El Centro CollegeENVR 1401 OnlineWhat Trophic Level Are YouOb.docx

El Centro College
ENVR 1401 Online
What Trophic Level Are You?Objective
1. Students will discover where their food comes from in
nature.
2. Students will demonstrate how nature is connected and
dependent on each other.
3. Students will predict how humans impact food webs.
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Please Highlight or type answers in a different
color.Introduction
All of the energy that you use to perform daily tasks like
exercising, thinking, and staying warm comes from the food that
you eat. All of the energy in your food comes from the sun.
First, plants convert light energy from the sun into chemical
energy through photosynthesis. When animals eat the plants
they use the process of cellular respiration to transform this
chemical energy into a form their bodies can use. Animals can
also get energy from eating other animals, although much of the
original energy from the sun has already been used up by the
animal which is eaten. In this activity you will determine where
you get your food and it turn your energy.Procedure
1. Create a list of food consumed during
one day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, & beverages).
2. Label each item as from a producer (plant), a primary
consumer (e.g., cow), or secondary or higher consumer (e.g.,
fish) based on their feeding behavior.
* If the food item contains both producers and consumers,

note both and guess approximately how much of each
it contains.
3. Determine the approximate percentage of food obtained from
producers and the approximate percentage of food obtained
from consumers. Data
Food List
Feeding Behavior (producer, primary consumer, etc.)
Results
Trophic Level
Feeding Behavior
Percentage
First
Producer
Second
Primary Consumer
Third
Secondary Consumer
Fourth
Tertiary Consumer
Fifth
Apex Predator
n/a
Decomposer
Conclusions

How much support do you receive from the first trophic level?
How much from the second trophic level?
In which trophic level do you belong? Consider more than this
day.
If you ate more producers, how would this change the
percentage of the biomass pyramid necessary to support your
survival? Why?
If you ate more food from secondary consumers, how would this
change the percentage of the biomass pyramid necessary to
support your survival? Why?
1
3/15/2020 American Dream: Social Mobility & Opportunity Are
Alive & Well | National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/05/american-dream-
social-mobility-opportunity/ 1/5
I
(Photo: Mylightscapes/Dreamstime)
Social mobility is still going strong in the Land of Opportunity.
s the American dream on life support? That’s the perennial

claim of
“declinists,” who are convinced that the American spirit of
opportunity is at
death’s door. That claim was recently bolstered by research
from a team of
top economists, who found that half of today’s 30-year-olds are
worse off than
their parents were at the same age. A closer look at that study,
however, reveals
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
The American Dream Abides
LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE
By May 15, 2017 8:00 AMSCOTT WINSHIP
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that opportunity is alive and well. That does not mean we
should be complacent
about removing barriers to success for those born
disadvantaged, but neither
should we worry that the nation’s best days are behind us.
For a long time, some declinists reluctantly acknowledged that
Americans enjoy
much higher living standards than those of previous
generations. But, they
argued, it’s harder to rise from rags to riches than it used to be.
That claim ran
against 20 years of academic research on “relative economic
mobility” — moving
from, say, the bottom fifth to the middle fifth of family income
between
childhood and adulthood. Those studies consistently found that
any changes in
how often such transitions happen have been so small as to be
difficult to detect
reliably.
That academic consensus was ratified two years ago by Stanford
University
economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues, who used tax records
to show that
relative mobility has been flat since the early 1970s. But their
latest paper gives
the declinists an out. “The Fading American Dream” finds that

“absolute
mobility” — exceeding the income of one’s parents — has
declined dramatically
over the past 45 years. In 2014, 30-year-olds had only a 50–50
chance of beating
their parents, whereas nearly all 30-year-olds did in 1970.
Are the declinists finally — finally! — right that today’s
children will be the first
generation to do worse than their parents? No.
For starters, absolute mobility is higher than the Chetty paper
suggests. Because
of delayed marriage, rising divorce, delayed childbearing, and
reduced fertility,
families are smaller than they used to be. That means that a
given level of
income needs to feed fewer mouths than it did in the past, so
adults today can be
better off than their parents even when their income is lower.
When Chetty and
his colleagues adjusted incomes for family size, 60 percent of
today’s 30-year-
olds were better off than their parents at the same age.
cookies here.

