FOURTH TEXT

Most of the business of the government Tsar Peter the Great in those years concerned the war and taxes. Peter’s decrees, like his constant traveling through the country, almost invariably dealt with the enrollment of recruits or the collection of revenues. The Tsar’s demands for money were insatiable. In one attempt to uncover new sources of income, Peter in 1708 created a service of revenue officers, men whose duty it was to devise new ways of taxing the people. Called by the foreign name “fiscals,” they were commanded to “sit and make income for the Sovereign Lord.” The leader and most successful was Alexis Kurbatov, the former serf of Boris Sheremetev who had already attracted Peter’s attention with his proposal for requiring that government-stamped paper be used for all legal documents. Under Kurbatov and his ingenious, fervently hated colleagues, new taxes were levied on a wide range of human activities. There was a tax on births, on marriages, on funerals and on the registration of wills. There was a tax on wheat and tallow. Horses were taxed, and horse hides and horse collars. There was a hat tax and a strove all the time to uncover new sources of revenuetax on the wearing of leather boots. The beard tax was systematized and enforced, and a tax on mustaches was added. Ten percent was collected from all cab fares. Houses in Moscow were taxed, and beehives throughout Russia. There was a bed tax, a bath tax, an inn tax, had an insatiable thirst for revenue.a tax on kitchen chimneys and on the firewood that burned in them. Nuts, melons, cucumbers were taxed. There was even a tax on drinking water.

Money also came form an increasing number of state monopolies. This arrangement, whereby the state took control of the production and sale of a commodity, setting any price it wished, was applied to alcohol, resin, tar, fish, oil, chalk, potash, rhubarb, dice, chessmen, playing cards, and the skins of Siberian foxes, ermines and sables. The flax monopoly granted to English merchants was taken back by the Russian government. The tobacco monopoly given by Peter to Lord Carmathen in England in 1698 was abolished. The solid-oak coffins in which wealthy Muscovites elegantly spent eternity were taken over by the state and then sold at four times the original price. Of all the monopolies, however, the one most profitable to the government and most oppressive to the people was the monopoly on salt. Established by decree in 1705, it fixed the price at twice the cost to the government. Peasants who could not afford the higher price often sickened and died. (Massie, Robert. K. Peter the Great – His Life and World. Ballantine Books. New York, 1980: 401).

According to the text, in Peter’s time:

Item 4: The Russian government abolished a few monopolies that had been granted to foreigners.

FOURTH TEXT

Most of the business of the government Tsar Peter the Great in those years concerned the war and taxes. Peter’s decrees, like his constant traveling through the country, almost invariably dealt with the enrollment of recruits or the collection of revenues. The Tsar’s demands for money were insatiable. In one attempt to uncover new sources of income, Peter in 1708 created a service of revenue officers, men whose duty it was to devise new ways of taxing the people. Called by the foreign name “fiscals,” they were commanded to “sit and make income for the Sovereign Lord.” The leader and most successful was Alexis Kurbatov, the former serf of Boris Sheremetev who had already attracted Peter’s attention with his proposal for requiring that government-stamped paper be used for all legal documents. Under Kurbatov and his ingenious, fervently hated colleagues, new taxes were levied on a wide range of human activities. There was a tax on births, on marriages, on funerals and on the registration of wills. There was a tax on wheat and tallow. Horses were taxed, and horse hides and horse collars. There was a hat tax and a strove all the time to uncover new sources of revenuetax on the wearing of leather boots. The beard tax was systematized and enforced, and a tax on mustaches was added. Ten percent was collected from all cab fares. Houses in Moscow were taxed, and beehives throughout Russia. There was a bed tax, a bath tax, an inn tax, had an insatiable thirst for revenue.a tax on kitchen chimneys and on the firewood that burned in them. Nuts, melons, cucumbers were taxed. There was even a tax on drinking water.

