Commodity Chains Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Commodity Chains - Essay Example In this regard, the paper will discuss Diamonds from Angola produced by DeBeers De Beer operates in over 25 nations and mining occurs in Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Botswana and Canada among others. In Botswana mining is done via the mining firm Debswana while in Namibia it occurs through Namdeb, which is a 50-50 joint venture with the Namibian government. Due to its massive market share, the firm has dominated diamond sale, mining, trading, and industrial manufacturing sectors. It is headquartered in Luxembourg and was founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes. In 2012, the company got revenue of $6.1 billion. It has over 20,000 employees. The key people in De Beer Group of Companies are Mark Cutifani as the Chairman and Philippe Mellier as the chief executive officer (De Beers Group, 2014). According to McConnell and Brue (421), De Beer used monopoloid practices all through the 20th century. However, there are numerous amounts of hours that are spent on examining the piles of rough diamonds, dividing them as well as subdividing them into over 7,000 categories. In the diamond industry, from to cutting to polishing is an art that requires several years of apprenticeship and skill. Subsequently, the stones are re-sorted into a further 5,000 categories. From the dealers, to cutters, to polishers, and to jewellery sellers, the price of a diamond usually increases by about 10-fold by the time it leaves the De Beers vaults in Charterhouse Street and arriving in the shop shelves. The diamond industry relies upon a standard supply at a stable price, and that is what De Beers provides.  In this perspective, De Beer has been involved in various controversies including price fixing and acquiring diamonds from war torn nations, such as, Angola. Angola is the seventh largest nation in Africa with a population of 21.47 million according to the 2013 World Bank statistics. The country measures about 1,246,620 km2. In relation to the socio-economic conditions of the nation,

Tax systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Tax systems - Essay Example Indirect taxation leads to income effect. Income effect occurs when people find that they have surplus money and therefore their demand for goods and services increase. In case of no tax levied people after earning certain amount of income will start preferring leisure over work. Since indirect taxation increases the prices of goods and services people will have to work harder to keep up their standard of living and will have to earn more income to buy the same â€Å"basket† of goods that they were buying before and this will lead to more working hours in the economy. In this case, increase in taxation would result in increase in incentives for people to work hard and to expend more effort.ii) Regressive Taxation system is one where rich people pay lesser proportion of their income as tax than the poorer people. For example, a flat tax of $5 would make a higher proportion for someone earning $100/month than someone earning $200/month. For someone earning $100/month it would be 5%, whereas for the other guy it would be 2.5%. This kind of tax system is normally regressive and usually indirect taxation is regressive. On the other hand progressive system is one where rich people pay higher tax than the poor people. Income tax is usually progressive as it takes into account the income of people. Regressive taxation can be an incentive for people to work hard and earn more money, whereas as progressive systems can be a disincentiveSince regressive system leads to same amount of tax in absolute terms for both rich and poor., any additional work or money earned by poor people would reduce their proportion of income as tax. This makes people work harder to nullify the effects of regressive tax. For example, if someone is earning $100 and he knows that he will have to pay $5 in taxes every time irrespective of his income. He would try to increase his income to $105 to nullify the effects of the tax. This increase in income for $100 to $105 will increase his dispos able income after tax from $95 to $100. The person by earning more would be $5 richer. Hence, regressive tax system encourages increase in effort. People work harder to increase their disposable income to improve their standard of living. Progressive system can be a disincentive to work harder. Since, progressive tax increases with the additional income earned, many people would be put off from working harder as they will think that any increase in