Dr. Ron Blog 2 - Persuasion

In the article, College presidents want to lower drinking age (CNN.com), it states that the age limit for college-age students should be legal to prevent binge-drinking. I personally have mixed feelings about this statement. If students were able to drink at the age of 18 then there would be an issue involving drinking and driving through high school and younger students. The article 900 lives saved yearly by keeping the drinking age at 21 (livescience.com) explains why the drinking age should stay. They believe that there should be more restrictions towards the 21 age drinking limit.

The audiences that these articles are targeting are college-age students and up (which is 17+). The issue in each article is opposite yet the same. Some people vote yes for decreasing the age in drinking and others vote no for decreasing the age in drinking. I am someone who is undecided. I see both arguments validly. It is hard to decide to change it or keep it the same. I understand if you lower the drinking rate then hopefully a parent will help you learn to drink responsibly, but not all parents are helpful.

Moving on, there are a few things I liked about both articles. Them main idea I like is that they see each others point of view in a productive way. They may not agree on many things but they do understand the others argument. CNN.com states, “more than 500,000 full-time students at four-year colleges suffer injuries each year related to drinking” and then they continue, “1,700 die in such accidents”. This is a huge issue. Later in the article CNN states that they believe the numbers would go down in the drinking age goes down because the students would already be exposed to alcohol and would not make such a big deal out of it. They will be in their parents care (hopefully) so they would have more rules and be use to it. After reading about CNN's argument of lowering the age limit I then read about keeping it the same from livescience.com. Livescience.com states, “since 2006 there are lower rates of drunk-driving deaths” and then they continue stating “the age 21 laws have saved up to 900 lives yearly on the road”. Lastly livescience.com says, “teen drinking and driving rates have dropped by 54 percent over the last two decades”. All of these statements and comments are great and understandable, but CNN.com made some valued points as well.

In the end each argument does serve the public in a positive way. I understand that the law will most likely not be changed in any way, but I like how it keeps coming up and gives people something to talk about.

Cited Work:

Commentary: Drinking age of 21 doesn't work. (2009, September 16). Retrieved September 29, 2014. Gholipour, B. (2014, February 24). 900 lives saved yearly by keeping the drinking age at 21. Retrieved September 29, 2014.

Dr. Ron Blog 1 - Persuasion

Something that I came across while  I was figuring out what to write about was the idea of overtime in the work field. I was reading an article written by Miriam Schulman, Time to Go Home, and found a lot of facts about overtime that were a bit shocking. To start off, There are 168 hours in a week. 56 hours for sleep, 5 hours for the commute to work, and 40 hours for work. This leaves you with 67 hours left which is roughly 9 hours a day for extra time. This is a healthy week. In the article Schulman state, "the average 40 hour-a-week job no longer provides sufficient income for many families". Most men and women are lucky if they get out of the office on time and to top it off, most of these people do not get paid overtime! This is unethical because you should be able to use your 40 hours a week to work and the rest with your family. Overtime at work has put a stress on not only the workers but the families as well. Schulman wrote, "42 percent of employees reported that their workload was excessive" and "long hours at work have been blamed for family breakdowns". This is unethical because families should not have breakdowns and feel stressed because they can not be together all because a member or two has to work almost 60 hours in a week! This whole article brings up amazing but upsetting points about the amount of stress overtime puts on a person. Schulman goes on and states, "we all get tired, pressure builds up, people get edgy, and tension breaks out" so why not give "people without jobs the extra hours"? This would solve so many ethical and normal issues throughout our world. People would not be as stressed and others would have jobs and be able to support their families! It is a win win situation that I believe should be done to eliminate stress on a worker that should be able to see their family more often and not be worried about getting fired because they do not want to work overtime.

To continue a bit, Schulman states that "downsizing, which has created both a surplus of work to do and an insecurity that makes employees feel they have to do it or lose their job" is insane! It is unethical because people should not feel threatened that they will lose their job. This will make their stress levels even higher and cause them to do a poor job. It is unfair to ask an employee to stay longer and work harder but get paid the same amount of money they were for the work they did before. In the end I believe it is unethical for the amount of pressure that business owners put on their employees and on top of that it is unethical to expect them to work twice as long for what they are getting paid to do.