Michigan's Great Brink Krugman Analysis

Whether an opinion piece is effective depends on the expertise of rhetorical strategy of an author. This can either make a written piece convincing or unconvincing to the target audience. A clear example of how rhetorical strategies make a piece more convincing is the comparison of David Laska’s, “Minimum Need for a Minimum Wage Increase”, and Shamus Khan’s, “The Promise of More: Why We Should Raise the Minimum Wage”. By using rhetorical analysis on both opinion pieces Laska clearly makes a better argument. He makes use of logos by including statistics, an expert’s research in the field of minimum wage, and historical data to attack Obama’s decision to raising the minimum wage. He includes pathos to

The book begins by saying that economics has more incorrect arguments than any other study. The two critical reasons for this are: People don’t care about the long term health of the public, as much as the care about the short term gain in their private lives. Special interest groups create or reuse correct-sounding fallacies to promote their viewpoint. Economics consists in looking at more than the immediate policy; It includes seeing the problems of the policy for not just one group but for all groups. The misconception that government spending boosts the Economy, is a result of a system of misconceptions. The fact that, we don’t address deficit spending and inflation and assume that public spending will be covered in taxes, is a delusional dream.

The expert testimony of his editor friend backs up Buckley’s argument and gives the audience a valid reason to believe him. Buckley states that the weekly news magazine editor explained to him that “the volume of mail has noticeably decreased, even though the circulation of his magazine has risen” (562). This shows that although the audience of the magazine has increased over the years, the initiative of the readers has gone down. In this evidence I have presented, Buckley shows the negative correlation between the readers and protestors of the magazine and would reach an audience that cannot be easily persuade without hard facts. Buckley’s persuasive effort was successful by showing his audience that his argument is backed up by expert facts and it is not just his word that they have to believe.

Journalists are infamous for their motivation to produce hard hitting editorials, twisting the truth for their own selfish benefit. Steve Chapman strays away from this stereotype by ensuring integrity in every article. Continuously, Chapman strives to present the public with his analytical opinions. Douglas Adams describes the drive of Steve Chapman; “To give real service, you must add something which cannot be bought of measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity”. Steven Chapman, who writes weekly op-eds for the Chicago Tribune, delivers insight into national headlines using suggestive rhetoric appeals to address the reader’s fears of uncertainty followed by accredited reasoning, a condescending tone targeted at the written subject, calling the reader for reformation within society, and dashes to separate general statements from definitive fact, shifting from a mission-based point of view to thought-provoking opinionated writing in order to spark motivation within his readers using his opinions so that they can take action to better their communities in hopes of improving future national development.

In today’s world, with all the technology that is readily available, finding information that is credible can pose a challenge. With social media and everything being online, it seems as if anyone from everywhere can post whatever they want, whether it is deemed to be accurate or not. In using the topic of national debt in the United States as a guide, I was able to analyze plausible sources and compare them to inaccurate sources. Journalist, Brandon Greife, in his article, “Liberals are Losing the National Debt Argument,” elaborates on the topic of what liberals are accomplishing when it comes to national debt but his purpose is to tell readers about how liberals are going about doing that and voice his opinions on why he thinks it is the wrong way. Throughout his article, he expresses a biased tone to convey his feelings on the topic. On the other hand, businessman, Tony Robbins, in his video, “The National Debt Decoded,” discusses the national debt of the United States. Robbins’ purpose is to inform listeners on the topic of national debt and challenge them on what some of the solutions should be. He adopts a matter-of-fact tone in order to display the problems that the United States is facing in his fellow American citizens. Of the sources that I reviewed, the video by Robbins is the most reliable source because viewers are able to understand what he is saying throughout his presentation and his diction.

As a political personality, Robert Reich writes a book that closely relates the deteriorating status of the U.S. economy with the greed of other politicians and the government as a whole. To some extent, Robert Reich pulls out the sense in economy deterioration with the help of pinning the major government policies. Robert Reich 's argument comes out clearly, directly, and at some point presented willfully. From the heading of the topic of the book, what went wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it, a reader can clearly picture the content of the book that is politics and the financial mess that the United States of America is in today. The book provides a clear, simple, and easy to understand information on how the author, Robert Reich relates the cause a bad financial status for the country and how the government and other wealthy people living in America contribute to causing the financial crisis.

