Henry George offered a single tax on land properties in order to give an incentive to put the land to use. This meant hiring for labor and employing workers. This would create more wealth and allow better quality of living for the working class. Social Darwinism states that the strong would see their wealth increase and weak would see a decrease. In other words, it meant that the economy operated under “survival of the fittest”.
The poor suffered powerlessness because they were poor, therefore they were placed at the bottom of the social ladder. They were automatically placed at the bottom of the social ladder and were referred to as “sinners” because they were uneducated and poor. They were led to believe that they were inferior and were possessed like property that could be acquired, used , and disposed of the politics of the moment required. 3. Would you describe this society as a power-over or power-with society?
Negative externalities occur when social costs are more than a private cost. Governments may usually intervene when negative externalities arise, this is to tax demerit goods, which are goods that have negative externalities and are over produced in an economy. However, the government may find other solutions much more useful, for example; they find it more effective to subsidise merit goods, goods giving out positive externalities and also provide more information about the effects of demerit goods to discourage them. If markets were over producing demerit goods, those selling those goods such as firms would be taxed, so raw materials for the goods may be more expensive or possibly the machinery. This would increase the costs and result in the firms passing on the costs to the consumers, this would increase the prices of the goods causing negative externalities and discourage them from being bought.
Durkheim sees anomie as responsible for the world’s disorder of economics- the lack of morality and regulation resulted in overpowering the weak; thus, he feels that only norms can prevent the abuse of power and calls for regulation and equal opportunity from birth- the greater the equal opportunity the less need for restraint. Marx looked at how capitalism separated humanity by making work a simple means of individual existence. In addition he describes society in terms of class and economic conflicts. Marx saw proletariat or people of a working class as being underneath the bourgeoisie or the capitalist of a modern society. Marx looked at how alienation of production of commodities by workers also leads to alienation of social life.
The political functionalities of the individualistic subculture is similar to that of America's economy, "those with the abundance of wealth get what they want." Individualists believe that government should not be concerned with creating a society with high morals, but the fuctions of the government are to meet the demands of the people; which is the "sole" purpose of the government. Also, the power of the government is to be kept in check or limited, along with minimal interference of the private activities of the people.Individualists can care less of corruption in this " political arena." According to the sum of all these beliefs, individualists hold the opinion that the main function is that the government should sustain society so that individuals continue the pursuit of their own interests. Unlike the viewpoints in the individualistic subculture that government should be limited, the moralistic subculture views the government as positive tool responsible to promote the general welfare.
Liberty was central to two sets of political ideas that blossomed in Colonial America. One was Republicanism, which literally meant “a government without a king”. Republicanism espoused active participation in public life by property owning, independent citizens as the backbone of liberty. Republicanism held that man reached his highest fulfillment in public service. It also stressed the political role of the independent landowner and warned against the tendency of political power to encroach upon liberty.
Wealth and Poverty, written by George Gilder, is a depiction on how to increase wealth and curtail poverty. Gilder argues thoroughly throughout the book that society has been misled by popular economic theory and by general culture attitudes into only having a small percentage of wealthy people and having the majority of people in society living in poverty. He documents the ways in which the blighting of incentive has crippled productivity in society and shows how the essence of capitalism is not greed but giving by investing money and energy. Gilder states that the “golden rule” of economics is the idea that the good fortune of others is also finally ones own. The scientific basis of the golden rule is in the mutuality of gains from trade, in the demand, generated by the engines of supply, in the expanded opportunity created by growth, in the usual and still growing economic futility of war (Gilder, 9).
However, at the time, the term capitalism had not yet been created, and it was referred to by Smith as “a system of perfect liberty.” In addition to capitalism, Smith also outlined the theory of Absolute Advantage in “The Wealth of Nations.” Simply put, this theory states that a nation should concentrate its resources on the commodities that it can produce more efficiently than any other country. The nation should then trade those commodities with other nations for goods that they can produce more efficiently. In order to better prove his point, Smith was able to show numerically that the overall ratio of outputs/inputs rose sharply when his ideas were put into practice. For instance, in an oversimplified example, assume that China can produce 3 bolts of fabric with 2 units of input and 3 tons of soybeans with 1 unit of input. Now, also assume that the U.S. can produce 3 bolts of fabric with 1 unit of input and 3 tons of soybeans with 2 units of input.
Stratification is a division of a society’s resources that benefits some people and harms others. Social position reflects the way society divides resources. Unequal rewards only serve to divide society, creating “haves” and “have-nots.” There is widespread opposition to social inequality. Using a structural-functional approach to look at the demise of the middle class would point out that the middle class is sliding backwards due to a lack of personal talent and ability. Since
In this regard, Downs criticized economist who had concluded that bureaucrats and politicians were “perfect altruist” whose goal is to maximize social welfare. Contrary to Downs’ opinion, I believe that it is necessary to transit from the old perspective of government as a profit company to a non-profit organization, understanding the opportunistic characteristic of the bureaucrats and politicians. The social contract born as a pact to institutionalize non-profit organizations named governments in order to achieve specific goals as was already mentioned before. The same ideology is used when some citizens constitute non-governmental organizations (NGO). It is necessary here to clarify exactly what is meant by NGO.