Blog #10

Blog 10

Nick Mitterando

            This week in the American Economy textbook there were no readings. Instead there was a chart and map to read and understand. Starting with the chart it shows “Washington Think Tank Calculates N.A.F.T.A.’s Impact on Jobs”. The chart compares 1993 trade, and 2000 trade with Canada and Mexico. It also shows the percent increase and the jobs gained or lost in the process. From viewing this chart, we can see that the percent went up in every category. Jobs were also gained in most categories. This chart does a very good job at showing the effects of N.A.F.T.A on U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico.

            The next part of the reading was the map. The map gave a visual representation of NAFTA-related job losses since 1993 per state. From looking at the key we can tell there was a total of 786,030 U.S. jobs lost related to NAFTA. The key also shows us different shades representing different amounts of jobs lost per state. The most jobs lost were in Texas, California, Florida, and a few more states that had similar loss numbers. The least jobs lost were more in the south with states like Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Montana. This map gives a very detailed and easy to look at and interpret view of the data. Every state is accounted for and the data is easy to match to the key. This is a very good map to look at to understand the topic being explained.

            This week in the Nations book the topic was the Crash of 1987. This crash was also known as Black Monday. It was the largest one-day percentage drop in the history of Dow Jones. It dropped a total of 508 points. So many people were trying to move money that the computers that ran the stock market systems started to crash and transfers would take hours at a time. This is known as one of the biggest crashes in modern history.