Economic Inequality, Wealth, and Poverty

The reality is that there simply aren’t unlimited resources to address all the social problems that trouble American society. This means that in putting together their budgets legislators must prioritize the problems to which they will be allocating resources. Although they do allocate resources to address multiple social problems, each year they provide additional extensive funding to address one specific social problem that they deem to be of great significance. During the current legislative session they have been besieged by both lobbyists and the general public with requests to devote those extra resources to various social problems of concern to those groups. Not being experts in social problems, the legislators have called on you, as an expert in social problems, to write a report that will provide them with guidance on what social problem merits additional resources.

What they would like you to do is to analyze two social problems. The first is the problem that you conclude is of the greatest significance and thus merits the greatest amount of resources. The second is the problem that you conclude is of least concern, and that they should definitely not consider for those additional resources.

Thus in this paper you will be discussing two social problems, each of which will be selected from the problems that are the focus of chapters 2 through 11 in our textbook. You must select the two problems from different chapters. I encourage you to spend some time in making your choices because if you choose problems in which you have a lot of interest the paper will be enjoyable to research and write.

Your paper will follow the following structure, and include these seven sections in the following order.

Introduction – the mission of the paper and what will be covered in accomplishing the mission.
Full description of the social problem that you believe is of limited significance, and thus unworthy of the additional resources that are to be allocated by the legislature.
Your argument demonstrating that the minimal significance of the problem you have just described is limited.
Full description of the social problem that you believe is of the greatest significance, and thus very worthy of the additional resources that are to be allocated by the legislature.
Your argument demonstrating the significance of the problem you just described and why it is worthy of the additional resources.
Conclusion in which you briefly summarize your analysis and conclusion.
Reference section – List of sources you will be using in the paper. These must be in APA reference format.

Your paper must be 5 pages in length (not including the title and reference page), and supported with information from the following sources: the textbook, the video material in the course, and two additional peer-reviewed journal articles of your choice obtained from the Troy University online library. Plenty of information from each of these sources must be incorporated, cited, and referenced in support of your analysis.

The paper format, citations and references will be in APA format. Here is a link to a tutorial on APA to help you with this.

https://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx

With regard to writing, no more than a couple of brief quoted passages should be used in the paper and these should only be used to make a special point. The rest of the information you present from your sources should be paraphrased. This simply means that you rewrite the original language entirely in your own words and then follow with a citation. Do not retain any of the original language in your paraphrase. Here is the guidance provided by Troy University to help you with your citing, referencing, paraphrasing, and quoting.

https://trojan.troy.edu/library/assets/documents/pdf/plagiarism_student_guide.pdf

A grading rubric has been provided to help you in doing this paper. The grading rubric is what I will be using to review and grade your paper. Make sure to take a look at the grading rubric when you go through the paper preparation process. You will find this in the Helpful Resources section of the course. You will find a copy of this in the Helpful Resources section of the course.

I have also provided you with a checklist to use to help you to make sure that you have covered all the bases on this assignment. I encourage you to use this tool. A copy of this can also be found in the Helpful Resources section of the course.

Again, if you pick social problems in which you are interested, follow the guidance provided above, and always ask questions if anything is unclear to you, this will be an interesting assignment for you. Again, if you have any questions as you go through the paper preparation process please do not hesitate to let me know. I’m always willing to help you in order for you to maximize what you accomplish on our assignments.

Please submit your paper as a WORD file attachment, and don’t forget to check after you have submitted it to make sure that what you submitted is what you intended to submit. Thank you!