Capitalism vs. Socialism

Team: 38

School: Desert Academy

Area of Science: Economy

Interim: Capitalism vs. Socialism - Interim Report

Our goal is to investigate a socialist system and compare it to a communist system to determine whether it is a viable economic system, and to see if it can hold any weight against the capitalist system which we use today. For the purpose of our model we are defining a socialist economy as a limit surplus. The extraneous surplus is redistributed to the population that is under the minimum. Our definition of a capitalist economy is an economy where the individual had surplus and uses this surplus to invest and expand their business; no limit surplus. We want to find the system that best keeps all member in the economy above a set minimum balance. Therefore, our definition of the “best” system, will be the system where the wealth is spread so that no person goes hungry, while at the same time we want the system to not prevent from some individuals doing very well for themselves.
This project has many hurdles to be jump and fires to fight. We plan on jumping these hurdles and putting out these fires using two models, one of Capitalism, the other of Socialism. In both models, the wealth distribution of the population will start with 1/3 earning 15K/yr (half minimum), 1/3 earning 30K/yr (minimum), 1/3 earning 60K/yr (twice minimum).
In the Capitalist model, half of the 15K/yr group would lose money at a undisclosed rate. This rate will remain the same for increase and decrease of wealth throughout the groups in the models. The wealth of the other half of the 15K/yr will remain stable throughout the model. For the group earning 30K/yr, 1/3 will gain money at the undisclosed rate, 1/3 will stay stable throughout the model, and 1/3 will lose money at the undisclosed rate. The group earning 60K/yr will be similar to that of the 15K/yr group except instead of half the group lost money, they will gain money at the undisclosed rate.
We will then have a time step of one year and step ten times. We will divide each class’s wealth after those ten years of time by ten. Once we have a wealth for each class after ten years, we will then calculate the differential between their wealth and the minimum. Then we will anazlyze the each model and compare which has the more “even” distribution of wealth, meaning the three classes have a small differential to the minimum.

Team Members:

  Sean Colin-Ellerin
  Isaac Green

Sponsoring Teacher: Scott Christie

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