economic and social policy

Question 1

what’s public policy

Answer 1

rule, law, regulation or order that expresses the government’s goal

Question 2

economic policy

Answer 2

governmental action aimed to imporve economic performances and outcomes

Question 3

what are the conditions for government to make a market economy possible?

Answer 3

• establish law and order
• define rules of property and its exchange
• enforce contracts (must be enforceable under law)
• setting market standards (standardized terminology, weight and measures)
• provide public goods and services (establishing the physical market itself)
• labor force
• promote competition

Question 4

goals of economic policy

Answer 4

• promote stable market (federal government promotes reliable access through new investments thru its regulation of financial markets such as stock exchanges
• promote economic prosperity
• measure economic growth (GNP/GDP)
• full empllyment
  -low inflation

Question 5

national labor relations act

Answer 5

oversee union elections and collective bargaining between labor and industry

Question 6

monetary policy

Answer 6

entails regulation of the economy through manipulation of the supply of money, the price of money and availability of credit

Question 7

federal reserve system FED

Answer 7

created due to the fear of central bank, 12 federal reserve banks that make loans to other banks, clear checks, supply the economy with currency and coins, seek to prefent inflation deflation
- able to borrow money from the syste,

Question 8

fed and reserve requirement

Answer 8

fed has control over the amount of cash and securities that every bank has to cover withdrawals and checks by its depositors; when fed increases the reserve req it decearses the amount of money that the banks have to lend

Question 9

open-market operations

Answer 9

fed buys and sells government securities such as bonds to fund governmental activities, to increase/decrease the supply of money i the economy;

Question 10

what happens when fed buys government securities in the open market?

Answer 10

it increases the amount of money available to consumers to spend or invest; when it sell securities, it reduces the money supply

Question 11

fed has the opportunity for member banks to borrow one from another

Question 12

fiscal policy

Answer 12

government’s taxing and spending powers

Question 13

purpose of tax

Answer 13

to raise revenue

Question 14

most consequential aspect of economic policy

Answer 14

how fed spends the revenue

Question 15

budget deficit

Answer 15

gap between what the government collects from taxes or other revenue sources and how much it spends

Question 16

taxation

Answer 16

the revenue side of fiscal policy that is overseen by the treasury department, Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Question 17

Tariff

Answer 17

tax imposed on goods

Question 18

income tax: progressive tax/graduated tax

Answer 18

the heaviest burden is carried by those msot able to pay

Question 19

redistribution policy

Answer 19

collect revenue in a way that reduces disparities between the lowest and highest income brackets

Question 20

regressive tax

Answer 20

applied uniformly so the proportion of income that people in lower income brackets pay is higher that what richer people pay;
- because lower income spend more of their income on consumption covered by a sales tax

Question 21

discretionary spending

Answer 21

funding for transportation, parks, education, public safety, other services that the public demands and gov supplies

Question 22

economic policy tools; what can the government to do regulate the market

Answer 22

antitrust policy protects the government against potential abuses by concentrated economic power; gov can establish conditions to regulate the operations of big businesses to ensure fair competiotion;
- gov can force a big business to break into smaller companies if it established monopoly

Question 23

deregulation

Answer 23

the policy of reducing the number of rules issues by federal regulatory agencies

Question 24

subsidies

Answer 24

government grants to encourage private sector-business

Question 25

social policy goals

Answer 25

provide social insurance protecting against the risk such as illness, disability, temporary unemployment
- alleviate poverty
- promote equal opportunity

Question 26

welfare state

Answer 26

a set of national public policies by which government takes a central role in promoting the social and economic well-being of its citizens