Subject: Economic Models explained with Cows:

SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.

GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are, when you find them you turn them into leather and go out to lunch in your new shoes.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad.

IRAQI CORPORATION: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the hell out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy....

WELSH CORPORATION: You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.

AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. One skinny, fly blown and drought ridden and the other fat pregnant and rare. You sell the pregnant one to the international market for a beer then shoot the skinny one and have a BBQ & drink the beer...

Col,
I agree thank you for your confirmation, education is the key, however if education is not available on an equal basis, then the opportunities I refer of course to private schools who charge enormous amounts of money per student, and then are subsidised by the federal government to boot.

Same with health if you can pay privately for an operation you skip the line up, those who can't pay die, what a kind, compassionate system we have, and the the little rodent than has the hide to refer to mateship, a concept of friends helping each other without payment, simply because your mate needs help, I hate hypocrisy.

Col - by that phrase I was saying communism was not the solution, but the diagnosis of the flaws of capitalism was correct. Yes, you can ask the people of communist regimes, and yes they will tell you how bad it was. I wasn't arguing that at all.

The point of my post is that capitalism may be the best system we have at present, but it needs to be tempered with a level of intervention, as the free market system is far from stable.
Matters such as wage regulation are crucial for a fair society that places respect upon human life, though in the penultimate free market economy such a phenomenon would not exist.

SHONGA – disagree, individuals should always have the right to invest more in anything which takes their fancy. For some, that is education for their children and others, enhanced health care. Things like a School voucher system and government support for private schools simply allows flexibility of choice.

TurnRightThenLeft “The point of my post is that capitalism may be the best system we have at present, but it needs to be tempered with a level of intervention, as the free market system is far from stable.”

That is why we have government.

Government should not control the means of wealth creation or income because, to “control the means”, preordains a vested interest in the market process.

Government is there to perform the role of arbiter or umpire. Government is there to draft the legislation which represents “tempered with a level of intervention”

An “arbiter” who has a “vested interest” has a conflict of interest.

I recognize the important role of government and would observe the excesses of monopolistic corporations are addressed by government through anti-trust and anti-monopoly legislation.

However, the excesses of government owned corporations are never, ever questioned, least of all by the government.

Examples of government monopoly excesses

My travel costs in London dropping to one third of what they were when British rail operated a commuter monopoly

My telephone bills in Australia reducing with the de-regulation of Telstra

The failure through decades of the “Two Airlines agreement”, the consumer being charged excessive rates by an agreement hatched between a (then) “government owned” air transport corporation and its only competitor.

The “special dividend” which the state government of Victoria leaches from the Melbourne Metropolitan Water Companies (which it owns), depriving the domestic water users of the essential “infrastructure” which their rates and charges have paid for.

The notion of “state collective ownership” lacks the transparency, objectivity and accountability which is demanded of other forms of ownership, through corporations and tax legislation.

The free market is already “tempered with a level of intervention”

Unfortunately, with government ownership, “stability” tends to be debased until it ends up as “stagnation”.

Col,
I agree with your notion, however for those who through no reason of their own find themselves living in poverty, does your notion mean they should get what they get given,their children get a less than perfect education, and die earlier because they can't afford private health? This is not a stirring question mate, only wanting to know your view. As you are aware I find myself agreeing with some of your posts, I am wondering if there is an option for these people.