Politics IV Flashcards
Forms of subsidies given out by the government
- welfare payment
- housing loans
- student loans
- farm subsidies
If a subsidy is given out, the government is said to subsidize that group/industry.
Example of a government subsidy:
If a domestic industry, like farming, is struggling to survive in a highly competitive international industry with low prices, a government may give cash subsidies to farms so that they can sell at the low market price but still achieve financial gain.
Why has solar power been a bad industry the past few years?
There has been a supply glut of solar panels in the marketplace, reflecting Chinese government incentives to boost production, such as:
- loan guarantees
- tax breaks
The government gave these incentives when companies produced solar.
Quota
A government-imposed trade restriction that limits the number, or in certain cases the value, of goods and services that can be imported or exported during a particular time period.
What is the purpose of quotas?
- they are used in international trade to help regulate the volume of trade between countries.
- they are sometimes imposed on specific goods and services to reduce imports, thereby increasing domestic production.
- in theory, this helps protect domestic production by restricting foreign competition.
Politics and subsidies
- Politics play an important part in subsidization.
- the left is more in favor of having subsidized industries.
- the right feels that industry should stand on its own without public funds.
Free trade
The unrestricted purchase and sale of goods and services between countries without the imposition of constraints such as:
- tariffs
- quotas
- duties
Free trade has let formerly insular economies like China and India expand at faster growth rates.
It should enable a nation to generate enough foreign currency to purchase the products or services that it does not produce indigenously.
Protectionism
Government actions and policies that restrict or restrain international trade.
- often done with the intent of protecting local businesses and jobs from foreign competition.
Typical methods of protectionism.
- import tariffs
- quotas
- subsidies
- tax cuts to local businesses
Critics of protectionism
Critics argue that:
- protectionism hurts the people it is intended to protect
- free trade is a superior alternative
Feed-in tariffs
An economic policy created to:
- promote active investment in and production of renewable energy sources.
How do feed-in tariffs work?
They make use of:
- long-term agreements and pricing tied to costs of production for renewable energy producers.
- by offering long-term contracts and guaranteed pricing, producers:
- are sheltered from inherent risks in renewable energy production, allowing for more diversity in energy technologies.
Newspeak
(From Orwell’s 1984)
Propagandistic language characterized by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings.
It’s designed to diminish the range of thought.
Examples of newspeak
- The elimination of certain words or the removal of unorthodox meanings from certain words.
- the enforced substitution of one word for another (uncold instead of warm).
- interchangeability of the parts of speech, so that any word in the vocabulary could be used as verb, adjective, noun, or adverb. (The word “cut” being removed and replaced with the word “knife”. It becomes “She knifed the bread”).
- the creation of words for political purposes - “goodthink” means to think in an orthodox manner).
What 3 branches is semiotics divided into?
- pragmatics (deals with causal relations between words or symbols and their users)
- semantics (aka “significs” - relations between signs and what they denote)
- syntactics (aka “logical syntax” - deals with the formal properties of languages and systems of symbols)
