Articles by Rachael Murphey

Racism is a term used more and more frequently in recent American public discourse. After a rise of concern following the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, usage and understanding of the term has never fully gone away. With large-scale street protests provoked by the Black Lives Matter movement, the term has captured more of the public discourse than ever before. Along with the rise of concerns about general racism, there is greater discussion around the ideas of systemic racism an...

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, along with additional studies have compared the health care coverage options and outcomes of policies in 13 of the world's highest-income countries. These included the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada and Australia. These studies were conducted prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. According to th...

RAISE is an acronym for Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment, which reduces immigration intake and reforms the process for accepting immigration applications. The Basic Objectives of RAISE: 1) Cuts in half the amount of green cards extended each year by 50% 2) Requires that immigrants who receive citizenship are employable and are not added liability for American taxpayers 3) Offers priority to potential immigrants who have mastered English and later requires literacy in E...

Current news and politics are filled with discussion on the minimum wage. Most of the talk concerns raising the minimum wage to a level where the average person making minimum wage is making a living wage. When considering changes to minimum wage, it’s helpful to examine its history, original purpose and how it has changed over the decades. RELATED ARTICLE: Dispatch from Seattle: Will $15 Minimum Wage Actually Work? The first minimum wage law in the US was created as part of the Fair Labor St...

Student loan debt is always the same, whether you make the choice to attend online college or reside at an educational institution. The U.S. has created a new generation of people that have more student loan debt than at any other time in our history. According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, we are in a whopping $1.3 trillion debt from student loans. 1. Income vs. Debt Ratio In many countries such as Sweden, most students have an average college debt of $20,000. In Sweden specifically, 70% of c...

Since roughly the 1980s, certain norms on US college campuses have shifted dramatically. In cases of sexual harassment or sexual assault, the administrative default has swung from precautionary skepticism to, in a word, gullibility. Administrative policy is now being led by a contingent of activists for whom it is anathema to question the word of any self-proclaimed victim. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The Duke Lacrosse case, and the ensuing humiliation of Rolling Stone, should hav...

With the latest missile attack on Syria, it's hard to believe that the heart-wrenching conflict abroad has been going on for nearly six years and has taken the lives of more than a quarter of a million people. This article will succinctly explain what's going on, and how it happened. Who is Fighting? There are two main rival camps in Syria. On one hand, there are the soldiers who support the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. On the other hand, there are a group of rebel fighters who no lon...

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement between mostly Asia-Pacific countries. The original countries included the United States, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, Peru, Australia, Brunei, Chile Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and possibly Korea in the future. America exited this agreement with an executive order issued by President Trump on January 23, 2017, just two days after he entered office. The inclusion in this trade pact would have affected about 40 percent of America's i...

When political leaders discuss tax reform, they often refer to "progressive taxation." What does this term mean? What pros and cons does this type of tax structure offer today? Toward a Concept of Income Fairness When the United States government first implemented a system of taxation, economists soon observed a uniform tax rate would fall more heavily upon poor people than wealthy ones. Why? Just consider this example. If one household earns $100,000 and another earns $30,000 and both pay a ...