Racism at Wallmart - Research Paper Example

Social Problems at Wal-Mart of the Problem According to George (2006), social problems could be definedas the social conditions identified as detrimental to human welfare. They may be threatening and harmful conditions. In respect to the definition, there are many conditions that contributes social problems and these include; nuclear war, drug abuse, crime, poverty, family decline, limited energy supplies, corporate corruption, education, resource depletion, environmental pollution and unemployment. Focusing on unemployment, this social condition has a number of issues and factors that contributes to the problems that the society meets today (Mooney, Knox & Schacht, 2012). Unemployment is regarded to be a major economic and social problem that affects the whole world. An unemployed person is somebody who has no job, and he is always available for work because he constantly looks for employment opportunities, which seem limited and difficult to get. This may be because there no job vacancies available for such individual to get some work to do. Unemployment statistics could serve as an indication of how a nation has underused its resources. This indication also shows the general life hardships that have social and economic importance in relation to unemployment. Basing on this, America has a large no-working population that ranges in about 60 million. Among the unemployed, there are more than 50 million unemployed adults in the United States today. Reports indicate that many of the unemployed have been defined out of labor pool; this group includes young retiree, disabled, women, and minorities. These groups pose many problems to the society, and because of their basic needs and other factors that surround their lives. Challenges of Unemployment in the United States Unemployment poses many challenges to a large population in the united Sates. To begin with, unemployment has many dangers or negative effects it poses to the society. In view of this crime rate has increased because of unemployment. People seek for alternative ways of survival because they do not have a stable source of income and the available insurances do not give enough supplements to meet individual’s needs. The high rate of unemployment affects the self-esteem of people leading to depression and many other illnesses because of trauma. The general health of individuals affected by unemployment does not receive the required attention and this has adverse effects to the nation because a health nation would grow in both dimensions. Basing on this, economic development faces a sharp setback as the majority unemployed people contribute insignificantly to the national development and their needs surpasses the overall requirements the same people demand from the federal government (Pethig, Rauscher & Siebert, 2003). Because of unemployment, there are high chances of suicidal attempts because of the low self-esteem and high levels of depression among the unemployed individuals in the United States. This creates some danger because many people lose their lives, and the same individual would have been of much help to the economic development if chances of employment came by. The other impact or challenge that unemployment poses is that the national economy suffers because of low output. This is because the major of the population are unemployed whereas only a few are employed. This creates imbalance in terms of dependability and national economic contribution of those working. The needs of the nation become more than what the national produces. This makes the federal government to work under the pressure of deficits in every budget it drafts. There is also financial loss of the unemployed worker because the skills and the other general potential of the unemployed person do not help him to get the finances to support his expenditures and pay taxes to the nation. The nation loses the battle as there is no utilization of human resources, important for the growth of the nation through economic contributions. In addition, the current high rate of unemployment and the weak economy recovering from the great recession, there exist many other challenges that unemployment poses to the United States as a nation. Studies reveal that the United States labor market has remained weak following the great recession even if the overall economy shows indications of growth. This recent developments have called for policy reaction in the labor, which involves demanding efforts of expanding unemployment insurance in the United States (Samuelson, 2007). Among the major components of social security programs in the United States, the unemployment insurance system forms part of the programs. This program is used to protect those who have lost their jobs involuntarily. This kind of program requires more resources in terms of government financial support, a factor that increases the United States budget by a higher percentage. This is not an investment but rather a spending and it increases a burden on the taxpayers, especially those employed under the current state of the economy. During normal economic times the unemployment benefits payments usually get provided through the regular unemployment compensation program, funded at state level. The regular benefits tat are paid weekly as a normal routine, replaces more than 80% of the pre-employment income. These earnings last for duration of about 27 weeks and this is a standard limit that applies for most states in the United States. This are normal expenditures that the federal and states government has to put into consideration every time it handles its budget. With the rise in the number of unemployment, this amount or expenditure keep rising and with many other problems the federal government has to deal with becomes a major problem for policy makers to balance between the expenses for the key issues of national interest (Weisbrod, 2003). In addition, economic slumps, federal government is forced to increase the spending by considerate amounts, depending on the rate of unemployment caused by the slump in the economic set up that reduces the capability of many firms and the federal government to support a large number of employees. The additional expenditure comes in terms of extended unemployment insurance benefits and increase in the number of recipients of the same. The last few years have seen the United States government extend the duration for the benefits for longest period to combat the prevailing joblessness. Through this, the federal government provides insurance against job losses but the same insurance works against the recipient as most of them take the advantage of these benefits and refuse to get jobs. When the unemployment insurance benefits causes job seekers to relax by putting less efforts into searching for jobs, this has negative impacts in that it increases the unemployment rate. This brings in other economic influences on the government as the tax levels may not supplement the expenses required for sustaining the federal government’s provisions because of reduced number of taxpayers. This factor means that a heavy burden is left on a few individuals who belong to the working population. At the end when the prevailing taxation rates cannot guarantee the federal government spending, it means that the federal government has to waylay the option of increasing taxation rate. If this happens, taxation rate increase causes many other problems because this affects other factors of the economy in a big way and the worst thing is that this causes the cost of many essential commodities to rise. Because of the increase in taxes, which induces pressure on both the working population, and the unemployed majority in the society, the net balance would result to zero benefits for both groups and hence no job opportunities may be created at the end of the day (Mooney,2011). On the other hand, unemployment needs to be