QUESTION
Assessment : Critical review of a journal article
The following Robert Reich journal articale need to have critical review in eassy formet with 1000 words due in thurseday 22nd march 9am.The writing Style will be harvard referance style with in text citation.
A critical review of a journal article will require students to evaluate an article’s strengths, weaknesses and validity through explanation, interpretation and analysis. The evaluation should be based on the text itself and other related texts so that students can present a fair and reasonable view of the article. The details about the article and the guidelines on how to write a critical review need to be followed
Robert Reich: Why Growth is Good
Economic growth is slowing in the United States. It’s also slowing in Japan, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Canada. It’s even slowing in China. And it’s likely to be slowing soon in Germany.
If governments keep hacking away at their budgets while consumers almost everywhere are becoming more cautious about spending, global demand will shrink to the point where a worldwide dip is inevitable.
You might ask yourself: So what? Why do we need more economic growth anyway? Aren’t we ruining the planet with all this growth — destroying forests, polluting oceans and rivers, and spewing carbon into the atmosphere at a rate that’s already causing climate chaos? Let’s just stop filling our homes with so much stuff.
The answer is economic growth isn’t just about more stuff. Growth is different from consumerism. Growth is really about the capacity of a nation to produce everything that’s wanted and needed by its inhabitants. That includes better stewardship of the environment as well as improved public health and better schools. (The Gross Domestic Product is a crude way of gauging this but it’s a guide. Nations with high and growing GDPs have more overall capacity; those with low or slowing GDPs have less.)
Poorer countries tend to be more polluted than richer ones because they don’t have the capacity both to keep their people fed and clothed and also to keep their land, air and water clean. Infant mortality is higher and life spans shorter because they don’t have enough to immunize against diseases, prevent them from spreading, and cure the sick.
In their quest for resources rich nations (and corporations) have too often devastated poor ones – destroying their forests, eroding their land, and fouling their water. This is intolerable, but it isn’t an indictment of growth itself. Growth doesn’t depend on plunder. Rich nations have the capacity to extract resources responsibly. That they don’t is a measure of their irresponsibility and the weakness of international law.
How a nation chooses to use its productive capacity – how it defines its needs and wants — is a different matter. As China becomes a richer nation it can devote more of its capacity to its environment and to its own consumers, for example.
The United States has the largest capacity in the world. But relative to other rich nations it chooses to devote a larger proportion of that capacity to consumer goods, health care, and the military. And it uses comparatively less to support people who are unemployed or destitute, pay for non-carbon fuels, keep people healthy, and provide aid to the rest of the world. Slower growth will mean even more competition among these goals.
Faster growth greases the way toward more equal opportunity and a wider distribution of gains. The wealthy more easily accept a smaller share of the gains because they can still come out ahead of where they were before. Simultaneously, the middle class more willingly pays taxes to support public improvements like a cleaner environment and stronger safety nets. It’s a virtuous cycle. We had one during the Great Prosperity the lasted from 1947 to the early 1970s.
Slower growth has the reverse effect. Because economic gains are small, the wealthy fight harder to maintain their share. The middle class, already burdened by high unemployment and flat or dropping wages, fights ever more furiously against any additional burdens, including tax increases to support public improvements. The poor are left worse off than before. It’s a vicious cycle. We’ve been in one most of the last thirty years.
No one should celebrate slow growth. If we’re entering into a period of even slower growth, the consequences could be worse.
Article: http://robertreich.org/post/968048444
What is meant by critical?
Writing the critical review requires you to read the selected text in detail and to also read other related texts so that you can present a fair and reasonable evaluation of the selected text. At university, to be critical does not mean to criticise in a negative manner. Rather it requires you to question the information and opinions in a text and present your evaluation or judgement of the text. To do this well, you should attempt to understand the topic from different perspectives (i.e. read related texts) and in relation to the theories, approaches and frameworks in your course.
Assignment Question:
Given structure for this Assignment: Please Maintain the answer structure.
Given Structure of a Critical Review from University: Which must be followed
- Introduction (250 words)
The length of an introduction should be one paragraph. Include a few opening sentences that briefly explain the topic of the text. Present the aim of the text and summarise the main finding or key argument. Conclude the introduction with a brief statement of your evaluation of the text. This can be a positive or negative evaluation or, as is usually the case, a mixed response. Evaluate only the arguments
Answer the following questions:
1. What claims are made?
2.Is the argument consistent?
