In my second quarter of my first year of college, I am taking an intro class to microeconomics. Despite the class being about microeconomics, we still talk about macroeconomics because their terms and concepts go hand-in-hand with each other. This week in the 2nd quarter of the school year, Professor K.C. Fung shared with his students – which includes me – a video about Spain’s Economic growth, specifically Nadia Calviño’s overall reflections on the past few years of Spain’s progress and the future budget plans of Spain. In the video about Spain, Nadia Calviño – who is the Minister of Economy and Business for Spain and was a former Director-General of Budget for the European Commission – talks about how Spain’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in 2019 is expected to continue growing at rate above the average rate of nations in the European Union. Spain plans to make this expectation a reality with their new budget plan to increase minimum wage by 22%.
In the video about Spain, Nadia Calviño – who is the Minister of Economy and Business for Spain and was a former Director-General of Budget for the European Commission – . There was a point in this video about where Minster Calviño was being pressured to compare Spain’s economic and political situation to other European countries, such as Italy, who are currently in very unstable situations; I felt like Nadia Calviño handled this situation perfectly. She emphasized heavily that we should not compare one nation’s economical and political progress to another nation’s to determine economical and political success. It is not about competing with other nations to become the top country economically, but rather the goal of each nation should be to achieve its own stability through the cooperation of other nations also looking to achieve this goal. This response shows how Nadia Calviño’s main goal as the Economic and Political Minister of Spain is to focus on Spain’s gradual progress as it fixes its economical crisis. More importantly, it shows that she will not just go and waste all of Spain’s resources just to make Spain a more powerful nation in the global market than another nation like Italy.
Another powerful point in Nadia Calviño’s speech is when she is questioned about how she plans to push the budget plan when the government lacks strength in terms of European Union (EU) Parliamentary seats. In her response, she sounds very optimistic like she knows that the budget plan for 2019 will pass. The tone in her voice expresses a very important emotion when it comes to persuasion: confidence. When it comes to persuasion, you are only as powerful as you are confident. The more confident someone is during their speech or pitch, the more likely others will buy into that speech or pitch. Her confidence is backed up by the fact when she first became the Economic and Political Minister of Spain, she has managed to pass a significant amount of laws despite their weak position in the European Union.
The Academic Journey 