Shadow affairs within the US economy

The United States Economy is a complex system. There are many things that go into our economy running well or possibly recessing. I was able to learn what it means to be a part of a system for my Economics, Risking Value course. During this unit, we looked at a book titles “Doughnut Economics - 7 ways to think like a 21st-century economist.” by Kate Raworth. In order for my classmates and I to comprehend each principle, we each learned one and taught it back to each other. I had the fourth chapter, “Get Savvy with Systems”. As well as learning about doughnut economics, we had an external investigation to visit Rheaply, a business built on the concept of having a circular economy. To apply all of the things that I investigated, I elaborated more on an economic perspective. The perspective that I chose was something that I thought about a lot during this course, which is shadow affairs and corruption with the United states economy.

Shadow affairs within the US economy

Summery:
        Whether it's abuse of power or illicit activity, shadow affairs are activities that aren’t accounted for officially in the United States Government or overlooked. This principle will specifically cover exploitation of wealth and power as well as other factors such as fraud, drug transactions, and government corruption. Although black market transactions and wall street transactions seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum, both can end up being detrimental to everyone else and our economy as a whole. Ultimately, shadow affairs need to be brought into light to have a somewhat fair economy.

MW, Iceberg of the Economy, 2019

Further Context:

        In Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth talks about how we need to get savvy with systems. Throughout the book she pushes the idea that our thoughts and everything that we know about economics should be questioned.

        Shadow affairs within the US economy is pushing a similar narrative. The underground economy consists of the black market, smuggling, unreported income and more. This actively harms our economy by tampering with official statistics that’s used to determine taxes.

        Black market transactions aren’t the only thing harming our economy. We’re made to believe that the white collar workers on Wall Street are helping our economy grow but its causing more harm simply through their capitalistic traits, often overlooked by the government. There are too many factors that are negatively affecting our economy and there’s no way we will be able to rightfully thrive unless we rethink and directly address these issues. Raworth says “It’s time to stop searching for the economy’s elusive control levers and start stewarding it as an ever evolving complex system.” I believe that we are so used to questioning what so obviously wrong, powerful individuals and institutions have gotten comfortable with the idea of exploitation but what about the unethical role that private banks and financial institutions have in harming our economy? According to the BIS (Bank for international settlements) when private credit becomes larger than the GDP, it slows productivity growth. According to the World Bank data, private credit has reached as high as 206% of our GDP within this decade. This is just one of the many serious indications that we have to holistically account for all things affecting our economy.

       This project seemed simple on the surface but just as the illustration shows, there was more beyond that. As I kept researching different subjects that would add to my principle, I fell down the rabbit hole.The reason that I chose to do my project on this is because I wasn't familiar with any theories or principles that was based on the shadow economy or economic exploitation. This made it harder to put what I wanted to say in words and research my ideas. Nevertheless, it was stimulating to build my argument as if I were a 21st century economist. There are so many things that go into an economy and that’s what this class has taught me. I think the best part of this project was how as I kept researching, I was able to put together information that I learned during a course I took last year called Policy.

Citations-

1) Cecchetti , Stephen Enisse Kharroubi G, and Enisse Kharroub. “BIS Working Papers No 381 Reassessing the Impact of Finance on Growth .” Https://Www.bis.org/Publ/work381.Pdf, Bank for International Settlements, July 2012.

2) “Domestic Credit to Private Sector (% of GDP) - United States.” Data, 2018, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS?end=2018&locations=US&start=1960.

3) “Plans: Elizabeth Warren.” Plans | Elizabeth Warren, https://elizabethwarren.com/plans.

Chicago; The City That Works

The City That Works is a project that I did for my photojournalism course. For the winter term, I took an independent study in Photojournalism. In order for me to take this course, I had to do a proposal. I chose to focus on this subject because it's something that I've been passionate about and I wanted to dedicate more of my time to it and figure out what I truly enjoyed about it. One of my inspirations coming into this class was Vice's style of documentation and Adrienne Salinger's "In My Room" project. I started the course off with research. I learned about influential photographers in the community like Larry Clark and Erika Bowes. That was probably my favorite part of the course because I learned so much about the development of different styles and how important photography is to me. It was really fun to look at the process of some well known photographers. Here's some of my favorite works that I discovered:

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, DeBruce, 1999

Nan Goldin, Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC, 1991

At first, I didn't know what I wanted to make as a project to show of what I learned. I knew I wanted to interview people because that's something that I enjoy because it allows you to know the subject beyond the photo. The process of finding out what to wasn't that hard but I had to be practical and consider who I had access to. A consistent thought was I wanted to document people doing what they love or something important to them. It then came apparent that I should do workers in Chicago and it was a good opportunity to have an insight of how this city is actually ran beyond the politicians and news casters.

Overall, I'm so glad that I proposed this independent study. This was a great opportunity for me and a great learning experience.

Amara Enyia Mayoral candidate 2019

In my Humanities class: Rhetoric, our first unit was called Suppose. In this unit we studies all of the components of rhetoric. My teacher wanted us to focus on the Chicago mayoral election. During this unit, my classmates and I had two visits, one from Troy LaRaviere, who is a 2019 mayoral candidate. Troy talked to my class about his views on Chicago and what makes him stand out from other candidates. Our other visitor was Ted Miin, he came to my class to talk about peoples assembly's. My class is planning on putting one together so he came in to help us construct one. We also had an external field experience to a memorial of MLK at Marquette park, at the intersection of 67th and Pulaski. There we met Alia Bilal and she educated us on the history of that site.
 
For my action project, my class had to chose a candidate running in the 2019 election to look into. My candidate is Amara Enyia, she is a lawyer and activist with a phd. With our chosen candidate we have to make a script of them answering a question we made for them.

MW. Amara Enyia 2019. (2018)

Why do you feel like creating a public bank for the city is something you should focus on rather than other issues?