Friday, September 9, 2011

Sam's Post

1. Discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of living in a capitalist society. Then, describe how such disadvantages could be minimized.
The most important advantage of living in a capitalist society is freedom. There is freedom to succeed and freedom to fail. Someone can easily decide that they want to become a business owner and not much will stand in their way. There are hardly any government restrictions in this type of society. One can choose to open a business pretty much anywhere at any time and usually sell whatever they please, to whomever. In comparison, a communist society does not have these types of freedom. Usually, the government dictates who you will become, what your job will be, and what type of life style you will have to live. There is little to no room for freedom at all. Communist societies even dictate what type of religion you are allowed to practice, if you can move to a different town or not, and if or if not you can transfer into another career. Capitalist societies are wonderful because anyone can have the opportunity to chase their dreams and have hope of succeeding.
With this freedom comes another advantage of a capitalist society, incentives. Because everyone has an equal chance of becoming successful, this factor drives people to work harder and longer. Unlike a socialist society, individuals have the chance of excelling above their peers and climbing up or down the social ladder. This gives people the motivation to work hard and reap its benefits. A second advantage capitalist societies have over socialist is the personal value-added tax amount. From the Understanding Business book, by Nickels McHugh, it states that “U.S. shoppers pay sales taxes ranging from 10.25 percent in Chicago to zero in Delaware…” while “socialist countries charge a similar value-added tax of 15 to 20 percent or more”.
One disadvantage of a capitalist society is ending up on the other end of the stick. Although there might be a whole lot of money out there in the world for you to potentially get, there can be a mighty struggle to get any. Since everyone has the chance to become rich, capitalist societies have become a vicious cycle of business competition. The individual has to usually be inventive, smart and always be thinking to keep up their game. A second disadvantage is having to contribute taxes to government and state programs. Although this supports those in need, school programs, etc. the government is taking a huge chunk of money out of business profits through taxes. Finally, capitalist workers usually work more hours and have less vacation days than socialist workers.
To minimize these issues, the government needs to allow businesses to grow. When businesses grow, it allows more people to be hired which results in less money going to financial aid and to collecting unemployment. Also, if there were more competition in certain fields of business, prices would be lower for the buyers.

1 comment:

Sarah Start said...

You make some really good points in your response about the advantages and disadvantages of a capitalistic society. It is important to understand how lucky we are to have economic freedom since we are so used to it. We have the freedom to succeed, fail, and sell what we went when we want to who we want. Another thing that I thought was good to mention was incentives. Incentives are what drive a capitalistic society and what drives people to work harder. The harder a company’s employees work the better their company will be so it is worth it to them to offer good incentives. The disadvantages you put were good too. Some of the ones you put were the struggle to become rich, taxes, more hours, less vacation time. In your last paragraph I like how you ended by saying how the government needs to allow businesses to grow because it is better for everyone in the long run.