Burlington High School
Burlington, Kansas
Teacher: Devra Parker
Different Economic Countries
By: Brian Finical
12th grade
The word different means not alike. Colors have different hues, people have different nationalities, and cars have different looks. If everything was the same, then the world would be a boring place. We are lucky to have differences in everything, because it is what makes everything unique. Each of the countries in the world is different and unique from each other in their history, their nationality and their economy. So, each country plays its own role in the world today.
There are different countries with different economical views. The countries that I chose to report on are The United Kingdom, Israel, Russia, and North Korea. Each of these different countries has different types of economy. The four types are free, mostly free, mostly un-free and repressed.
The first county I chose to report on is The United Kingdom; it has a free economy system. The UK is a leading world trade power and has the fourth largest economy in the world. London, the capital of the United Kingdom, is the largest financial center in the world. The Gross Domestic Product slipped in 2001-2002 as the world down-turned and this “bursting” of the new economy hurt the United Kingdoms manufacturing and exports.
For the mostly free country, I chose Israel. Israel ranks 17 out of 72 mostly free countries. Israel’s economy is very diverse but modern with substantial government ownership. Israel is very poor in natural resources, so it relies heavily on imports of petroleum, coal and other resources. Israel has received a large amount of economic aid from the United States of approximately $1.2 billion per year since the 1970’s. However in 1998, that was dropped by $120 million. In 2004, Israel’s Gross Domestic Product reached a high of $145 billion dollars.
The third country I chose was Russia for the mostly un-free country. The economy of Russia has changed dramatically since the 1990’s; it started with the dismantling of the centrally-planned economy that was a symbol of the Soviet Union. Russia possesses an ample supply of natural resources and many of those Russia possess are required to maintain a modernly industrialized economy. Russia under the Soviet Union was a communist state and everything was controlled by the government, all manufacturing, exports and imports. Russia went under economic reform in the 1990’s after the Soviet Union fell apart and is now a market-based economy. In October 1991, two months before the collapse of the Soviet Union Yeltsin and his advisers, including reform economist Yegor Gaidar, established a program for economic reform. The Russian parliament, the Supreme Soviet, also extended decree powers to the president for one year to implement the program. One complication in the Yeltsin reform program is that since 1991 both political and economic authority have devolved significantly from the national to the regional level; in a series of agreements with the majority of Russia's 21 republics and several other sub national jurisdictions, Moscow has granted a variety of special rights and powers having important economic overtones.
For the repressed country I chose North Korea. North Korea’s government is a dictatorship under the rule of Kim Jong-Il. Everything in the country is based on the State and the North Korean military. In 1998 the legislator confirmed Kim Jong-Il, as Chairman of the National Defense commission, (the highest position in the country) the economy declined dramatically and food shortages started to become a problem. Many people died because of famine and looking for food, a large number of North Koreans illegally entered the Peoples Republic of China. The Government of North Korea is currently dominated by the Korean Workers Party; 80% of the government officials belong to this party. The Premier is usually the head of the government but the real power of the country lies with Kim Jong-Il, head of the military and the Korean Workers Party. He holds several different titles. The most important title he holds is General Secretary of the Workers Party.
Each of these different types of economies determines how the world economy is made up and how it works today. Each country in addition to the four I discussed here has a different economy and so each country in addition to size and population produce a different amount of gross domestic products and this amount plays a role in different how much a country can produce in products.
By having free trade, the world can be a better place because countries will want to buy more without having to pay taxes on trades. Being able to buy and sell goods without having to pay taxes will allow the country to have more money to use to resell goods at a higher price to make a profit off of.
Answers To Questions Prompted By The Required Reading
The Benefits of Free
Trade
Q1- Be the Devil's Advocate and counter Benjamin Franklin's statement that "No
nation was ever ruined by trade." This quote can be countered because some
countries don’t have enough workers to produce goods that can be exported, and
that some countries are so poor they can’t afford to export products and to have
enough to survive on their own.
Index of Economic
Freedom and Annual Report
(Chapter 3 for
links to countries)
Q2- Name five
countries whose ranking surprised you.
(1) South Korea,
(2) Japan, (3) Saudi Arabia (4) Pakistan (5)
India
Q3-
Q3- Write one sentence each to explain why you chose the countries you did in
Q2. (1) South Korea because it is bordered by North Korea and It could be hard
to get products through
North Korea
to Asia. (2) Japan,
it surprised me that Japan was not free because they are one of the leading
world exporters of manufactured goods. (3) Saudi Arabia, again I was surprised
because they are one of the world’s top oil producers and exporters. (4)
Pakistan, I thought Pakistan would be repressed because of always being at war
with India. (5)
India, I thought
India would be mostly free after they sent tons of supplies to Pakistan after
the earthquake there.
Q4- The USA was not
ranked first in any of the years exhibited online in the Annual Report nor in
the 2005 Index. List the twelve countries that ranked higher on the Index and
the countries that out ranked the USA in the eight Annual Reports.
The Countries the outranked the USA were (1) Hong Kong, (2) Singapore, (3)
Luxembourg, (4) Estonia, (5) Ireland, (6) New Zealand, (7) United Kingdom, (8)
Denmark, (9) Iceland, (10) Australia, (11) Chile, and (12) Switzerland
Q5- The Index uses 50 variables in 10 categories. The Report shows 21 variables in 5 categories and lists 24 sub-variables in its online charts.
We
investigated the ten categories as a class project and could not gather enough
information to answer the question that was asked in number 5.