Thomas Paine essay

Posted on August 30, 2011 by jrapson

As this is your first essay of the year, I am offering extra credit to those who share ideas on how they would respond to the prompt. Thanks!

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11 Responses to Thomas Paine essay

  1. Sydnei Taylor says:
    August 31, 2011 at 3:02 am

    In my essay I am going to compare and contrast Paine’s characterization of America in 1791 and the America we know today. Using our present economy and government situation as the evidence t fuel my argument.

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  2. Alicia Shelley says:
    August 31, 2011 at 4:05 am

    I would respond to some of Paine’s claims affirmatively, such as his statement that “taxes are few,” in that presently, taxes aren’t necessarily unjust or unnecessary. However, I believe America differs from how it was in 1791 when it comes to a statement like “the rich are not privileged,” for reasons such as the rich get undue tax breaks while public institutions like education suffer.

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  3. Kathy Lien says:
    August 31, 2011 at 5:22 am

    I disagree with Thomas Paine’s argument. His statement suggests that the American government is a perfect, infallible structure, which it’s not. So, I plan to explain how racism is an extant problem in our government, how the rich does have more privileges than the poor, and how our government undoubtedly faces problems just like any other country. I’m also going to use examples from today’s society like the Oascar Grant case, the recession, and private schools to prove my point.

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  4. Theresa Bagby Underwood says:
    August 31, 2011 at 5:35 am

    In my essay, I will talk about how Paine’s characterization of America is true to a certain extent. His stance is not completely true because today we still have corruption in our government, and some cases of unequal rights. I will then give examples of lobbyists and politicians to support my claim of how there is corruption in our government. As for examples of cases of unequal rights I will bring up Proposition 8 and how gays are denied their constitutional right to wed.

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  5. Theresa Bagby Underwood says:
    August 31, 2011 at 5:41 am

    I will also mention how the poor are oppressed since they are targeted to be recruited into the military. For instance, the military tries to recruit Skyline High School students (where most people here aren’t rich) whereas, you don’t see the military trying to recruit students from Piedmont or Orinda.

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  6. Jason To says:
    August 31, 2011 at 6:08 am

    In my essay, I will write about how Paine’s image of America has changed over time. It’s apparent in his article that America isn’t the same country anymore. The rich are barely affected by the taxes imposed by the present government, whereas the taxes take a greater toll on the poor. I am going to use the recession as one of my main examples for backing up my claim.

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  7. Eric Van Le says:
    August 31, 2011 at 6:21 am

    Much have changed throughout these years and Paine’s characterization of America absolutely does not hold true any longer. Our economy will not get better for a long time because of the debt. From 1900s until now, our government’s debt will keep on increasing, we have now added at least 3 trillion dollars to our debt. Poor people are oppressed because of the inability to give their children the education they need. For example, in New York city there are many public schools filled with lazy teachers,ergo lead to bad education. Now there are not that many “good” public schools around, so many poor kids will try to get into those schools. Unfortunately, those public schools won’t be able to fit every kid in there, so many poor kids will have to stick to the bad public schools they’re attending. On the other hand, rich kids are able to have the money to be put into private schools, therefore will receive a better education.

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  8. Simon Harris says:
    August 31, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    I, too, agree with Paine to a certain extent. He is correct about The diversity, racial and cultural, of the broad group of people that live in America, but his second statement is incorrect. He claims that the poor have few taxes and are not oppressed, and the rich are not privileged. I plan on refering to an article from the summer assignment to prove this.

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  9. norrishacooper says:
    September 2, 2011 at 2:49 am

    My idea of the prompt was that Thomas Paine seemed to be speaking from authority. Meaning he seemed to be naive to what really goes on in America because maybe he was born into wealth and never had to face the real world.

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  10. Victor Ho says:
    September 4, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    For my essay, i willing be explaining on how Thomas Paine is wrong about the part where he talks on how the poor has few taxes with the being of taking advantage and about the rich not having any rights. In today, the poor has very difficult time in dealing with taxes while the rich have the power of money to almost extensively buy anything they want. The difference between these two would be the rich not having the experience of how hard workers are and the poor not having enough wealth.

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    • Victor Ho says:
      September 5, 2011 at 12:35 am

      Senator Orrin hatch opinion talks about how he wants to get people paying taxes because not many of them do. The rich has been paying too much taxes and about the bottom of 51% of Americans are not paying enough and about 23% of people may get refundable taxes from the government. He wants the poor to pay taxes like regular people and to use that extra money as a opportunity to get people working. He wants to improve the tax code and he wants to target the poor because they are avoiding social security taxes and making the rich do more. We should be grateful that we live in America since it is consider as one of the rich country and we get to pay less taxes.

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