"Capitalist Manifesto"

[tikky]

By Stefan Theil
Newsweek International

Aug. 14, 2006 issue

Europe could use more people like Ehssan Dariani. The 26-year-old entrepreneur runs a hot Internet start-up called studiVZ—Europe's fastest-growing social network for university students. Since setting up in a cheap Berlin loft only last fall, he's already hired 25 people. Yet when Dariani looks back at his high-school days, a decade ago in the west German city of Kassel, he remembers his teachers warning against exactly what he's doing. "They taught us the market economy was a dangerous wilderness full of risk and bankruptcy," Dariani says. "We never learned how prices affect supply and demand, only about evil managers and unjust wages." If he'd listened to his teachers, he'd be among the vast majority of German students who dream of becoming civil servants or fitting into the comfortable hierarchy of a traditional corporation. Instead he set out and created some desperately needed jobs.

Ask any European what he learned at school about how the economy works, and you'll likely hear a similar story. A recent study of German high-school textbooks by the Institute for the German Economy, in Cologne, found entrepreneurs—instead of getting credit for creating jobs—taking the blame for everything from unemployment to alcoholism to Internet fraud and cell-phone addiction. Some high-school social-studies textbooks teach globalization as an unmitigated catastrophe; students are advised to consult the radical anti-globalization protest group Attac for further information. In France, books approved by the Education Ministry promote statist policies and voodoo economics. "Economic growth imposes a way of life that fosters stress, nervous depression, circulatory disease and even cancer," reports "20th-Century History," a popular high-school text published by Hatier. Another suggests Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were dangerous free-market extremists whose reforms plunged their countries into chaos and despair.

Such blatant disinformation sheds new light on the debate over why it is that Europeans lag so far behind Americans in rates of entrepreneurship and job creation. It also helps explain widespread resistance among Europeans to accepting even the smallest reforms of their highly regulated economies...

(continue @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14206355/)

[Nilsen]

"Ask any European what he learned at school about how the economy works, and you'll likely hear a similar story."



Hmm.. I wonder.

[lasersailor184]

Are you really surprised?  The socialists feel threatened, so they fight back through one of their only weapons.

State funded education.




Btw, the dude directly ripped his idea off of Facebook.

[bj229r]

US kids undergo similar things.... one only needs to see everyone's suprise when the price of most any commodity goes goes up after some sort of disaster befalls production of said commodity.

There only reaction is.. "it's not fair!"  "The government oughta regulate the price..."

[lasersailor184]

I disagree.  It's not that US Kids will not be taught basic economics.  It's that they haven't taken it yet.  Or that the class isn't mandated much like history, trig or literature.

I do think that it should be a mandated class, Freshman year or so.  It's not difficult math, so that's not an excuse to not teach them.

[Boroda]

They should better teach Marxism.

"Credit for creating jobs" - what a nonsence. Making profit is now a form of charity, OMG!

Adam Smith and Marx explained how capitalism works. In US school a macroeconomics class was a total nonsence for me, explained obvious things, telling blatant lies about Socialism at the same time. All that stuff was explained from the basics in Soviet school in a Sociology (obschestvovedenie) class, in less then one semester, together with philosophy of dialectical materialism and hallucinatory historical materialism.

[lazs2]

boroda... we don't even need marx to explain how communism works...

We have all the examples we will ever need..... All those sucessful communist countries...

lazs

[1K3]

Originally posted by lazs2
boroda... we don't even need marx to explain how communism works...

We have all the examples we will ever need..... All those sucessful communist countries...

lazs

Way to go CHINA!:cool:

[indy007]

Originally posted by 1K3
Way to go CHINA!:cool:

Gotta watch out for those dangerous, greedy, capitalist thought crimes... like lending somebody money and expecting to be paid back...

[1K3]

Originally posted by tikky
By Stefan Theil
Newsweek International

Aug. 14, 2006 issue



(continue @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14206355/)

It's the same reason that we teach kids the about the market economy in America. It's more about spreading an ideology than sharing a philosophy. In that respect, we're not much different.

We teach kids about the evils of socialism, and force a little bit of basic economics on everyone, but we never really get to the philosophy behind capitalism, the socialist's critique of capitalism, and whether or not the capitalist can properly address the socialist.

One thing that is certain is that we definitely need to share more equipment from the businessman's toolbox with the public. Accounting, Finance, and Economics really need a little more prominence in a person's studies.

[lasersailor184]

Again, I disagree.  We force economics on no one.  There are very few people out there that understand basic level economics.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by 1K3
Way to go CHINA!:cool:

Heh, China became successful after it turned from communism to capitalism.

[Nilsen]

Originally posted by lasersailor184
Again, I disagree.  We force economics on no one.  There are very few people out there that understand basic level economics.

how many do you mean by "few" ?

[lazs2]

what do you mean by "basic"?

lazs

[lasersailor184]

Basic Microeconomics (supply and demand), and Basic Macroeconomics (Taxes, GDP, spending...).

There are too few people who ever will take a basic economics class.  You can tell by people freaking out when someone in government does something from the basic economic playbook.


I can't really guess well, because I'm not too sure.  But from my experiences, roughly 1 in 20 have taken a basic economics class.  Or at least from all the people I've met, 1 in 20 understand a basic economics class.