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Throughout history, every society has faced the fundamental economic problem of deciding what to produce, and for whom, in a world of limited resources. In the 20th century, two competing economic systems, broadly speaking, have provided very different answers: command economies directed by a centralized government, and market economies based on private enterprise. Today, in the last decade of the 20th century, it is clear that, for people throughout the world, the central, command economy model has failed to sustain economic growth, to achieve a measure of prosperity, or even to provide economic security for its citizens.
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по английскому языку на тему:
« А MARKET ECONOMY ».
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Throughout history, every society has faced the fundamental economic problem of deciding what to produce, and for whom, in a world of limited resources. In the 20th century, two competing economic systems, broadly speaking, have provided very different answers: command economies directed by a centralized government, and market economies based on private enterprise. Today, in the last decade of the 20th century, it is clear that, for people throughout the world, the central, command economy model has failed to sustain economic growth, to achieve a measure of prosperity, or even to provide economic security for its citizens.
Yet for many, the fundamental principles and mechanisms of the alternative, a market economy, remain unfamiliar or misunderstood — despite its demonstrable successes in diverse societies from Western Europe to North America and Asia. In part, this is because the market economy is not an ideology, but a set of time-tested practices and institutions about how individuals and societies can live and prosper economically. Market economies are, by their very nature, decentralized, flexible, practical and changeable. The central fact about market economies is that there is no center. Indeed, one of the founding metaphors for the private marketplace is that of the "invisible hand."
Market economies may be practical, but they also rest upon the fundamental principle of individual freedom: freedom as a consumer to choose among competing products and services; freedom as a producer to start or expand a business and share its risks and rewards; freedom as a worker to choose a job or career, join a labor union or change employers.
It is this assertion of freedom, of risk and opportunity, which joins together modern market economies and political democracy.
Market economies are not without their inequities and abuses — many
of them serious — but it is also undeniable that modern private enterprise
and entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with political democracy, offers
the best prospect for preserving freedom and providing the widest avenues
for economic growth and prosperity for all.
Products such as bread, meat, clothing, refrigerators and houses are
produced and sold in virtually every country of the world today. The
production methods and resources used to make these products are often
very similar in different countries — bread, for example, is made
by bakers using flour and water, often with salt, sugar and yeast added,
then baked in ovens. Once the bread has been baked, the loaves are sold
to consumers in stores which, at least superficially, can look very
much alike, even in countries with very different kinds of economic
systems.
Market economies provide no magic solutions, however, and government
plays a critical role in helping correct problems that can't be fully
solved by a system of private markets. Moreover, market economies are
by no means immune to pressing public policy issues in today's global
economy — issues such as inflation, unemployment, pollution, poverty
and barriers to international trade. Nevertheless, in comparison to
the chronic shortages and inherent inefficiencies of command economies,
a free-market economic system offers greater opportunities for economic
growth, technological progress and prosperity.
CONSUMERS IN A MARKET ECONOMY
Consumers in both market and command economies make manv of the same
kinds of decisions: thev buy
food, clothing, housing, transportation and entertainment up to the
limits of their budgets, and wish thev could afford to buy more. But
consumers play a much more important role in the overall working of
a market economy than they do in a command economy. In fact, market
economies are sometimes described as systems of consumer sovereignty,
because the day-to-day spending decisions by consumers determine, to
a very large extent, what goods and services are produced in the economy.
Business in a market economy
A firm's success in a market economy depends on satisfying customers
by producing the products they want, and selling those goods and services
at prices that meet the competition they face from other businesses.
Doing that requires firms to develop careful answers to one of the most
important questions every economic system faces: how can a society produce
goods and services most efficiently? In a market economy, that means
getting the greatest value of output from the inputs producers use.
Competition and Productivity
Making these adjustments as the prices for a firms' inputs change is an important part of what it means to produce efficiently, and to compete with other firms making similar products. Companies that don't hold their production costs down may try to charge a higher price for their products; but that just won't work if other firms can make the same quality products at a lower cost, and sell them at a lower price.
Consumers benefit from this competition among firms because they get better products at lower prices. And if most goods and services they buy are made in markets characterized by a high degree of competition, their budgets will go further and allow them to buy more products with the income they receive.
Even in competitive markets, however, not all firms will choose to use exactly the same materials or production methods. In many cases, that will reflect the different kinds of bicycles or other products they choose to make.
Ideally, of course, everyone would like to have all of the things they buy face sharp competition — thereby holding those prices down — but face little or no competition from others in what they do to earn their own income — so that their wages will remain high. More generally, everyone seems to favor the idea of high wages and low production costs (including labor costs, which are most firms' largest expense), because that seems to imply that everyone will be able to afford to buy more goods and services. But no economic system can provide high wages and low prices at the same time, because workers' wages represent a company's labor cost in making and selling the goods and services it produces. In other words, as long as other costs and demand remain unchanged, raising everyone's wages simply raises production costs and product prices.
Over time, however, there are ways for workers and firms to resolve this dilemma — that is, to earn higher wages and profits without driving up the prices consumers pay for products, and thereby risk losing their jobs or sales to competitors. The answer is to increase productivity, the level of output that an industry or company achieves from each worker or each unit of input into its products and services. To increase productivity, workers and firms must develop new products for the marketplace, or produce goods and services more efficiently than the competition, at a lower cost or with better quality. In short, their products must be newer, better or cheaper.
Higher production levels justify higher wages and living standards. Higher productivity means higher output per worker, which translates into greater prosperity that can be shared through higher wages and a better standard of living. Cutting costs and working more efficiently are ways of increasing productivity; but in modern technology-based economies, research and innovation are critical to the sustained productivity and growth of a nation's and the world's economy. Advances in computers, telecommunications and biogenetics are the result of scientific research, experimentation and testing. These advances occur continuously in market economies as companies seek to develop new products and services, or to produce existing ones more efficiently. The result: new jobs, expanding opportunity and greater prosperity for all. This, too, is the same way all workers and businesses in a country can improve their competitive position in the world economy, to raise the material living standards in their nation over time.
International trade can make an important contribution to productivity and prosperity as well.
The most popular arguments calling for policies that limit free trade
— usually taxes on imported goods or limits on their amounts — claim
that protecting jobs in some industries is good for a country because
the workers and owners in those industries will earn higher wages and
profits, and spend most of that money in their own country. This claim
has an element of truth, but it is only part of the story. Protecting
some producers and workers also means that prices for the goods and
services they make will be higher. This is bad news for consumers, for
other producers who use those products as inputs, and for firms that
find their sales falling because some of their customers paid more for
the protected products.
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