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 Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:03 am Capitalism 101 |
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Hi Jamie,
Yes that's an interesting cartoon indeed. There is one part that reminds me of socialism, though.
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Torsten
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| Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:50 am Capitalism 101 |
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what a good cartoon!
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prezbucky
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| Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:50 am Capitalism 101 |
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| Torsten wrote: | | Yes that's an interesting cartoon indeed. There is one part that reminds me of socialism, though. |
Which part? |
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Jamie (K)
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Jamie (K)
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| Wed Jan 16, 2008 14:52 pm Capitalism 101 |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: | | Torsten wrote: | | Yes that's an interesting cartoon indeed. There is one part that reminds me of socialism, though. |
Which part? |
The part where the state collects taxes. Of course even in a free enterprise system there has to be a government that collects tax money from the privately held businesses to provide services to the public. But then again, why not privatize everything, even the government itself?
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| Wed Jan 16, 2008 16:11 pm Capitalism 101 |
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| Torsten wrote: | | But then again, why not privatize everything, even the government itself? |
I'd say you were joking  The likes of Murdoch and Abramovich are already running the world, imagine them governing us as well...
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| Wed Jan 16, 2008 16:41 pm Capitalism 101 |
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Thank you, Jamie, for sharing such a good cartoon. It really explains how capitalizm works in a funny and understandable way !
| Ralph wrote: | | I'd say you were joking The likes of Murdoch and Abramovich are already running the world, imagine them governing us as well... |
But partly they are running the goverment. They lobby (read: con, threat) members of Congress into doing what they think is profitable to them.
In America though it happens (i mean lobbying) not that much as it does in Russia.
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| Wed Jan 16, 2008 21:03 pm Capitalism 101 |
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| lost_soul wrote: | | Thank you, Jamie, for sharing such a good cartoon. It really explains how capitalizm works in a funny and understandable way! |
Hi Alex,
Did somebody at school explain to you how a market driven economy works? I mean you must have had a subject like "social studies" or "modern society" at school?
| Ralf wrote: | | Torsten wrote: | | But then again, why not privatize everything, even the government itself? |
I'd say you were joking The likes of Murdoch and Abramovich are already running the world, imagine them governing us as well... |
Hi Ralf,
Murdoch and Abramovich are running the world because the world wants to be run by them. The point I was actually trying to make is the following: We all understand that Jamie's cartoons are entertaining and interesting because they explain a rather complex system in a very simplified way. Jamie's cartoon don't say how much tax the businesses have to pay and how exactly the tax money is spent. Yes, we could say "Apparently the tax rate is low enough for the businesses to thrive and for the business owners and employees to live happy lives". But why not create a cartoon in which nobody pays any taxes at all?
Also, in Jamie's cartoons there seem to exist only two systems: capitalism and socialism. However, in many countries you will find a combination of both. So, where exactly do you draw the line between the two?
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| Thu Jan 17, 2008 5:34 am Capitalism 101 |
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| Torsten wrote: | | The part where the state collects taxes. Of course even in a free enterprise system there has to be a government that collects tax money from the privately held businesses to provide services to the public. But then again, why not privatize everything, even the government itself? |
There are certain things that are not handled well through private enterprise, but most of the things that socialists want the government to control are really better handled privately.
There has to be some form of taxation to cover national defense and other important services, but the trick is to keep it low enough so that the government doesn't kill the goose that lays the golden egg, as they've done in France. If you tax something you get less of it. Many countries heavily tax productivity, and so they get less of it, which ends up hurting them.