3. What kinds of evidence does the text rely on?
4. How valid and reliable is the evidence?
5. How effective is the evidence in supporting the argument?
6. What conclusions are drawn?
7. Are these conclusions justified?
8. Has the author overlooked anything?
You do not need to summarise the text and you do not need to evaluate all the aspects of the quality of the text, such as significance of the article, methodology used, writing style or structure. Evaluate only the arguments –
- Critique : (600 words)
Write your opinion about the article .The critique should be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the strengths, weakness and validity of the text through explanation, interpretation and analysis in the article and support your arguments with empirics- data, statistics, other articles, books, etc. Illustrate your points with examples, include other sources to support your evaluation (remember to reference). Avoid a point-by-point listing of themes and use a more integrated approach.
You can choose how to sequence your critique. Here are some examples to get you started:
- Most important to least important conclusions you make about the text.
- If your critique is more positive than negative, then present the negative points first and the positive last.
- If your critique is more negative than positive, then present the positive points first and the negative last.
- If there are both strengths and weakness for each statement you evaluate, you need to decide overall what your judgement is. For example, you may want to comment on a key idea in the text and have both positive and negative comments. You could begin by stating what is good about the idea and then concede and explain how it is limited in some way. While this example shows a mixed evaluation, overall you are probably being more negative than positive.
- Think about what the main point of your criticism will be. You can either address each statement you choose in one paragraph, including both negative and positive points or you can write a paragraph of positive aspects and another of negative. Evaluate only the arguments.
- 3. Conclusion(200 words)
This is usually a very short paragraph.
- Restate your overall opinion of the text.
- If necessary some further qualification or explanation of your judgement can be included. This can help your critique sound fair and reasonable.
- References
Include a list of references at the end of the review.
(adapted from http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/pdf/critical_review.pdf, http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~genzuk/Reviews_Journal_Articles.pdf)
End of answer structure
Critical review- assessment criteria:
Knowledge and Understanding For this you need to show that you have a good grasp of the broader context- provide evidence of wider reading. Your understanding of the topics involved will be judged based on the arguments you provide.
Evaluation and Analysis For this you should show your ability to analyse the information and data you decided to use and make critical judgements and conclusions. You will need to provide relevant arguments to support/contradict the statements in the article.
Use of supporting data/sources You will be assessed on how you use the appropriate evidence to substantiate your discussion. You will need to use evidence to support all your arguments- data, empirical evidence, references,…
Clarity and Cohesion, Structure This requires you to present clear, understandable and logical discussion which sensibly follows on from what has gone before and is divided into paragraphs which form a clear structure.
Referencing You will be expected to acknowledge your sources both in the text and in a list at the end, both of which must conform to Harvard Standards.
SOLUTION
In this article ‘Why Growth is Good: Robert Reich” (Reich.R., 2010) the author has supported the faster economic growth for the world to sustain and to create equal opportunity and economic gains in the society for each and every class. However he also criticises that growth is detrimental because the rich countries just capitalise on the resources of the poor nations overlooking the environmental damage and polluting the Mother Nature. His argument supporting faster pace of growth is consistent all through the article because he feels that slower growth means more unemployment, inequality amongst the social classes and more people below the poverty line.
He has tried to support the concept of growth through Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that is the countries with growing and more GDP possess higher overall or productive capacity, while the countries with lower and slower GDP rise show decreased productive capacity. This is the reason why it is quite evident that rich countries like United States of America and China whose GDP is already very high and has always seen upward trend have more productive capacity. These countries on the other hand keep on utilising the resources and eth lower productive capacity of poorer nations like Pakistan, African Countries etc. to enhance their economic growth and leave these poor nations devastated.
The evidence provided by Robert Reich are quite effective as Benjamin S. Friedman also supported the fact that more the GDP , the more will be goods and services which will create great number of happier citizens (Freidman, 2005). However the author has overlooked the fact that GDP is not the real measure of the economic growth because there is absence of evidence that there is systematic correlation existing between the household income and the per capita GDP and the per capita GDP itself which give rise to classical measurement errors (Dollar and Kraay, March).
