October 20

Social 30-1

I covered the concept of market socialism today. You can find the reading on this in your Social 30-1 study booklets on pages 130-133. I also taught you how to write the WRA I three source analysis assignments (pages 312-313 in the 30-1 study booklets). I gave you each three sample WRA I from Unit 2 material. I split the class into thirds, with each third tackling a different set of sources. We'll talk about each of the WRA I samples tomorrow. One week from today, on Monday, October 27th you will be writing your Unit 2 WRA I. Please remember that you are writing your Economic Systems Exam on Thursday, please check out the study guide below. I also talked about military spending briefly with each class, in part because we were talking about the Four Modernizations (one of which was modernization of national defence), and I said that the United States spends a tremendous amount of the federal budget. This video is old, but it illustrates the American military spending using Oreo cookies. The statistics used in the video are old, given that the USA spends about $600+ billion a year on their military, and China's military spending has increased to the point where the PRC now have the second highest military spending budget. Figures vary depending on the source you use, but by in large, the top 15 military spenders are as follows: USA, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UK, France, Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Italy, Israel, and Iran.

Economic Systems Exam

This exam will be written on Thursday, October 23rd. It is a multiple choice question format test.
This is a comprehensive exam that covers all of the major economic systems: market economy, mixed economy, and command economy. It is 70 multiple choice questions.

• Chapters 3-6 in Perspectives on Ideology
• study the applicable PowerPoint presentations that are on the wiki under Unit 2 (check your notes): The Development of Classical Liberalism, Responding to Classical Liberalism, The Evolution of Modern Liberalism, 20th Century Rejections of Liberalism (just the USSR section of this PowerPoint)
• In Chapter 5, just focus on the Soviet Union, and left-wing of economic spectrum (command economy), we haven't covered aspects of dictatorships or Nazism yet (the techniques of dictatorship and fascism will be on a Chapter 5 Test)
• please see the summary notes from the Ideologies textbook: Chapter 7 (Private Enterprise), page 78-80 in the Social 30-1 study booklet 
• supply-side economics (page 84 in study booklet)
• boom and bust cycle/business cycle (pages 50-54 and pages 56-62 in 30-1 study booklet)
• laws of supply and demand, Adam Smith, invisible hand, market forces
  self-interest, consumer sovereignty, competition, private ownership, profit motive
• basic economic problems/questions
• advantages/disadvantages of the market economy
• causes of the Great Depression (pages 63-64 in 30-1 study booklet)
• FDR and the New Deal
• please see summary notes from the Ideologies textbook on the Mixed Economy Case Studies #14 (Sweden) and #15 (Canada), #16 (Japan), #17 (Fascism and Nazism): pages 73-76 in the study booklet
• also see the Democratic Socialism booklet on Sweden (indicative planning, "cradle to the grave" economics/"womb to tomb economics"): pages 65-72 in 30-1 booklets
• characteristics of a mixed economy
• nationalization
• privatization
• democratic socialism
• welfare capitalism
• Keynesian economics
• the business cycle and fiscal and monetary policies (study all of the notes I gave you)
• demand-side economics
• neo-conservatives
• monetarism
• trickle down economics
• supply-side economics
• Thatcherism and Reaganomics
• Milton Friedman
• Friedrich Hayek
• how Keynesian economics deals with a recession (remember "the percolator": increase circulation of money reducing taxes, increase government spending on "make work" projects, and reduce interest rates, which according to Keynesian economics is going increase demand for goods and services and lead to more money circulating in the economy) pages 81-82 in the Social 30-1 study booklet 
• how supply-side economics deals with a recession (remember "trickle down coffee maker": government should stimulate the goods and services sector of the economy by reducing corporate and personal taxes, eventually benefits will "trickle down" to the middle class and working class, make connections between supply-side economics and laissez faire economics/classical liberalism): pages 81-82 in the 30-1 booklet
• advantages and disadvantages of a mixed economy
• neo-conservative criticism of government intervention
• characteristics of a centrally planned economy
• advantages and disadvantages of a centrally planned economy
• Marx notes (pages 94-96 in 30-1 booklet)
• Lenin notes (pages 97-98 in 30-1 booklet)
• establishment of the Soviet Union
• Soviet economic system (top-down decision-making process): study pages 105-114 in the Social 30-1 booklet
• Lenin's War Communism and the New Economic Policy
• "Stalin and the Modernization of Russia" (see film notes)
• Stalin notes (pages 99-101)
• "Changes to Soviet Society After Stalin" notes (this bridges the gap between Stalin and Gorbachev): pages 116-117 in 30-1 booklet
• Gorbachev to Collapse Notes: pages 118-121 in 30-1 booklet
• Economic Planning in the USSR: pages 122-129 in 30-1 booklet
• Market Socialism (pages 130-132 in the Social 30-1 booklet)

IB 20 HOTA

We started the French Revolution and Napoleonic Age unit. I started a PowerPoint lecture on the French Revolution and I covered up to the end of the causes of the revolution. We'll continue this tomorrow. I will collect your U.S. Constitution graphic novels tomorrow.