addressed because of various factors surrounding it. Basing on the large numbers of unemployed population in America, this country could have significant economic development by tapping into the use of this important resource. America could reduce reliance on payroll taxes and open ways that would foster growth in the economic and other essential sector by putting to task tens of millions of capable Americans who seek employment and they have potential giving tremendous results in terms of national output. This could be realized by creating avenues that would harmonize activities in the labor market and create more chances for economic growth through employment. People with disability, the minorities, including other unemployed groups have the potential to generate more income and revive the state of national output when they get opportunities that rhymes with their potential well (Chetty, 2008). The Role of the Other Sectors (Nonprofit and Government) Schlesinger and Bradford (2005) reveal that nonprofit organizations in the United States are tax exempted and more than half of them are charity related organizations. Nonprofit organizations have contributed to the United States economy through employment creation. The nonprofit organizations contribute about 11% of the employed individuals in the country. They also help in providing educational facilities to the unemployed needy in the America. Most of the nonprofit organizations achieve this by charitable ways, and they reach out to many people in the nation through their voluntary services. The organizations also address the needs of unemployed people by providing various employment opportunities there by offsetting the unemployment rate to some level. The contribution of these nonprofit organizations in the education sector reaches about 16% of the total contribution and thus a good number of the population benefits from the efforts and services of the groups. The organization fosters the operation and achieving many things related to educational and other fields of interest through diverse number of activities and engagements. This includes nonprofit organizations generate knowledge through research and education. This generated knowledge could be used in a number of ways to enable individuals create for themselves job opportunities through entrepreneurship and other possible ways that could empower individuals to be independent. The efforts of carrying out research uncover various methods for unemployed individuals to create wealth and employment opportunities for other individuals in country. Through the protection of consumers, nonprofit organizations help the unemployed to live within the means provided for them by the government and other people they depend on. Without this protection, the consumers would be exploited and this would only worsen the situation by forcing unemployed groups to engage in criminal activities as a means of achieving their demands. Too much consumer exposure could exposure the unemployed to other dangers like depression and poor health access because of high expenses that this people would not meet in the end. Nonprofit organizations play an important role of preventing and treating diseases through voluntary health care services to the community, this important role promotes health and helps the government to meet the requirement of a healthy nation. This role also allows unemployed individuals to access health services that would have seemed impossible to access because they lack financial capabilities to match the trend of health service provision. Nonprofit organizations play an important role in creating community economic and social infrastructure that would help individuals and the government to stimulate economic development in the country; this would help reduce the rate of unemployment to great levels (White, 2003). Ideas for Approaching Unemployment in the Future from the Business Sector To create millions of jobs that the youth and other unemployed individuals in the American society need, this calls the stakeholders to provide effective strategies that would address this problem well. To this end, there is need for combined efforts that requires involvement of the private sector that would increase investment and create employment opportunities for many individuals in the society. The civil society needs to be mobilized so that practical interests to initiate ways of addressing unemployment problems form the grassroots level. The other future strategies that would help address unemployment in the future would involve high concentration in the maintenance of investment infrastructure (International Labour Office, 2008). This would help mobilize private and government t involvement in creating employment opportunities by coming up with new projects to support economic growth and employment creation. There should be strategies to help in supporting small and medium-sized enterprises and microfinance. In addition, this are the cornerstones that would help build the economy from the grassroots level by empowering the minority groups and every unemployed individual who has interests in business to have the financial capabilities to invest and create employment opportunities for other individuals in the society. Efforts aimed at enhancing employability and capability of labor force through the undertaking of critical restructuring in education that would allow creation of an environment to reduce the constraints in the labor markets (Mooney, 2011). How Individual Citizens Address or Could Address Unemployment Problem Various individuals have different strategies they employ to handle unemployment problems in lives. Studies show that a number of individuals engage themselves with voluntary activities to keep life moving. Most of these voluntary activities may not pay or offers very little in terms of income; the only importance is that these voluntary jobs makes life enjoyable to some extend and issues like depression and crime would not exist (Chetty, 2008). The other alternative that many individuals have engaged is part-time jobs that have enabled many individuals to cater for their needs. These part-time jobs give opportunities to individual for short durations, it makes life more bearable, and the job opportunity supplements individual needs because the unemployment insurance does not give full guarantee for an individual to meet his needs fully. The other option relates with the applications that most individual make concerning masters of business administration, MBA; this provides opportunities for students to get jobs while undertaking studies. This helps individuals to gain both experience knowledge at the same time (Willwerth, 2005). References Chetty, R. (2008). Moral Hazard vs. Liquidity constraint and optimal unemployment insurance. Journal of Political Economy, 116 (2), 173-234. George, H. (2006). Social problems. Chicago, Chi: Cosimo Inc. International Labour Office. (2008). Record of proceedings. New York, NY: International Labour Organization. Mooney, L., Knox, D. & Schacht, C. (2012). Understanding social problems. Washington, D.C : Cengage Learning. Mooney, L. (2011). Understanding social problems. New York, NY: Cengage Learning. Print. Pethig, R., Rauscher, M. & Siebert, R. (2003). Challenges to the world economy. Chicago, Chi: Springer. Print. Samuelson, P. (2007). Economics. New York, NY: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Print. Schlesinger, M. & Bradford, G. (2005). Why nonprofits matter in American medicine: a policy brief: nonprofit sector research fund. Washington, D.C: Aspen Institute. Print. Weisbrod, B. (2003). The nonprofit economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Print. White, G. (2003). Nonprofit organizations. Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship, 9(1), 49-80. Willwerth, P. (2005). Careers and occupations: looking to the future. Washington, D.C.: Thomson Gale. Print. Read More