Money also came form an increasing number of state monopolies. This arrangement, whereby the state took control of the production and sale of a commodity, setting any price it wished, was applied to alcohol, resin, tar, fish, oil, chalk, potash, rhubarb, dice, chessmen, playing cards, and the skins of Siberian foxes, ermines and sables. The flax monopoly granted to English merchants was taken back by the Russian government. The tobacco monopoly given by Peter to Lord Carmathen in England in 1698 was abolished. The solid-oak coffins in which wealthy Muscovites elegantly spent eternity were taken over by the state and then sold at four times the original price. Of all the monopolies, however, the one most profitable to the government and most oppressive to the people was the monopoly on salt. Established by decree in 1705, it fixed the price at twice the cost to the government. Peasants who could not afford the higher price often sickened and died. (Massie, Robert. K. Peter the Great – His Life and World. Ballantine Books. New York, 1980: 401).

According to the text, Tsar Peter:

Item 3: strove all the time to uncover new sources of revenue

FIRST TEXT

Sympathetic writers talk of Marx’s passionate empathy toward the working class, his demands for a decent wage and improved working conditions, and his great feeling for his family’s welfare. In this respect, Marx is an enigma. In the classroom’s most popular book on the history of economics, Robert L. Heilbroner writes that, despite his reputation as a contentious and vengeful man who feuded constantly with his contemporaries, Marx was a devoted husband and father. In a sympathetic biography, Saul K. Padover notes, “Marx, the harsh critic and angry radical in his public life and writings, was a different man in private. In his personal life, he was extraordinarily kind and generous and, when not tormented by illnesses, gay. . . . [As a] self-assured male, Marx has a genuine affection and esteem for women. . . . [And] Jenny was the only woman in his life.”

Apologists for Marx are almost always blind to the darker side of the creator of communism. They write of his devotion to his family and his love letters to his wife but ignore or condone his illicit affair with the family’s household servant, Lenchen, which produced an illegitimate son whom Marx would have nothing to do with. Interestingly, Marx also never paid this servant a penny for her housework.

Karl and Jenny Marx were poverty-stricken but not for want of money. They received large sums over the years from Engels, other supporters, and from Marx’s writings. One estimate is that Marx was poor only 15 years of his 65-year career, and that his income placed him in the top 5 percent of London residents in the 1860s. But the Marxes were financially incompetent and could not control their spending habits. Marx entertained lavishly, speculated on the stock market, and spent large sums on liquor, books, travel, and other consumer goods until he had to beg for more or borrow from pawnshops at usury rates. Such irresponsible spending habits often left his family starving, destitute, and in ill health. Marx’s family life was often a nightmare, resulting in the early death or eventual suicide of most of his children. Historian Robert Payne, in his biography of Marx, concludes, “He exploited everyone around him – his wife, his children, his mistress and his friends – with a ruthlessness which was all the more terrible because it was deliberate and calculating.” (“Was Marx a Good Family Man?” Skousen, Marx, Economics on Trial: Lies, Myths, and Realities. Business One Irwin, Homewood, Ill, 1991: 212-213).

According to the text:

Item 2: Saul K. Padover notes that Marx was unmanly

FOURTH TEXT

Most of the business of the government Tsar Peter the Great in those years concerned the war and taxes. Peter’s decrees, like his constant traveling through the country, almost invariably dealt with the enrollment of recruits or the collection of revenues. The Tsar’s demands for money were insatiable. In one attempt to uncover new sources of income, Peter in 1708 created a service of revenue officers, men whose duty it was to devise new ways of taxing the people. Called by the foreign name “fiscals,” they were commanded to “sit and make income for the Sovereign Lord.” The leader and most successful was Alexis Kurbatov, the former serf of Boris Sheremetev who had already attracted Peter’s attention with his proposal for requiring that government-stamped paper be used for all legal documents. Under Kurbatov and his ingenious, fervently hated colleagues, new taxes were levied on a wide range of human activities. There was a tax on births, on marriages, on funerals and on the registration of wills. There was a tax on wheat and tallow. Horses were taxed, and horse hides and horse collars. There was a hat tax and a tax on the wearing of leather boots. The beard tax was systematized and enforced, and a tax on mustaches was added. Ten percent was collected from all cab fares. Houses in Moscow were taxed, and beehives throughout Russia. There was a bed tax, a bath tax, an inn tax, had an insatiable thirst for revenue.a tax on kitchen chimneys and on the firewood that burned in them. Nuts, melons, cucumbers were taxed. There was even a tax on drinking water.

