Essay Writing on Microeconomic Topics - A Learning Experience for Students

Task:

• As students continue to try and improve writing essays on microeconomic topics, it is helpful for students to have the opportunity to see what other essays look like . The takeaway I think would be valuable and a good learning experience.

• Every student will therefore submit an essay on the topic below on Canvas by the due date. The individual essay will be evaluated for class participation points, but not graded. When the groups are formed, each member will share his/her essay with the rest, and together they will choose the essay the group likes the best. This essay will be stapled to the group answers and will be graded as the group essay.

This also increases the chance of scoring higher on the group grade.

• If the group prefers, they can re-write the essay collaboratively and submit that instead.

• Note: Any student who does not submit the essay on time on Canvas, or does not write an essay, will lose points from the group grade since the Group was disadvantaged and might have wanted to choose it. The student will also get a zero for class participation for that assignment. Canvas requires a numerical assessment, so a point =1 will be assigned, confirming an essay was submitted. Please disregard otherwise .

Did you ever wonder who assembled the cars on the parking lots of car dealership? Or the TVs, washer/dryers or other machines you purchase? It turns out that on factory lines across the country, temporary workers are welding, testing and operating machines alongside permanent workers. This is also true of jobs (high and lower paying too) in Corporate America . In many, if not most, cases they are making half the money. The number of workers that were hired as’ temporary workers’   had reached a staggering 25% by 2010, the height of the Great Recession years.  After ten years of economic recovery as many as 6 million worker in 2017 and 2.8% of the workforce today continue to be just For a closer look at a ‘typical temporary worker’ and what this means, click on the pdf link posted on  Canvas entitled,” Temporary Worker Image. You will find a picture that was published in 2010 with multiple facts attached to it that shed light on this phenomenon. This continues to be a go-to strategy  in many industries that are facing challenges domestically and globally and are attempting to lower their costs or even to control them. Some are doing so to take their businesses to different directions.

For example, a host of companies are sticking with relocation plans to Mexico. They find a $12.43 an hour wage quite irresistible. Many American companies are also currently dealing with the burden oftariffs President Trump has waged against many of our trade partners in Europe and also in China.

Your Task

No other research is required or should be done! First look carefully at the image. This will linkthe text to related concepts and cost terms we discussed in the last few weeks. You are to build your essay from the lens of our lectures and concepts learnt in ch 7 especially.  My recommendation: Read the topic below. Then look at the image of a temporary worker and annotate in the margins concepts that we studied that you think you can connect to the information listed by the image. Do not just repeat the information – that would be just a summary and not a micro analysis. Think microeconomically !