| Reading
Assignments:
Daniel
Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights. Video
Transcript Two
Discussion Topics:
In the 20th
century, most of the world's nations tried to create prosperity
through government control of their economies -- from the
totalitarian central planning of the communist world to more
democratic nations that tried to develop their economies by
nationalizing industries and protecting them from foreign
competition.
But in the
1980s those policies began to fail dramatically, and the fall of the
Berlin Wall unleashed an era of dramatic and turbulent economic
reform around the world -- in Russia and the Eastern Bloc nations;
in democracies like India that had embraced central planning; and in
Latin American countries, which had developed their own brand of
government control of economic life, based on a theory called
dependencia. "The
Agony of Reform" tells the story of how those economies failed and
how new leaders embraced the idea of "shock therapy" -- a rapid
conversion to free-market capitalism. The program focuses in detail
on how reform played out in several countries -- Russia , Poland , India , Bolivia , and Chile
-- as they lived through the upheavals of rapid
change, dealing with both the new freedoms and the new dangers of
privatization, deregulation, and freewheeling
competition.
Discussion Questions:
-
What are the
benefits and dangers
of open flows of
capital and trade in
goods across all
national borders?
-
What have we
learned about the
effects of imposing
price and wage
controls, of deficit
spending, trade
tariffs, and
subsidies?
-
What have we learned
about the effects of
government
regulation of
markets and
privately owned
industries?
-
What have we
learned about
government use of
fiscal vs. monetary
policy in promoting
economic growth?
-
Compare the
benefits and
liabilities in
nationalizing
private enterprises
and turning them
into state-owned
industries.
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