Why Paid Family Leave is the Responsibility of the Government

Dong Gyu Yoon 

Level 5 Academic Seminar 

7/31/2018 

Why paid family leave is the responsibility of the government 

Why do we pay taxes? One of the reasons of existing tax is get assist through government. One method to support citizen from government is support paid family leave. It is too hard to take care our family by individually. I think government have responsibility of support paid family leave because tax should use for everyone and it can happen to everyone that take responsibility for take care your family member who suffer disease, also it can help to raise the rate of birth.   

First, taxes should use to everyone. From the article “Millennials Struggling to Care for Aging Baby Boomer Parents Call for Better Paid Leave” (Abigali Abrams,2018), the main character 'Oniqa Moonsammy' took time to care her uncle, mother and grandfather who suffer from critical disease. Because of caring, she couldn't work more, couldn't meet her boyfriend and couldn't use her time whatever she wants. Not only take time for them, also she should take responsibility for financial support. Everyone should pay taxes, but everyone can't get appropriate support from taxes like Moonsammy. It is unfair. Because of the reason that each individual person has different problems, we should care about other's problem. Moonsammy is one of the cases that we should focus. Through using taxes to serve paid family leave, we can solve one of the problems in current society. With make voice to solve other's problem, then we can get opportunity to argue that solve our own problem.  

Second, by using taxes to serve paid family leave, we can anticipate the increasing rate of birth. After couple get baby, one of couples take responsibility to care of baby. It leads to excessive stress which focus on working and take caring to them. This situation is one of the critical causes of no kid family. From the article, we can find this saying that "We need to look at how to empower and help young folks when it comes to caregiving" (Jason Resendez, 2018, para. 10). According to Jason, it is obviously clear that young folks need helping form government because the helping can relieve the low rate birth. In these days, low rate of birthrate is serious problem. If the nation does not have enough population, the economy will suffer damage from the decline of the domestic market. This result will affect you even though you have not been interested in paid family leave.  

In sum, it started with one problem called paid family leave, the result is not confined only paid family leave. It can lead serious problem like decline of the domestic market and the reason that society can't live alone that's why paid family leave should assist by government 

Children’s Responsibility as Caregivers in Japan

by Eri

  Nowadays, taking care of ill elderly people has been one of the most severe problems in the world. Many elders passed away alone without being noticed because no one looks after them. Many countries have been facing this problem and conferring about solutions. So, who should take care of the aging parents? In Japan, people believe that taking care of parents is the responsibility of their children because people have an idea of a symbiotic relationship between parents and children, and paid leave is distributed only to the family members.

     First, Japanese people tend to believe in a symbiotic relationship. According to an article, “Millennials Struggling to Care for Aging Baby Boomer Parents call for Better Paid Leave”, many American people believe that children have the responsibility of the caregiver. The author, Abigail Abrams (2018), states, “86% of adults ages 18 to 29 told the Pew Research Center they view it as their responsibility to financially help aging parents” (para. 4) in the US. A lot of American millennials naturally consider that helping their parents is their own role. In Japan, also, many people think that the care of parents is a children’s task. For instance, since I was a child, my mother has often told me, “If I have Alzheimer disease, don’t forget that I love you, and don’t abandon me.” It means that she raised me with love, so I should give love in return when she needs help. This thought was derived from one of the Japanese cultures. In the past, there was a tradition that one of the children, especially the first child, had to live with parents and take care of them. Although this cultural tradition mostly disappeared, it is still affecting people’s mind. Furthermore, many parents want to be taken care of by their children, not by people who they don’t know. Therefore, Japanese people tend to think of the relationship between parents and children as symbiotic, and it has naturally raised children’s responsibility of the eldercare. 

    

     Second, the Japanese government offers paid leave only to family members of the ill elderly people. Abrams (2018) reports that every developed country, except the U.S., has a national policy which provides paid family leave. While there is no policy on the paid leave in the US, the Japanese government have a policy which allows giving paid family leave to people who need it to take care of other people. However, getting the leave is not easy because there are some requirements in order to obtain it. One of them is that the person who can acquire the leave must be a husband, a wife, a parent, or a child of a person who needs someone’s help. It means that even though you are a partner of someone who can’t live without any caregiving, you won’t be permitted to get paid leave unless you have a valid relationship. Considering the financial support, the family member should take care of the people better than any other people. Moreover, many young people have more physical strength than old people. For these reasons, the best people who have energy and be able to get financial support for taking care of people who need help are their children. Thus, children should have the responsibility because they are the best people who can take paid leave to take care of their parents.

