meat filler that led to forms of cancer. Normally, I would've have looked at that info given out by a Google Health tweet and just been surprised and went on with my day, but since we were focusing on McDonalds and Supersize Me at the time I saw that tweet I didn't simply brush it aside. This was the perfect example of McDonald's negative externalities that we have been talking about so much in class. The meat filler is cleaned with a form of ammonia leading to various forms of cancer. I thought it was an interesting movie and it definitely raises concern about eating McDonalds but I also think he over exaggerated a bit which threw me off.

If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

Check out the trailer to the film If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.  It's been nominated for an Academy Award.  How can you use the concept of negative externalities to explain the group's extreme behavior?

Supersize Me

We watched Supersize Me to see first hand the role that externalities play in our everyday lives. The moral of the externality story is that by eating really high processed, low quality food on a consistent basis you are putting yourself in danger of serious health risks. So although the food may be cheap at the time, the price you will pay in medical bills just does not balance out to make it worth it. You should invest in good quality, healthy food now, and not pay a lot in medical bills later. Other than the interesting lesson on externalities it was pretty gross to see how bad McDonald's is for not only your body, but your mind and spirit as well.

Freedom and fast food

In Super Size Me, the concept of externality is very clear. Everything has a hidden cost associated with it. I remember reading a report written by some vegan groups that every meat hamburger should be sold around $100 because to feed those animals it requires a lot of water, need land to farm corps to feed those animals, and therefor there is pollution. Another example would be if a company skip the processed of processing the wastes, their product will be cheaper and more competitive. If some company just dig out minerals without the obligation of taking care of the environment, they sure will be more competitive in the market. Total free market for cause is chaotic, only mafias and drug dealers will own everything. There is a cost to these business so the government, supposedly the collection of people's opinion, will stop it. Even in our body there are white cells to eat up those cancer cells. I have always thought that a sate of lawless free mind is a corrupted, and animal-like mind. Humanity, implies disciplines, control, and logic.

Underemployed woman receives aid from Tribune readers

Here is a link to a cool story in today's Chicago Tribune.  It parallels much of what we read in Nickel & Dimed.  I thought it was particularly touching that the Trib's readers responded with the level of support they did.  Way to go Chi-ca-go!

Externalities

I think Supersize Me was a great video that showed what externalities really are. I do think that it would be hard for low-income workers to get a great healthy meal say from Whole Foods, but you do not need Whole foods to have a balanced diet. No one really knows the health facts that are associated with McDonald’s and other fast food chains and this is causing low income workers’ weights to increase. I think Spurlock’s video was a great idea because he first hand, showed his viewers what fast food restaurants actually do to your health and what externalities actually are.

On The Topic of Mr. Spurlock and his "Little Adventure" With the Supersizes

I think that the film Supersize Me would actually be very helpful to any and all beginner level Economics classes. The reason I say this is that the issue of externalities is clearly quite an important one in the field of economics, sometimes shaping how businesses operate, and the two best examples of externalities that come from businesses that I can think of are pollution from factories and reduced health from fast food. The latter is perhaps the most widely used example, and Spurlock's film so clearly demonstrates the effects of McDonald's business model that nary a student would be able to forget the concept of an externality. Who, after all, can forget the sight of Spurlock throwing up out of a car window after consuming the result of McDonald's supersize business practice? It's a good film to begin with, albeit crude at times, but nonetheless illuminating from health standpoints and from an economic standpoint.

Freakonomics

What I thought was an extremely interesting part of the movie was the name segment. That if a parent were to name one twin Winner, and the other Loser, that it turns out Loser would be immensely more successful in life. It makes sense why too. One of the reasons that this part of the movie struck me was that I read an article over the summer about how names affect people. It talked about how names shaped one's personality but I thought that was crazy. I thought it didn't matter if my name was Steve or Kevin, I'd still be me. Freakonomics helped prove me wrong and that is why I liked it.

The Persuaders Post

I had never really thought that much about advertising till we watched The Persuaders in class. I found it pretty ridiculous that people put enough time and money into figuring out people's emotion towards advertisements. I understand that they need to do tests to see how it appeals, but one does not need to ask how they feel about eating a sandwich or something of that nature. This movie was a sad realization of what society has come to. People need to focus less on trying to make their products a part of American Culture and start figuring out how to create more jobs and better business plans. Song Airlines really made it far.

