Assignment:
First discussion
1- As I was researching for my paper, which compares the U.S.'s economy with that of China's, I was reflecting on Karl Marx's theory of the stages of history. Karl Marx suggested that every society would go through the stages of a primitive society, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and finally to communism type economic systems.
What I found so interesting was that China basically followed Marx's stages, but in fact did it backwards. With the 1949 Communist revolution China became a communist country, implementing planned socialism. However after having implemented such a system they noticed the lack of economic growth and began to fall behind the rest of the world. As a result China started implementing market type systems into their economy in 1978. Many other economies that where once under communist rule under a planned economy have made similar changes. To me it seems as though we are all moving away from communistic societies, not toward them.
My question is, does the evolution of China disclaim what Marx suggested in his theory of the stages of history?
Second discussion
2- Economic Freedom affects nearly every facet of an individual's life. Countries with minimal economic freedom, as in the case of Venezuela, experience extreme poverty, product shortages, and economic instability. Chile's free markets and capitalist economy have resulted in reduced poverty, a healthy GDP growth rate, and incredibly strong entrepreneurial participation rates. With the exception of Venezuela's marginally lower Gini Coefficient, Chile's free market approach has emphatically outperformed Venezuela's not-so-free market approach by every metric.
With this in mind, I'm curious as to why individuals and politicians in America (*cough cough, Donald Trump, cough*) are supporting nationalistic trade policies. For example, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump recently suggested imposing a 45% tariff on all goods America imports from China. Economically, this may be the worst idea proposed in years. High tariffs create dead weight loss, which negatively impacts the welfare of domestic consumers. Trade is mutually beneficial, so the high Chinese tariff would hurt China as well, perhaps further hindering their slowing GDP growth. As nations like the US and Chile have shown, free trade/low-tariff policies produce dozens of positive effects for both parties involved. Allowing a nation to focus on its comparative advantage is economics at its most basic form. American voters would do well to familiarize themselves with the economic impacts of the policies being proposed by presidential candidates.