Critique
The material consequences of the economic growth have been dealt in a very good manner by the author in this article , however the economists are unable to detail or chalk out the moral consequences which the economic growth has (Delong, 2006). Even John Mynard Keynes believes that getting tormented over their bank balance is good for a man than to dictate their fellow beings which mean that the rich class is always focussed on their wealth and treat it as means to control nature, rather than power their fellow beings. A prominent economist has also written that in the 18th century the people have become more commercialised and they have become sweeter and turned polite and courteous towards each other. While earlier they used to treat their fellow beings as clan enemies (Hirschman, 1997).
According to Friedman (2005) we have started valuing economic growth because there is tendency amongst people to compare their well being with the others in the society. He says that as the average income increases in the country, the levels of expectations also increase in that country. This clearly indicates that the GDP level per person in any country is not the real time measure of the happiness of any country. So there is lack of link between per capita GDP and the personal satisfaction which clearly undermines the economic arguments or statements given by economists in support of growth. This shows that why should we face the turmoil of economic restructuring and advanced technological changes, if these numerous gadgets and huge mansions to live are not going to give us any kind of happiness?
However it has been noticed by Friedman( 2005) that economic growth has one very good benefit attached to it and that is the people when see their personal income levels growing do not get bothered about what is happening with others. This creates a favourable social and political environment for the country to move ahead and grow. The article misses upon this aspect given by Friedman (Mandel, 2005).
But Robert Reich has made or put forth a good point which connects the rising economic growth and its effect on the environment. Where economic growth is termed as the mean rise in the average income measured by GDP per capita population and natural enlivenment is not at all compatible with growth because the resources are very limited and all the economic activities take place in this biotic habitat only (Temple, 2006). All eth human economic activities do have impact on the environment and the emissions, carbon footprints or the concentrations of pollutants are just a brief or smaller picture of the major shock absorbing capacity which environment has.
The growing levels of production and consumption has lead to technological progress and industrialisation over the past 200 years and that is why environment has been treated as a sink to throw residual wastes. But due to the huge volume of goods and services produced on global scale the level of contamination has become persistent and its impacts have become very toxic too. Therefore the main source of such kind of economic growth through different standpoints and to sustain this economic growth is totally incorrect (Temple, 2006). In order to develop and strengthen the economic and environmental nexus we need to develop strict international laws and have a collective approach.
Conclusion
Thus all the points being specific by Robert Reich are totally justified and true that economic growth is good for the development of any country as it enhanced the productive capacity. However the rate of growth has to be very fast in order to create level of equality amongst the society and to enhance the scope of distribution of profits amongst the people. But at the same time the countries like U.S. and China which already have faster growth rate should be environmentally conscious and try to work towards benefit of society and saving the environment rather than just exploiting the productive capacity of the poor nations for their own benefit . This leads to severe damage to the environment, health and general well being of the society.
Another constraint which is found is that GDP cannot be taken as real measure of growth of any country because GDP does not take in account the maintenance of GDP in future or the value of the non-monetary activities of the society and lastly it does not differentiate between the lesser or more productive economic activities (Chang-Chein, 2010).
Bibliography
Chang-Chein, G. (2010) Gross Domestic Porduct: Is GDP a good measure of economic grwoth? Why or whynot?, 11 October, [Online], Available: http://www.quora.com/Gross-Domestic-Product/Is-GDP-a-good-measure-of-economic-growth-Why-or-why-not [22 March 2012].
Delong, B.J. (2006) ‘Growth is Good’, Harvard Magazine, Janaury February.
Dollar, D. and Kraay, A. (March) ‘Grwoth si Good for the Poor’, Journal of economic growth, 2002.
Freidman, B.S. (2005) The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Random House.
Hirschman, A.O. (1997) The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Mandel, M. (2005) ‘What’s So Good About Growth ‘, Bloomberg Businessweek, 7 November.
Reich.R. (2010) Robert REich: Why Growth is Good, 17 AUgust, [Online], Available: http://robertreich.org/post/968048444 [22 March 2012].
Temple, B. (2006) ‘Is economic growth ‘good’ for the environment?’, Otago University Research Archive, March, p. 60.
JA91
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