Elements of A Mixed Economy
The elements of a mixed economy have been demonstrated to include a variety of freedoms:
- to possess means of production (farms, factories, stores, etc.)
- to participate in managerial decisions (cooperative and participatory economics)
- to travel (needed to transport all the items in commerce, to make deals in person, for workers and owners to go to where needed)
- to buy (items for personal use, for resale; buy whole enterprises to make the organization that creates wealth a form of wealth itself)
- to sell (same as buy)
- to hire (to create organizations that create wealth)
- to fire (to maintain organizations that create wealth)
- to organize (private enterprise for profit, labor unions, workers' and professional associations, non-profit groups, religions, etc.)
- to communicate (free speech, newspapers, books, advertisements, make deals, create business partners, create markets)
- to protest peacefully (marches, petitions, sue the government, make laws friendly to profit making and workers alike, remove pointless inefficiencies to maximize wealth creation)
with tax-funded, subsidized, or state-owned factors of production, infrastructure, and services:
- libraries and other information services
- roads and other transportation services
- schools and other education services
- hospitals and other health services
- banks and other financial services
- telephone, mail and other communication services
- electricity and other energy services (e.g. oil, gas)
- water systems for drinking, agriculture, and waste disposal
- subsidies to agriculture and other businesses
- government-granted monopolies to otherwise private businesses
- legal assistance
- government-funded or state-run research and development agencies
and providing some autonomy over personal finances but including involuntary spending and investments such as transfer payments and other cash benefits such as:
- welfare for the poor
- social security for the aged and infirm
- government subsidies to business
- mandatory insurance (example: automobile)
and restricted by various laws, regulations:
- environmental regulation (example: toxins in land, water, air)
- labor regulation including minimum wage laws
- consumer regulation (example: product safety)
- antitrust laws
- intellectual property laws
- incorporation laws
- protectionism
- import and export controls, such as tariffs and quotas
and taxes and fees written or enforced with manipulation of the economy in mind.
Read more about this topic: Mixed Economy
Famous quotes containing the words elements of, elements, mixed and/or economy:
“The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.”
—Thomas Carlyle (17951881)
“The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Naturewere Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882)
“Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe.”
—Friedrich Engels (18201895)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)