A culture shaped advertisement

A sentence form the film stuck with me "a culture of advertisement ceases to be a culture at all." I have always complained as a child way back in China that our poorly educated, old generation of manufactures have no idea how to shape the image of their product. The advertisements on TV were lame, the choices they took of naming the brands are dumb. While their quality of the goods might match those big brands, no one wants to buy them therefore they have to go the route of being cheap and sacrifice potential profit. The cheaper it is the less people would want to buy it. While I realize all those successful firm's ads are not like traditional ads at all they are just very cool, interesting or funny short films that make me want to watch them over and over again.

I thought this kind of things are only associated with the materialistic side of the world. But then its more than that. When I see some "real-artists" who make real art and live a life in a free manner, playing awesome music with a very old guitar that has a hole in it, I would want to pick up clothes in Good Will and somehow all of the objects there smells like California and "beat generation". In the film they actually got a group of Linux user and they said it felt like "being a part of the tribe." I am a Linux user myself and I know what they are talking about. By possessing certain object it demonstrate an attitude. It's like a religion, and instead of a cross with a guy nailed on it, we worship either an apple or a penguin. It has nothing to do it's value or profit, it's about message, and gospel.

The Persuaders - advertising changing our lives

I always knew that advertising was a interesting topic, but this movie really revealed how much time goes into even the tiniest aspect of a logo, like color or shape. I also found it to be an eye opening experience considering now i spend more time noticing logos and brands and how they are able to catch the attention of many people. I also think of how they are used to target certain age groups. Like at the grocery store all the colorful cereals with cartoon characters are strategical placed at the lower level of the shelf allowing kids to see them and it will appeal to them so they will attempt to beg their parents to buy it. Small things like that really have a big presence in the marketing world.

Freakanomics Video

I think while watching the film the most interesting segment to me was the idea of incentives and how they provide the ability for people to have a goal that will always motivate them to work. I thought the idea of how the girl was potty trained with candy was genius, until she began to understand the concept of hot it works and than began to abuse it. Also i thought that the children who were being payed to get good grades was pretty amazing. Some of them were able to really increase their grades while others were not effected by the incentive. It just goes to show that everyone takes incentives differently.

The Persuaders

What really stood out to me was the all the different ways Marketing can be twisted and formed to look like something other than the plain reality of manipulation. It's not lying, that would be an insult to the great profession because they don't actually need to lie about anything. I believe the best word is manipulation because the goal of Marketing is to take one product and make it as appealing as possible to as many people as possible, the only way to do that is exaggeration. This all makes perfect sense, and you would think that almost anything could be accomplished under these guidelines, but the sad truth is that if there is not a market for the product the marketing campaign can only do so much.

The Persuaders - advertising changing our lives

The movie "The Persuaders" made an excellent point that advertising has created a "second skin" in our society, and is becoming more like clutter than actual messages. Consumers are exposed to many types of commercial messages per day, including the radio, newspaper, television, and billboards. In fact, "the average American is exposed to 247 commercial messages each day" - Consumer Reports Website. And marketing and exposure of a company goes beyond just posters. Many consumers are marketers for a company without even knowing it; by wearing the logo of a brand, or talking about how much you love a certain company. The company's overall goal is to make their product blend it, to feel natural, not to appear as advertising. I found the invention of the "tevo" and tv recorder the most interesting. The company selling these products makes sales because it offers the television viewer the ability to record shows and then fast forward through the commercials. However, these companies also lessen the usefulness of commercials because the commercials are not being exposed to as many consumers since now they can skip through them. This is the cause of many youtube and pandora commercials, because the brands want to get their name out there somehow.

Advertising

The documentary that we saw gave me a different perspective on the world of marketing. As a consumer, advertising is interesting when you are unaware of a product, but once you have seen the same commercial over and over again, it becomes repetitive. The key is to keep commercials and television shows separate, otherwise there would be a backlash. I know personally that we have a Comcast recorder on our televisions at my house, and its fairly easy to skip over the commercials that you do not want to see.
And then there was the portion that discussed Song, the airplane company that went under and never recovered. The problem is that this airline was much different from other airlines, and didn't add something new. With advertising, it is about being first and being original. Song was neither and thus, in my opinion, went under. We are surrounded by consumerism because we are a capitalist society. We should have the right to have advertisments, but there is also a point when it becomes overkill.

How Names Affect an Application

I think that names and what you name your child do affect how your child appears on paper. Our world revolves around applications--applications for jobs, for high schools, for college. Often, the first step in an application process is how you appear on a resume, on paper. The first thing the interviewers read is your name, and often, according to Freakonomics, they make a snap judgement. There are names that sound "black," "white," "mexican," and such, and in some areas that are unofficially racially segregated, depending on the category that your child falls in because of their name, they may be at risk for not getting a certain job.