Help the Poor!

     In order to tech the class the ideas of Karl Marx and Adam Smith about the economy, our teacher set up a fun activity to help us better understand what exactly Karl Marx was trying to accomplish. In this activity, each student was given Hershey kisses. Most of the students in the class including myself! were given two Hershey kisses. Two kids however, were given 8. The Hershey kisses were a representation of money and the people who had more were wealthy and the rest of us, which was over 90%, were poor. Then, we were given instructions that we could get up around the class and play Rock Paper Scissors shoot with others. If you lost, you would give the winner a Hershey kiss and vice versa. Our freedom of competition and trade of Hershey kisses represents Capitalism which we would later find out to be Adam Smith's idea of the invisible hand. Pretty soon a lot of students including myself, were sitting down because we ran out of Hershey kisses and had nothing to trade. Next, we ended the game and everyone sat down with their Hershey kisses if they had any. Our teacher then took back all of the Hershey kisses and redistributed them so every student had the same amount of Hershey kisses. This was representing Karl Marx's idea of socialism and how the government would take all materials and redistribute them equally among the traders. Finally, we were shown how communism worked when we all agreed on having equal Hershey kisses and not trying to play the game again. After that, we were free to do as we wanted with our two Hershey kisses. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and that was eat them! When we were free to do as we wanted, it was representing his with communism the government is no longer needed because everyone agreed to having equal amounts of materials.

Now we know what Karl Marx thought was a well developed system, and it was time to learn more about Adam Smith and his theories on economics. To do this, we watched this short video below that gave us an overall main idea of this system that was easy to understand.

     Adam Smith's idea of "the invisible hand" sounds a lot like capitalism doesn't it? That's because they are the same thing. Karl Marx says that Capitalism isn't fair for the poor and it's not going to work out because the poor will revolt. Marx  idea of helping the poor is having them help themselves by creating a system where in the end, everyone was equal. It helped them by eliminating class division. However, Smith thinks that it would be better to help the poor when everyone is allowed free of trade and commerce because businesses will realize that people want good quality products that are at low price. This means competition between businesses will occur and some will fail, but it will provide the poor with the things they need because the prices will be better because businesses are competing with each other which in most cases, results in the drop of prices in order for companies to try and get business.

     I think that the ideas of Marx would be the best way to go. I think that if everyone had equal supplies and class divisions were eliminated, everyone would get along better and no one would try and revolt against the government. The government wouldn't even be needed! I think it would make most people feel better about their life knowing that everyone had gotten the same as them to begin with.