In a recent paper for the Archbridge Institute — a new
Washington, D.C., think
tank focused on expanding opportunity — I summarize the
evidence on
economic mobility in America. Using a different data source
than the Chetty
team, I find that 64 percent of 30-year-olds in 2010, 2011, and
2012 had higher
size-adjusted incomes than their parents at the same age — very
close to the
average rate of 62 percent found by Chetty during those years.
I then make two additional improvements to the absolute
mobility measure. I
adjust incomes for the rise in the cost of living, using the
superior price index
preferred by the Federal Reserve Board — whose mandate is to
keep inflation
under control — and the Congressional Budget Office. (The
price index used by
the Chetty team is known to overstate inflation.) That raises the
absolute
mobility rate to 67 percent. Adding income from federal cash
transfers — both

social-insurance programs, such as unemployment
compensation, and safety-
net benefits, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
— raises the rate
to 68 percent.
It seems likely that when all is said and done, 70 percent or
more of today’s
30-year-olds are better off than their parents were at the same
age.
Better data would show even more adults exceeding their
parents’ income.
Neither my estimates nor Chetty’s count employer benefits,
such as health
insurance or retirement contributions, as income, nor do they
count federal non-
cash benefits, such as housing assistance or food stamps. These
employer and
federal benefits have increased over time relative to cash
income. The income
estimates do not look at disposable income after taxes either.
Tax rates have
declined over time, and refundable tax credits to low-income
families have
increased.
Furthermore, research suggests that even the price index I use
overstates
inflation, thereby understating the rise in income over time.
Finally, these
estimates miss adults whose parents immigrated to the United
States after age

cookies here.
https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/2017/03/20/economic-
mobility-in-america/
30 or who are themselves immigrants. It seems likely that when
all is said and
done, 70 percent or more of today’s 30-year-olds are better off
than their
parents were at the same age.
That is still lower than in 1970. But 30-year-olds in 1970 were
born towards the
end of the Great Depression. Exceeding the income of their
parents was
relatively easy compared with today. Few of today’s 30-year-
olds would trade
the higher absolute mobility their 1970 counterparts enjoyed for

contemporary
living standards.
My research shows that today’s 30-year-olds typically are richer
than their
parents by more than 25 percent. That translates into over
$10,000 more than
their parents. And as noted, these are conservative estimates of
absolute
mobility.
Rich children are less likely than poor children to exceed their
parents’ incomes,
because a rich child can be affluent as an adult and still be
poorer than his
parents, while a poor child can be poor as an adult and still be
richer than his
parents. We care more about the poor adult’s poverty than we
do about the rich
adult’s lack of absolute mobility.
The same should be true in assessing the lower absolute
mobility in a richer
America. The Chinese today are likely experiencing sky-high
absolute mobility
rates. Should we wish that we were in China rather than in the
nation that
remains the land of opportunity? We should not.
The American dream — even in an affluent United States — is
alive and well.
Increasing absolute mobility will require us to boost economic
growth through
lower corporate income taxes, deregulation, deficit reduction,
higher-skilled
immigration, and revived entrepreneurship. The mistaken belief

that living
standards are falling will lead us to embrace counterproductive
policies that will
cookies here.
perversely reduce absolute mobility rates. And that would
actually produce the
fading American dream that the declinists wrongly proclaim
today.
SCOTT WINSHIP directs the Social Capital Project for Senator
Mike Lee in the Joint
Economic Committee. His writings re�ect his own views, not

those of Senator Lee or
the JEC.
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Discussion about Social Mobility

No unread replies.No replies.
Please read "
The American Dream AbidesDownload The American
Dream Abides," which provides an example of an optimistic
view on social mobility, a conversation that you may want to
address in your own Exploratory Essay.
After you have read this article...
· Provide a position, angle, or perspective that you have on this
article and the author's optimistic view of social mobility.
· Provide one concrete example that supports or that counters
this author's position (you can take this example from your own
personal experience or from current events and your own
reading).
· Respond to at least one of your classmates' posts. Contribute
something that will be useful for your classmates when they
consider their own issues. (If you post early, you may need to
come back a few hours later to see what your classmates have
posted.)
Remember, you're not
arguing with each other in this discussion board;
instead, you're providing multiple perspectives in order to
provide a fuller understanding of a complicated issue.
Here is the online link to the article:
The American Dream Abides

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