In order to start a successful clothing business, entrepreneurs allocate their initial scarce resources. This includes having a theme/look to the company, quality and price of the product, and effective advertising

In order to attract customers, entrepreneurs create a certain theme to their company. Giving the product a certain “identity” persuades the customers that want to be looked at with the certain “identity”, purchase it. For example, if you want to be looked at as a yogi, you would buy Lululemon to present that look. Another example of a company that demonstrates this strategy is Vineyard Vines. Vineyard Vines was designed to have the image of a preppy style so that people who look for preppy clothing know to shop at Vineyard Vines.

Entrepreneurs have found that quality and price go hand in hand. This is because people tend to assume that if a product is more expensive the quality is better, which causes them to buy it. Knowing this, companies raise the price of their products assuming that they will accumulate a better profit and have more sales.

Lastly, effective advertising is very important to make the company and products known by many. Instead of spending a big amount of money on one advertisement, a better strategy is to spend little to no money on multiple advertisements. The CEO of Nasty Gal made sure the clothing looked exactly how they did online including good quality. The word of the company starts to spread and next thing you know thousands of girls are buying products from this firm all because of the free advertisement that Sophia produced. “Social media is built on sharing, and Nasty Gal was giving girls something amazing to share each and every day.”

How can YOU help to stop pollution from businesses?

amazonaws.com

Many of today’s officials plan to end major environmental laws, but what most people don’t know is that they can help to stop it!

 

According to The Waterkeeper Alliance, Anticipating that a lack of government resources or political willpower could severely undermine enforcement of environmental laws, Congress in the 1970s included innovative provisions authorizing private citizens to prosecute violations in cases where government has failed to meet its enforcement responsibilities,”.  So, normal citizens like you and I, can prosecute a corporation for abusing environmental laws.

For example, the Waterkeeper Alliance has been fighting to help enforce water pollution laws for about 50 years. “Puget Soundkeeper brought a Clean Water Act citizen suit against the city of Bremerton, WA, which was discharging hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Puget Sound. Thanks to Soundkeeper action, Bremerton cut its sewage discharges by 96%,” This demonstrates how normal citizens can help do their part to protect the environment.

Just think of all the damage citizens can prevent with these overlooked laws. We all need to do our part to protect our environment.

http://cdn.history.com

The American homefront during World War 2 revolved around ensuring a victory over the Axis powers. From rationing to the women of the USA stepping up and preparing to get their hands dirty, we worked as one and sacrificed a great deal during WWII. According to the History Channel, “Rosie the Riveter” was the term stapled to women that stood up in response to the demands of our military.

In order to ensure a victory in WWII, a system of rationing had to be implemented. These ration stamps limited the amount of “gas, food and clothing consumers could purchase” with intentions to supply the men deployed. In order to obtain a win in the most crucial war in the history of the world American values changed drastically. It wasn’t in the best interest of the public to waste critical products that our soldiers needed. Other than the rationing, WWII demanded U.S. women to take a huge portion of the manufacturing workload for the first time ever. Instead of focusing on their families, women had to become welders, electricians, and riveters. The percentage of women in the American work force went from 25% to 36% in the short years that the war occupied.

Enforcing Environmental Laws

wikimedia.org

Our world is quickly changing and moving to the future. I don’t think people  realize the real consequences and consider the major effects we as a nation have on the future of our well being. We must enforce policies for protecting our environment to move to the future with cleaner and more eco friendly methods.

Many people claim that major corporations environmental regulations are not enforced enough. But what most people don't know is that a large number of these companies get a pass on most major environmental laws. According to Dusty Horwitt, a senior analyst for the Environmental Working Group, an environmental organization, “Unlike most other industries, oil and gas drillers enjoy waivers under the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Superfund, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act and the National Environmental Policy Act” (Horwitt). With all these loopholes for major corporations to get through, we need stronger laws to encourage companies to reduce the amount of pollution they produce and help them to safely dispose of all of it.

George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States Suggested a cap and trade system, which would force companies to cut their pollution by allowing corporations to trade emission allowances under an overall cap. This shows how providing a market incentive encourages companies to limit their amount of pollution for their own greatest gain.

Next question- How can we enforce major companies to abide to pollution laws?