     The same as the most Japanese people, I think that the person who should take care of my parents is me or my sister. This is because we have communicated with my parents about our futures many times, and my sister and I perceive what my parents want to do for the rest of their life. My parents hope that my sister or I will take care of them, and I want to do it because they raised me with a lot of love. In addition, I have relied on my parents for my whole life so far, so whenever they need me, I want to assist them. However, some parents think that they don’t need their children’s support because they don’t want to spend their children’s time and bother the children. Even though children don’t take care of their parents completely by themselves, devising plans with their parents and as necessary, taking parents to care services are also children’s responsibility. That is why children should take care of their parents. Nevertheless, there is a crucial issue in Japan that many children have been getting exhausted from helping their parents. This is because the increasing number of aging people has been having an impact on young people. To solve the problem, the government has to make a scheme to reduce their burden.

     In conclusion, because of the thought of symbiotic relationship and the system of the policy about paid family leave, Japanese people tend to think that children should have the responsibility of helping their aging parents. To solve some problems clarified by the increasing number of aging people, the Japanese government has to introduce new appropriate policy. 

Implication of critical thinking article

One of the important implications of this study is suggest to student that how can they improve their critical thinking skills. Students don't care about how much they understand about studies. They always think about how can I get a better grade without critical thinking. Even as me, I hadn't thought about critical thinking. I always care about my grade, but after I read this article, I realized that how critical thinking is important and the way of improving thinking with bunch of reading and writing practice.
  In Korea, until we enter university, I just learn the method which answer the question as fast as I can. My thinking was not important. I should analyze the research and should answer just with author's thinking. After this process, when I enter the university, suddenly professors need my own thinking. This demand makes me confused. I don't even know the way of get my own idea.
  But after I read this article, I realized the way of critical thinking. I need a lot of reading and writing practice. If there are someone who suffer like my problem, they also can get appropriate strategies from this article.
   In conclusion, students can find answer the way of improving skill from this article. Also, this article reminds me the method of improving critical thinking and lead to me to do more reading and writing for critical thinking

Get skills of Critical Thinking from Communicating

by Eri

     Reading and Writing would help me learn critical thinking skills. However, I think communicating would be more helpful than reading and writing in creating intellectual engagement. I have several reasons, and one of them is that I can know new ideas which I have never considered from other people by communicating.

     According to the article, "Study: Many college students not learning to think critically", the author, Sara Rimer, reports that students who took classes heavy on both reading and writing showed the higher rates of learning critical thinking. Reading more than 40 pages and writing more than20 pages per week help you think critically. This is true because reading can build your vocabulary, and writing can teach you to explain your own ideas. Nevertheless, reading a lot can be factors of making biased thinking. For example, my friend likes horror and mystery books and has been reading a lot of these books. By reading a lot, she can think critically. However, when she wrote essays, it became like a horror essay, and she couldn't write a positive one. It means that reading specific types of books, she acquired a biased thinking skill. As same as reading, although writing many pages might be good to increase the skill of analytical thinking, if someone doesn't have enough information, writing can be meaningless. Therefore,  the author's recommendation, reading and writing a lot, is one approach to improve your thinking skill, however, it is not the best way.

     Compared with this advice, communicating may be a better way to change your thinking skill to the more critical one. Before I came to the U.S., my mother suggested me to talk to as many people as I can. This is because the more I communicate with people who have different aspects, the more I can consider deeply and widely. Indeed, I learned a lot of ideas from Small Talk. My classmate told me many opinions which I had never thought. For example, I learned a lot of stereotypes of Japan which I couldn't notice when I lived in Japan. To know how my country has been thought by other countries' people is important to know what my country is, and I could think of Japan again, but more deeply. In addition, you can practice talking about your opinion by communicating as well as writing. Therefore, communicating is the best way to learn critical thinking for my lifestyle.

     In conclusion, although the author's recommendation, reading many books and writing many pages, is a good method to acquire critical thinking skills, as for me, communicating with many people is the best way to gain the skills effectively.

The Threat to Wildlife in Forests

by Eri
Today, many people have said that global warming is the most important environmental problem, so we need to make an effort to stop it. However, there are a lot of other critical environmental problems which we are not focusing on yet. Pollution of the forests is one of the problems. People throw away a lot of things in the mountains, and the garbage which remains is a factor which poses a threat to nature. Furthermore, the problem intimidates wildlife.

 A lot of trash which was dumped into forests injures animals. The rubbish causes them to get hurt in two ways, from inside of their body, and outside. 

      First, the garbage injures animals because they eat it. This problem is well known in the sea. According to the article, “US bans microbeads from personal care product”, the author says that nondegradable polymers are being eaten by fish as food. In the same way as in the sea, much waste has is being eaten by animals in forests and killed them. For example, only one plastic bag which is eaten by an animal can stop it breathing and rob its life. Therefore, the trash which is dumped into forests and eaten poses a threat of killing wild animals. 