I watch or read the news pretty regularly, but I only watch news which has the traits that I value most. The news to me isn’t about being entertained, it is about learning, in an unbiased, clear, and concise way. Other television shows can entertain, but the news should be reserved for information relevant to people’s everyday lives, allowing them to make informed decisions. I feel this way because I don’t like when a news source is pushing a hidden agenda. I look for a fair telling of both sides of the story. I also feel that because I stay relatively busy, I think it is insulting that the news would choose to waste my time with extraneous background information, off topic statements, or articles over 1,000 words. Most importantly though, It needs to be clear, if I can’t understand it, it’s the worst kind of news, no news. I have chosen three articles regarding the Flint Michigan water crisis to evaluate based on my criteria. One from CNN titled, “Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan, Draws Federal Investigation,” written by Greg Botelho, Sarah Jorgenson, & Joseph Netto, which focuses on the investigation but also background into the crisis. The next article I have chosen an article from the New York Times (NYT). This article titled, “As Water Problems Grew, Officials Belittled Complaints From Flint.” From the contributions of writers, Julia Bosman, Monica Davey, & Mitch Smith. I chose this article from other ones, because this article primarily focuses on politics like who

Throughout the article, Krugman’s diction is displayed in a colloquial manner, often using terms such as “flub,” “wimps,” or “hacks,” in order to not overwhelm the reader and attract a wide-range audience. On occasion, he also dictates formally to highlight the negatives of the current and “incompetent” administration and their lack of commitment. Krugman’s syntax also contains the

Introduction: Almost everyone has an opinion about almost anything. The strength of opinions fluctuate. However, when it comes to financial and political issues, opinions are usually strong. The strong opinions of a writer leads to bias in their pieces of writing. Sometimes opinions in writing are meant to be shared.

The piece is seemingly unbiased, simply presenting facts, but it does present facts that shine a negative light on the rising tuition costs. The article isn’t trying to sway the reader but it does not present any positive points to the rising tuition.

He is also using the article as a place to use his own outrage constructively. He suggests that Trump is immoral and that voters were mislead into voting for him (6). Krugman is angry at the unfairness of the situation, he is angry that Clinton didn’t win because of people who were “mislead” (6), because he does not only feel they were mislead, he feels they were tricked into creating an America that he does not want to live in. Krugman continues to voice his outrage in the phrase: “Trump malfeasance” (7). Trump is pure evil, Krugman is outraged that someone so evil could be held in such high esteem. Krugman knows that his audience will feel the same way, because they are interested in protecting “basic American values”

For example Buffett states, “And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.” Bringing to the attention of the audience that we are in a current financial crisis, and to make matters worse we have a high unemployment rate. Signaling that this is a problem that needs to be resolved by some response from the audience being the government. Another problem Buffett bring to the audience mind is how we the people are losing our faith on our government to handle our fiscal problems as he states the following; “Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness.” Again reminding our government that they need to take action not only quickly but also considerable to the public before its too late and the people become hopeless on our government.

The unprecedented government intervention during the massive economic crisis of the late 2000’s was met with varied sentiment of economists (Lee, 2009). For example, economist Marci Rossell felt that government intervention was arbitrary and lacked clarity as to which firms would receive government aid (Lee, 2009). She furthered her argument by stating that if the government bailed out homeowners and banks that were borrowing and lending “over their heads,” they were creating a dangerous precedent to set (Lee, 2009, p.40). However, Rossell praised the Obama administration for having a clear grasp on the economic situation and trusted in this administration’s guidance to recover from the economic crisis. Conversely, economist Steven Schwarcz said that though the government bailout in 2008 would cost more than it would have if the government had reacted more swiftly to early signs of recession, these institutions would collapse and fail without government aid (“How Three Economists,” 2008). If these institutions failed, the ripple effect of this failure to the U.S. economy would be irreparable.

Unfortunately, much of America did not heed Krugman’s warnings when his first book was released in 1999 because America was still rising high. Technology and the top businesses of the day were just starting and booming very fast and smoothly. While technology and internet giants such as Google were growing, the United States’ government’s budget surplus was also increasing. Yet, our government departments--Federal Research and Congress still insisted that capitalism should be a free market--that it will save itself, that regulating credit default swaps was unnecessary. Americans were overconfident with their past successes and forgot to look to other countries as models. Now, lasseiz-faire has turned around to bite America in the butt.

points that are debatable and his high use of emotion alone could cause one to question