The economic principle I examined was Institution.  There are many situations where this economic principle can be applied to the real world. For instance, while studying about women's sports and the benefits they have, my research question being: How should sports institutions (e.g NCAA, high school, professional) reduce the inequality between genders and racial groups? I found many examples of how women are being discriminated in professional sports. In my first blog post I talked about how Women's soccer in the US  has no justification for paying women a less amount of money compared to men. Women's soccer players are speaking up and filled out a complaint with the federal equal employment opportunity commission. This shows that they are starting to speak up and getting bothered on how the US discriminates women when it comes to women's sports. Second, If women's soccer is bringing in more money through TV than before they certainly should be getting paid the same as men not less. Winning a World Cup is huge when Germany won the World cup they awarded them 35$ million but a year later when the US women's team won the world cup Fifa only awarded them with 2$ Million. Third, Jazmine Reeves, who played for the Boston Breakers in 2014, had what I would call a breakout rookie year and after quit and got a job at Amazon. She could´ve been the star of the league and get called up to a national camp, but her and her teammates figure they were getting underpaid.This means that a job at Amazon had a better pay than a professional basketball player in women's sports would get payed. Overall, you can see that the US discriminates women when it comes to sports and If women are not willing to walk away from their job then there's nothing that can be done about hiring their net pay in professional sports.

Synthesizing Research on The Advertising Ban on Cigarettes in the United States

Source: America on Track

In conclusion, the government has set reasonable preventions against the companies that supply the country with its need for cigarettes, but in my opinion, it is not enough. Yes, it has impacted their income greatly, but even someone on the street smoking cigarettes is advertising them, like a nike swoosh on a t shirt. For these cigarette companies to feel a permanent hit in their income I believe that it will take time, as in the next generation and the next generation after that will be much smarter with their choices.

To summarize my evidence, the cigarette companies have been massively impacted by advertising bans, and it’s only going to get worse. As the government is thinking of  implementing more laws to show that cigarettes do more bad than good. As said in one of my articles, the University of South Carolina has already suggested to the government that “ Tobacco warning labels that include graphic pictures of the health consequences of smoking are more effective than text-only warnings”, which the government has a possibility of reopening the case in the upcoming years.

Not only has their income been impacted severely, but the cigarette companies have already had their peak in the amount of people that have used their product a long time ago. The peak of Americans using cigarettes was in the 60s, and early 70s, until the government banned the advertising of cigarettes on TV and radio on January 2nd, 1971. So the last two or three generations have been the ones that have mainly used cigarettes, because there really wasn’t any ban on cigarettes back then. But now due to FDA and other government run corporations stopping them, they will not get a grasp on as many as they did back in the day: with teens.

Many use the saying out with the old, and in with the new. This can be used for the use of tobacco today, as things are changing immensely. Instead of cigarettes today, the new epidemic is E-cigarettes, or reusable, refillable ways to smoke. But that, is a whole another project.

Wildlife Protections in the US

Source: http://thehill.com/

The Endangered Species Act was created in 1973 and signed by president Richard Nixon. The ESA act lists the exact amount of species that were in danger of becoming extinct, and gives them the protection they deserve to help their survival. Laws to accomplish this goal have been followed up until this year, because President Donald Trump has acted on the federal level to remove certain protections to gain more commercial benefits.

Recently, the US Fish and Wildlife services who has acted under the Trump Administration's surveillance has denied the protections for the Pacific walrus. Aside from the denial of the Pacific Walrus being an animal becoming extinct, 25 other species who were qualified to be in danger of extinction by Obama, have been denied the right to be protected as well.  This is an example of how Trump's future goals is going to end with environmental laws in order to gain economic strength.

According to Carmichael- the Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment- "Protecting the environment and strengthening the economy are not mutually exclusive - in fact, studies have shown that permanent protection for our public lands actually drives economic growth."Preservation of species does not ruin our economy in any way because they are not dependent on each other, so if our government is putting less regulations of wildlife, it does not mean that our economy will all of a sudden rise. 

Given that humans are the #1 responsible for the cause of the disappearance of species, it is imperative that we act together to combat animal extinctions. 

So what did Obama do to take action in solving animal trafficking and illegal wildlife trade:

1. Obama had created a law called: Eliminate, Neutralize and Disrupt Wildlife Trafficking Act (law in which it is easier to convict prosecutors of crimes in the US)

2.Big companies such as: Google, JetBlue, Ralph Lauren, and others have shown interest in cooperating and committing themselves into fighting against wildlife trafficking. 

3.Trans-Pacific Partnership was the first trade deal to address the illegal wildlife trade


How Trump is promoting the destruction of wildlife:

1. "Trump has called for new oil and gas drilling on public lands and in waters", which could completely ruin habitats and prohibit species to migrate in case they had to. 

2. The Republican Legislators have passed several laws in which it has made it harder to list species as threatened or endangered.

3. Building the Wall between the US-Mexico border would restrict the diversification of about 111 species of wild animals who live in this ecosystem because the wall would: destroy migratory routes, destroy habitats and make it harder for animals to hunt their prey.