Money also came form an increasing number of state monopolies. This arrangement, whereby the state took control of the production and sale of a commodity, setting any price it wished, was applied to alcohol, resin, tar, fish, oil, chalk, potash, rhubarb, dice, chessmen, playing cards, and the skins of Siberian foxes, ermines and sables. The flax monopoly granted to English merchants was taken back by the Russian government. The tobacco monopoly given by Peter to Lord Carmathen in England in 1698 was abolished. The solid-oak coffins in which wealthy Muscovites elegantly spent eternity were taken over by the state and then sold at four times the original price. Of all the monopolies, however, the one most profitable to the government and most oppressive to the people was the monopoly on salt. Established by decree in 1705, it fixed the price at twice the cost to the government. Peasants who could not afford the higher price often sickened and died. (Massie, Robert. K. Peter the Great – His Life and World. Ballantine Books. New York, 1980: 401).

According to the text, Tsar Peter:

Item 2: was not concerned with his country’s welfare.

There is the bottom-line, spreadsheet way of doing business in quiet boardrooms. And there’s the Latin Way. Knowing the difference between the two is a big factor behind what has been dubbed the reconquista of Latin America by Spain. And this time the weapon of choice of the conquistadores is the peseta rather than the sword. In what has become the world’s hottest spot for foreign investors, Spaniards have a head start over competitors, says Sergio Aranda Moreno, CEO of Spanish-owned Gas Natural México. Explaining the Latin way of wheeling and dealing, he says, “Sometimes I come out of a meeting and a colleage says, ‘Phew, what a bloodbath!’ Yet on the the surface, everything was warm and polite. Someone from another culture would never have noticed the battle going on behind the scenes.”

But anyone who is numerate can see the fallout from those deals. Big spending by foreign companies in Latin America and the Caribbean has catapulted outside investment into the region by an estimated 33% last year, to $97 billion, surpassing that in Asia by $13 billion. And the foreigners doing the most moving and shaking come from one of the region’s old colonial powers. In telecommunications, banking, energy supply – even marketing fish and collecting trash – Spaniards are “invading” Latin America with more force and flair than anyone else. Juan Villalonga, president of Spain’s communications giant Telefónica, says Spaniards doing business in Latin America these days feel “como Pedro por su casa,” or like Pedro at home – which is about as comfortable as a Spaniard gets.

The Spanish-led push has helped Europe turn the investment tables on Latin America’s longtime financial Big Brother, the U.S. Of the 25 largest foreign companies in Latin America in 1998, on the basis of consolidated sales, 14 were European and 11 were from the U.S., with Spain’s Telefónica now the region’s biggest communications operator.

In other markets dear to the U.S. heart, Spanish firms have muscled themselves into preferred positions. Sergio Aranda says that when the Mexican government opened its natural-gas market five years ago, U.S.-based companies were expected to dominate, given their proximity. But it didn’t turn out that way. Gas Natural México, set up by an affiliate of Spain’s petroleum giant Repsol, today has about 10 times as many customers as its U.S. rivals. And in March, Aranda made another coup. Gas Natural bought from Texas utilities the right to supply gas in Mexico City, converting the Spanish company into by far the dominant force in Mexico’s gas market.

Aranda says language alone doesn’t explain the Spaniard’s surge. The affinities that give Spanish firms an edge run deeper. “American businessmen have a 9-to-5 culture,” he says. “Here, where personal contact is so important, it’s a constant round of lunches and dinners. That’s the way we do business in Spain too. The Americans are also much more direct. Like the Mexicans, we skirt around the issues, often making our point indirectly.”

Like Spaniards in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and many other Latin American countries, Aranda doesn’t sense any resentment in the region of the 21st century conquistadores. Questions do arise in some countries about concentration of ownership. But Aranda says, “I feel more than welcome here.” (“New World Conquests,” Time magazine, May 8, 2000: 22-27).

According to the text:

Item 0: Resentment of conquerors is still a boulder on the way to development of Latin American relations with Spain.