GAMSAT Section II - Capitalism, Money, Structure

Question 1

Taxation Arguments

Answer 1

Wealth is produced, individually. Taxation is taking what’s rightfully theirs
Landowners used the help of the state to get rid of serifs from their land. Private wealth built and maintained on the back of state-sponsored violence
Taxation low compared to what they pay for

Question 2

Money

Answer 2

anything that serves as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value
Needs to have an institution or state to make it trustworthy

Question 3

Commodity

Answer 3

The higher the price you pay the more its worth

Question 4

Debt

Answer 4

Without debt there is no easy way to manage agricultural surplus. As debt appeared money flourished

Question 5

Surplus

Answer 5

The state could not exist without surplus since the state needs bureaucracy and organized army sustained by the state

Question 6

The Great Contradiction (Varoufakis)

Answer 6

ljk

Question 7

Value

Answer 7

Exchange value - what they are worth in the market in exchange for something else
Experimental value - the non-exchange value for an object, its personal value

Question 8

Commodification

Answer 8

The shift from contribution to transition can ruin value (commodification) Oscar Wilde “cynical person knows the price of everything but the value of nothing”
Difference between a market with society and market society - buy an Olympic Medal

Question 9

Three basic elements of production (Marx)

Answer 9

Capital goods
Land or space
Labour

Question 10

Enclosures

Answer 10

More than 70% of peasants thrown out of houses

Question 11

Current forms of slavery

Answer 11

Indentured servants - After the abolition of slavery in the 19th century 1.5 million Indians, Chinese and even Japanese event overseas
Child labor - can’t reach full potential

Question 12

Forced labor and child labor

Answer 12

21 million in forced labor
Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times - work forms adult need to consider physical (ex. fatal injuries at work) and psychological dimensions of work (share of unemployment with less than 6-month work)

Question 13

Causes of poverty

Answer 13

What makes people poor is low productivity which is not the individuals’ fault

Question 14

Argument for inequality

Answer 14

the rich will invest more and generate more for others
Milton Friedman - “most economic fallacies derive from.. the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another”
Trickle-down effect

Question 15

Poverty cycle

Answer 15

Arises when low incomes result in low savings, permitting low investments (in physical, human, and natural capital), and therefore, low productivity leading to low incomes.

Question 16

Neoliberalism

Answer 16

Shifts in economic control from the government to personal. It limits government control so that there is economic growth by favoring free trade and privatization. Preference of private control over the public.

Question 17

Neoliberalism and Inflation

Answer 17

Creating new monetary policies that starve inflation

Question 18

Neoliberalism and Capitalism Link

Answer 18

Process of systematization - builds procedures and institutions that function with money central to its purpose.

Question 19

Unemployment

Answer 19

Unemployment economic hardship (especially if no unemployment benefits). US only 30-40% of the previous salary, and psychological wellbeing (mental health)
Skills become out of date

Question 20

Types of poverty

Answer 20

Relative inequality is important and global inequality not so much, don’t really care for people so far away

Question 21

Colonialism

Answer 21

Only recently attained its pejorative connotation, particularly through the reaction against the exploitation of and imposition of Western culture on native populations during European imperialism.

Question 22

Post-Colonialism

Answer 22

the term “colonialism” is a matter of political struggle. What colonialism “is”, is merely contingent to the larger project of creating different modes of expression, of speaking from a liminal or marginal position, and to write against the flow of imperial culture.
But the communities after colonization are already grossly distorted, forged through the transmigration into its borders as a consequence of colonialism.

Question 23

Punishment

Answer 23

Foucault - the power and techniques of punishment depend on knowledge that creates and classifies individuals and that knowledge derives its authority from certain relationships of power and domination.
The prison is part of a “carceral network” that spreads throughout society, infiltrating and penetrating everywhere.
BF Skiller’s Operant Conditioning - the psychological basis for the impact of punishment on our behavior. Operant conditioning refers to learning with either punishment (often confused as negative reinforcement) or a reward that serves as a positive reinforcement of the lesson to be learned.

Question 24

Externalities

Answer 24

a consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in market prices, such as the pollination of surrounding crops by bees kept for honey.

Question 25

Frantz Franon’s The Wretched of the Earth

Answer 25

anger because the colonized are made to feel inferior; and the need for violence as a purge for both the inferiority complex and the colonial situation that creates it.

Individual’s potential for psychological liberation in the aftermath of violent, cathartic revolution (that is, an experience in which negative feelings associated with domination are purged) as with the revolution itself.

National culture will be rebuilt through violence as the colonized recover their humanity—but while nationalist sentiment (the belief that defining oneself as part of a particular nation is of primary importance) has the potential to bind revolutionaries together, it may hamper the formation of a cohesive state.