Main Elements
The main elements of the Social Market Economy in Germany are basically:
- The Social Market Economy contains the central elements of the free market economy such as private property, free foreign trade, exchange of goods, and free formation of prices.
- The government implements policies that are designed to remedy some of the problems of the free market economy. One of these policies is the establishment of a social security system that includes pension insurance, health care and unemployment insurance. Members of the labor force pay into the social security system, providing it with its main source of revenue. Other policies of the social market economy are designed to restrain the free market (antitrust laws, laws against the abuse of market power, etc.).
- Some prominent authors (Werner Abelshauser, Bernd Rüthers) also regard social partnership as a key element.
Read more about this topic: Social Market Economy
Famous quotes containing the words main and/or elements:
“But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward, the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)