To me, if a country takes half your income in taxes, while qualified people stay home for years because they don't want to take a job that's a slightly imperfect match for their education, that country has stepped over the line. They're confiscating other people's money to let that guy be lazy. I also think that if a government sends people around with devices that detect the presence of an untaxed TV or radio, and forces people to pay the government to produce programming, that place has really gone crazy. |
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| Thu Jan 17, 2008 5:38 am Capitalism 101 |
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| Ralf wrote: | | Torsten wrote: | | But then again, why not privatize everything, even the government itself? |
I'd say you were joking The likes of Murdoch and Abramovich are already running the world, imagine them governing us as well... |
I think I'm missing something. Here we know who Rupert Murdoch is, but there's no feeling that he's controlling the world, because he has just one of many media companies. I'm pretty up on the news, but I don't have any idea who you're talking about when you mention that name Abramovich, so I guess he's not controlling the world either.
Are you sure you're not limiting your information too much? |
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Jamie (K)
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| Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:30 am Capitalism 101 |
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| Torsten wrote: | Hi Alex,
Did somebody at school explain to you how a market driven economy works? I mean you must have had a subject like "social studies" or "modern society" at school? |
I won't speak for Alex, but I could see the evidence in the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic both during communism and a little bit after. It appeared that they explained market-driven economies by giving people an exaggerated account of American laissez-faire capitalism and the robber barons of the 19th century. The idea was that these guys were impoverishing ordinary people -- forget about the fact that unless they made the nation prosperous enough, and their products cheap enough, they could never have built or sustained their wealth.
It appeared to me that, during the days of communism, a large segment of the population was reading the stories of these "evil" robber barons and thinking, "WOW! I want to be like THAT guy!" Then, after 1989, when they had the chance to be small-time capitalists, they thought that cheating people was the way to go. You'd see an honest guy getting richer and richer because his integrity attracted more and more customers, and his sleazy competitor would insist, "He must be stealing!" He didn't understand capitalism in any other way.
One of the funny things to me was that everybody I knew, from Russia to Bulgaria all the way up to the German Democratic Republic, had read a whole bunch of turn-of-the-century American anti-capitalist social consciousness novels -- Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, etc. -- and especially the East Germans were convinced that those novels must certainly be forbidden in the US. In fact, those of the novels that weren't actually required reading in American schools were typically on the recommended reading lists. They were available in bookstores in massive quantities, and as cheap as toilet paper. |
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| Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:01 am Capitalism 101 |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: | | I don't have any idea who you're talking about when you mention that name Abramovich |
Roman Abramovich is an oil mogul from Russia. He inherited the largest Russian oil consortium from his father who had snapped it away from the "post-communist" state in mafia-like large scale bribery style.
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| Thu Jan 17, 2008 12:55 pm Capitalism 101 |
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| Ralf wrote: | | Jamie (K) wrote: | | I don't have any idea who you're talking about when you mention that name Abramovich |
Roman Abramovich is an oil mogul from Russia. He inherited the largest Russian oil consortium from his father who had snapped it away from the "post-communist" state in mafia-like large scale bribery style. |
And he controls the world?!  Sounds a bit implausible to me. Where's King Abdullah in your theory? Or Hugo Chavez? Besides, I thought "the Americans" controlled the world under our "feeble-minded" president who "has his finger on the button". But then, he is controlled by "The Jews", so I guess they control the world. |
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| Thu Jan 17, 2008 14:25 pm Capitalism 101 |
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| Ralf wrote: | | Jamie (K) wrote: | | I don't have any idea who you're talking about when you mention that name Abramovich |
Roman Abramovich is an oil mogul from Russia. He inherited the largest Russian oil consortium from his father who had snapped it away from the "post-communist" state in mafia-like large scale bribery style. |
Inherited? Are you sure you're up on what has been going on in Russia?
I'd like to quote a passage from Wikipedia | wikipedia wrote: | | In 1992 to 1995 Abramovich founded five companies that conducted resale and acted as intermediaries, eventually specializing in the trading of oil and oil products. In 1995 Roman Abramovich, together with Boris Berezovsky, acquired the controlling interest in the large oil company Sibneft |
Courtesy of Wikipedia
In a few words, he's been embezzling a big part of Russia natural resources. He DID NOT inherit anything, that SoaB.
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