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, taxes were levied on:

Item 2: beards and mustaches;

Sobre a controvérsia entre Novos Keynesianos e Novos Clássicos, indique se a afirmação é falsa ou verdadeira:

Item 3: Para os Novos Clássicos, as flutuações da atividade econômica são causadas por choques reais que atingem a economia como um todo.

SECOND TEXT

All things considered, it must have been a crummy week to be the king of the software world. If you are Bill Gates, you’re used to being cursed by competitors, hounded by regulators and lampooned by late-night comics as the perfect – albeit perfect rich – geek. But no one, not even Gates, could be comfortable with the idea that one’s masterpiece – which happens to the biggest and most powerful software company on earth – could be taken and sliced in two.

But that’s precisely what state and federal trustbusters demanded last week. In a filing submitted to federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the Justice Department and 17 of 19 states that have brought suits against Microsoft finally agreed: Microsoft should be chopped into two companies. One would develop and sell the Windows operating system that runs 85% of the world’s desktop computers. The other business would handle everything else – most notably, the universally used “applications” software, such as Microsoft Office, which includes its dominant word processing and spreadsheet programs, and its Web-browsing Internet Explorer.

The two companies could not collude or cooperate in any way for 10 years. During that time, they would be required to strive ceaselessly against each other. Gates would have to choose which company to run and hold stock in – while competing with the other.

To antitrust chief Joel Klein, the plan strikes a perfect balance: “Neither the heavy hand of ongoing government regulation nor the self-interest of an entrenched monopolist will decide what is in the best interest of consumers,” he says. “Rather, consumers will be able to choose for themselves the products they want in a free and competitive marketplace.” Counters Gates: “We don’t believe the courts are going to uphold this kind of unprecedented and radical regulation of our activities.”

But beyond the angry words and legal documents, the proposed remedy marked the culmination of 23 months of state and federal pursuit of Microsoft and represents a clear watershed for the computer and software industries. The ruling that emerges from Judge Jackson’s court, and from an appeals process that could last two more years, will do much to determine the course of software development for decades to come – and with it the programs that countless companies and consumers use.

For now, Microsoft attorney William Neukom plans to push for an extension of the company’s May 10 deadline for responding to last Friday’s Justice Department proposal. Microsoft will want “months and months” of additional hearings in front of Jackson, who ruled on April 3 that the company had illegally and repeatedly used its monopoly power to stifle innovation. A final decision by Jackson might not come until the end of summer. Even then, any breakup that the judge might call for would be on hold until the appeals process is done. That’s why Klein and the states want Jackson’s ruling to include immediate restrictions on Microsoft’s conduct, including a measure that would bar it from retaliating against computer makers that load rivals’ software on their machines. In addition, prosecutors want Microsoft to publish a price list that would apply to all its largest customers. (“Carving up Gates,” Time magazine, May 8, 2000: 28-31).

According to the text:

Item 3: The future course of software development hinges on the outcome of the antitrust suit against Microsoft.

A partir de 1990 começa uma nova fase na economia brasileira. Essa nova fase assistiu a

Item 2: um novo plano de estabilização com a introdução da URV em março de 1994 a qual, funcionando como unidade de conta, promoveu a imediata desindexação da economia;