Second, the garbage causes them serious injury when it remains in the forests. Even if animals don’t eat it, it can possibly hurt them. An expert says that a lot of wild animals are at risk of getting hurt by the trash, especially, sharp objects left in forests. This is because the objects fill the road and animals may walk on it. Which is how they can be hurt by the waste to stick them. In addition, there is a possibility that a small animal looks inside of an empty can, and gets its neck stuck in the can. Animals risk injury even if they don't eat the garbage.

In conclusion, because of the garbage which humans throw away, wild animals face the risk of death. People need not only to clean up the forests, but also to think about how to decrease the waste product which we dump into forests, and to realize what a dangerous threat the trash poses to wildlife. Making a comfortable world for both humans and animals is the task that people should do first.

Examples of threatening the environment and our attitude

By Daniel

In human's life, unconsciously we use a lot of items that of environmental problems. In other words, we face a lot of environmental problems. How can we deal with them? How should we differentiate what is harmful?  Here are some example for the items that we use frequently but harmful.

  One of them is micro-beads. According to the author of  'Study : Eight trillion micro-beads pollute aquatic habitats every day', micro-beads are serious cause of pollute environment. We use the micro-beads as a toothpaste or face wash. We think the micro-beads are go away and disappear forever, but they never really go away. They arrive to the ocean and could eaten by sea creatures, and kill the creatures as a food or pollute the water. So how can we handle this problem? From the article, we need the law for prohibit using micro-beads.  In the U.S. the movement for the ban has already begun from July 2017. They defined that any solid plastic particle less than 5mm in size should be banned.


  And then where can we find the item that we use unconsciously but harmful? It is using air conditioner. We use it every summer to make us feel comfortable but actually earth feel uncomfortable because of that. What is the matter of using air conditional? When we use air conditioner, it need refrigerant called R-22. It makes much Freon Gas that cause of global warming. Freon Gas generates Carbon Dioxide(Co2) in the process of disassembling oxygen and Co2 is one of the cause of global warming. We can't see the Co2, so we don't care about it or someone can think that our atmosphere is so huge so it will go away forever. Here is the same problem like micro-beads. Co2 is never really go away. They remain in the sky and block the geomagnetic energy. That's why the earth getting hotter and hotter. Then how can we deal using air conditional? World have already begun regulated use R-22, and find other refrigerant called R-410.

  In conclusion, what's our job for environment? It is too hard to notice which behavior is harmful or not. So we should have interest in current common sense and do our best to obey the rules which made for protect environment

Introducing Myself

By Eri Shimizu

     My name is Eri Shimizu and I'm from Japan and learning English. I like English because it helps me know a lot of things about the U.S., for example, the culture, interesting habits and new slang.

  The thing I like best about English is grammar. In Japan, most English classes focus on grammar more than reading, writing, speaking, or listening. For that reason, I have learned a lot of grammar. Therefore, grammar is my strength. I like grammar because it feels like a puzzle. Sometimes, it becomes hard for me to describe, for instance, if I don’t know which part of speech a word is. However, when I can figure it out, I am so happy. There is always a solution and reasons, so I can find an evident answer. Also, the point that everything is connected is one of the reasons why I like grammar. I can use something which I have learned before to understand a new thing. I think that this is also true of puzzles. Puzzles are also difficult, but I like them because there are rules, and I can certainly find the answers. Grammar and puzzles have a lot of similarities; therefore, I like grammar, and it is my strength in English.

      Compared with grammar, I’m not good at reading. I like reading books, but most books I have read are in Japanese, not in English. This is the first reason why I’m not good at reading. I want to read English books fast, so I need to read as many books as possible. The second reason is prejudice. When I was in Japan, I read English articles in my textbook, but most of them were so boring. In addition, the teachers were so boring, too. That's why I have a prejudice against reading class. However, the class in the U.S. is much more interesting than in Japan, so I think the prejudice will go away. To sum up, I don’t like reading very much now, but I might get better at reading this summer.

      Writing is better than reading for me. It is interesting and exciting because I can use grammar which I practice in writing. Writing helps me realize how much I know about grammar. For example, in the last session, I had learned how to use past perfect progressive and was able to use it in my essay. Consequently, I like writing because it has some connection with grammar. Of course, I have many problems in writing such as I can’t write as fluently and accurately as I'd like to. However, I believe that I can be a good writer if I learn a lot and practice hard. In fact, I have become better at writing than I was in Japan, so this hasn’t become a factor in disliking writing.

      In conclusion, my strength in English is grammar, and I like writing because I can use grammar for it. Now, I’m not so good at reading, but I hope that my reading skill will improve this semester.

