Burlington High School
Burlington, Kansas
Teacher: Devra Parker

Why Economy Makes Our World Different
By Whitney Hagemann
12^th grade

The four countries that caught my attention were the United Kingdom, Belgium, Croatia, and Cuba.  They are all different in their own ways when it comes to their economies.  Some of them have good things to do with their economy, and some of them have bad things to do with the economy.  The United Kingdom was placed in the free category, Belgium was in the mostly free category, Croatia was in the mostly unfree category, and then Cuba was in the repressed category.  Let’s check out these countries out and see their strengths and weaknesses. 

United Kingdom- The United Kingdom is a leading trading power and financial centre.  They were number seven on the free category.   They have the fourth largest economy in the world.  The capital of United Kingdom has the largest financial centre in the world.  The economies that they are made up of are England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  Their GDP growth slipped in 2001-2002.  This was higher than France, Germany, and a lot of other European countries.  The economy of the United Kingdom is one of the strongest of all the larger European Union economies. 

Belgium- The population of Belgium is just over ten million, and their GDP level was placed in the top 20 for all the countries of the world.  They were number 21 in the mostly free category.  They use a great transportation system to integrate its industry with its neighbors.  Some of the things that they use for this are ports, canals, railways, and highways.  They are a strong supporter of the powers of the Economy Communities to integrate European economies.  They were the first member of the Economic and Monetary Union in January 1999.  The biggest thing that Belgium depends on is world trade.  Their exports are twice as much as Germany’s and five times as much as Japans.  Belgium has a big trade advantage to them since it is a central geographic location.  Coal is no longer an economical to exploit, with this they have no natural resources anymore.  Most of their traditional industrial sectors are represented in the economy, which they include steel, textiles, refining, chemicals, food processing, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, electronics, and machinery fabrication. 

Croatia- More than half of their population was once made up of peasants.  Their population was like this until after World War II.  They were number 74 in the mostly unfree category.  The industrialization in 1945 was very slow and it was centered on mills, sawmills, brickyards, and food processing plants.  There was a lot of rapid Industrialization and diversification after World War II.  One of their results of the Croatian war of Independence was the economic infrastructure sustained had a massive damage period.  By the end of the 1990’s, Croatia was facing with some bad economic problems.  Some of these problems were:  The legacy of longtime communist mismanagement of the economy, damage during the internecine fighting to bridges, factories, power lines, buildings, and house, the large refugee and displaced population, both Croatian and Bosnian, the disruption of economic ties, and the mishandled privatization.  After all this Inflation and unemployment rose really high in Croatia.  In December 1998, they had a new banking law passed and this gave the central bank more control over the other 53 commercial banks in Croatia. 

Cuba- They believe more on the communist principles for their government in organizing a state-controlled economy.  They were number 149 in the repressed category.  They use their government and about 75 percent of the labor force that is employed by the state to own and run the means of production.  Their states play the primary role in the domestic economy, and they control most all of the foreign trade.  During 1989 and 1993, the Cuban economy was still recovering from the decline in gross domestic product that was at least 35 percent due to the loss of the Soviet subsidies.  The living conditions remained well below the 1989 level.  There were new taxes introduced in 1996, and this helped drive down the number of self-employed workers from 208,000 in January 1996. 

As you can see, each country has a lot of different things about them.  As you read through them you should have seen their good points about them and their bad points about them.  Even though there might be some with more bad than good, these points are what makes all the counties their own and unique kind of country!

Answers To Questions Triggered 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."

That is not true, because if the United States did not depend on other nations for supplies, those other nations could not hurt us economically like they are now.

Q2- Name five countries whose ranking surprised you.
 1. Cuba 2. Brazil 3. Costa Rica 4. Egypt 5. Turkey

Q3- Write one sentence each to explain why you chose the countries you did in Q2.

Cuba- Since it is so close to the United States you would think that they would have a little more freedom than what they do have. 

Brazil- They were ranked 90 on mostly unfree and this surprised me because they are a bigger country and would have more natural resources to help themselves. 

Costa Rica- They were ranked 54 on Mostly Free it is surprising because since they are so small they would have to rely on all the other countries around them and you would think that the other countries would try to take over them.

Egypt- They were ranked 105 on Mostly Unfree so since they have a “democracy” you would think that they would have free trade.

Turkey- They were ranked 113 on Mostly Unfree and I was surprised because they are our only true Muslim allies and I assumed that they traded freely. 

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.
 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 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.

As a class we looked at 10 categories in the Index, and found that there was not enough information to answer the question.

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