Cow Economics

Mar 12, 2010 by Justin McCall    1 Comment     Posted under: General, Politics

Someone sent this to me today, it’s brilliant!  A really simple way of explaining economic types.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

CITY OF LONDON CAPITALISM : You have two cows. You sell three of them to a new shell company listed on the Alternative Investment Market, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at a bank on the Isle of Man, then execute a debt / equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows and transferring the ownership of the initial equity to a children’s charity. You get a CBE for services to sick kiddies. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who takes out a securitised debt package on the rights to all seven cows’ milk and sells them back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because they c***ped on your Maserati.

PRIVATE EQUITY CAPITALISM: You’ve bought two cows. Take out a massive structured debt package calculated on ten times the amount of milk they can ever possibly produce in a lifetime. Then hack one cow to bits. Sell off the milk, the meat, the bones, the blood. Squeeze as much milk as you can from the other one, then sell it to one of your mates for twice what you paid for the pair. Pay off the bank. Go skiing.

GORDON BROWN ECONOMICS: You have two cows. The government introduces a new “straw tax” calculated on how much straw the cows eat. When the price of straw becomes too high and the cows can’t produce any more milk, a new tax on unused cows is introduced. You give up and try to sell the cows, but the new tax on buying second hand cows means it’s not worth it and there’s no market. The government launches a task force into cow development.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

EUROPEAN BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called ‘Cowkimon’ and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything. The cows then get flu and the government burns them.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

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