ABOUT DANIEL

 Hi, my name is Daniel and I'm from Korea. When i was in Korea, i had to take a Korean SAT to enter university. In it, there are many article that i must interpret to answer questions, so i practiced a lot to read fast and understand as fast as i could. That's why i think my strength in English is reading. Also, when I read something, I can control everything. For example, i can control the speed of reading, can read the same sentence until i can understand perfectly, and even if i can't understand some words, i can answer questions about the article. I think my favorite genre of reading is novel. When i read novels, i can imagine the scenes of story and this imagination can fill my life with real happiness. For example, when i was in elementary school, i loved 'Harry Potter'. I read the whole series again and again with imagination. From that time, i found pleasure in reading, so i tried to find other novels to read for fun.

 But writing is a different problem. If i want to write something, i need to consider
vocabulary, grammar, and try to think clearly about topic or my opinion. That's why i need more practice in writing in the next three months. Writing combines many part of English skills, so it's very hard to write refined article. I believe that if i improve my skills in vocabulary, grammar, and clear thinking, i can write better paragraphs. My favorite kind of writing is to write about myself. It is easy to think about me because i always think about myself and i can just write my life's experience without deep thinking.

 In conclusion, I prefer reading than writing because reading brings to me a happiness, but writing always brings me confusing and sadness. I know that i can write better but it is very difficult to find errors and fix them. This is why write bring me sadness. Thank you. 

My First Vacation in US

By Eri Shimizu

 Last week, I had the first long vacation in the US. I went to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. There are a lot of impressive place for me, and I enjoyed so much.
 On the first day of the vacation, I went to Las Vegas. I was so surprised because there is a lot of homeless people on the street. It was more dangerous than I expected. I knew that Las Vegas is a night city, but I didn't want  to go out at night. Yet, I saw the famous fountain show in Las Vegas.

On the next day, I went to Grand Canyon. It was so big and so wide. I had never seen any canyons before but seen the photos of Grand Canyon. It was bigger than I was thinking. I felt that human is just tiny creature. I wanted to relax in the place, but it was too hot, so I couldn't.
  From the next day to the last day, I spent time in Los Angeles. I prefer LA than Las Vegas, because there are more place for fun in LA than in Las Vegas. The best place is Disneyland.
I have been to Disneyland, but it was the first time to go to one in California. I took a lot of pictures with many characters.

My First Vacation in the U.S.

By Daniel


After spring class, we got time for vacation. So i decided to go to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. The first definition was San Francisco where far from here about 2~3 hours.
When i planed the vacation, i want to save my money so i chose transfer route from Spokane to San Francisco. I spent about 6 hours to got San Francisco. It wasn't boring than my expectation. I visited Portland airport for transfer and then finally i arrived San Francisco. When i arrived there, it was crowded. I felt confused to find Share ride station, so i missed the first Uber. After that i got Uber, and head to my hostel with the other Koreans. When i got there, there was so many Koreans in the lobby. I felt excited because in Spokane i couldn't find many Koreans. The next day, i visited Lombard street, pier 39, In n out bugger for lunch and cheese cake factory for dinner.
I didn't know about L
ombard street before the trip. But i realized that the street is famous and beautiful. There was many people to see the street. It located in the hill with some flowers and shaped with curve. After that i head to In n out bugger.

My Summer Vacation

by Bridget Green

The Big Easy, Crescent City, Nawlins, New Orleans! 

This wasn't summer, but New Orleans is hot enough that it felt like summer! Last week, my family all went to New Orleans for my son Fionn's graduation from Loyola University.

Crawfish!

He has been living and studying in NOLA (that's what he calls it: NOLA -- which stands for New Orleans, Louisiana) for the last four years. His major is Music Production and he's in the Honors Program (that's my boy!). We are so proud of all of his hard, creative work so we wanted to celebrate him! 
The whole family came: James and I from Spokane, his sister and her boyfriend, Ceilan and Harry, from Scotland, his brother Zeke from France, his cousin Ryan from Seattle, and my sis and her husband, Mary and Gary from Spokane.  So that makes nine people. We all stayed in a super cool Airbnb 'shotgun' house and we had so much fun! We ate incredible food (alligator, crawfish, red beans and rice,

Ceilan and Harry with a 4-year-old alligator

cornbread!) and went on a couple of cool tours (a slave plantation, a swamp tour, and to a cooking school for a class on how to make gumbo and chicken creole) and heard Fionn sing (in a church choir and at a vocal recital)! Wow! Oh, and it was James' birthday and Mother's Day! The vacation was packed with activity and joy and new adventures.
The very best part for me was that we were all together.  I love all of those people who came to NOLA. They are the center of my world. I am especially overjoyed to see my children so happy and creative and strong and so loving to each other. I am the luckiest woman on earth!