the tucker automobile :: essays research papers

The 1948 Tucker was dreamt up by Preston Thomas Tucker and designed by Alex Tremulis. This was one of the last attempts made by a small enterprise to break into large volume car production. This car was said to be â€Å"The first new car in 50 years†. Many people felt that a car this great wasn’t possible. The many new innovations in the car were always surrounded by controversy. The car seemed to be doomed, and it was. Much of the appeal of the Tucker was the man behind it. Preston Thomas Tucker was always obsessed with cars, as long as anyone could remember. Tucker was born on September 21, 1903 in Capac, Michigan. He spent his childhood in car repair garages and used car lots. He worked as an office boy at Cadillac, a policeman in Lincoln, Illinois; he even worked at Ford motor company for a while. After he attended Cass Technical School in Detroit, Tucker became a salesman and went to work for Studebaker, then Stutz, Chrysler, and later became regional manager for Pierce-Arrow. During WWII the automotive industry was focused on the war effort. There were no new models of cars produced for over four years, and people needed a new car. Any new car. Tucker thought that the time was right to make his move. He formed the Tucker Corporation for the Production of Automobiles in 1946. Tucker wanted the old Dodge plant in Chicago. Its main building was the largest under one roof. During WWII B29 engines were built in the plant. The War Assets Administration leased him the plant under the understanding that he could have $15 million capital by March of the following year. Tucker moved into the plant in July and started work on his prototype immediately. The corporation needed money desperately and Tucker realized backing from businessmen would cause him to lose almost all control over his company. This was not an option for him so he started brainstorming for ideas, and got one. Franchising. He began selling dealership franchises, and quickly raised $6 million to be held in escrow until the car was delivered. The dealerships seemed suspicious to the SEC. This caused them to put Tucker under investigation. This was the first of many to span the next three years. The franchise agreements were rewritten to satisfy the SEC. Soon after that Tucker experienced his first serious obstacle, Wilson Wyatt. The head of the national housing agency who ordered the WAA to cancel Tucker’s lease and to turn the plant over to the Lustron corporation to build pre-fabricated houses.

Beyond Gdp Paper

Special attention is devoted to recent developments in the analysis of sustainability, in the study of happiness, in the theory of social choice and fair allocation, and in the capability approach. It is suggested in the conclusion that, although convergence toward a consensual approach is not impossible, for the moment not one but three alternatives to GDP are worth developing. ( JEL I31, E23, E01) 1. Introduction GDP is recurrently criticized for being a poor indicator of social welfare and, therefore, leading governments astray in their assessment of economic policies. As is well known, GDP statistics measure current economic aactivity but ignore wealth variation, international income flows, household production of services, destruction of the natural environment, and many determinants of well-being such as the quality of social relations, economic security and personal safety, health, and longevity.Even worse, GDP increases when convivial reciprocity is replaced by anonymous mark et relations and when rising crime, pollution, catastrophes, or health hazards trigger * Fleurbaey: CNRS, University Paris Descartes, CORE (Universite de Louvain) and IDEP. Comments, suggestions and advice by S. Alkire, G. Asheim, A. Atkinson, A. Deaton, E. Diewert, R. Guesnerie, D. Kahneman, A. Krueger, I. Robeyns, P. Schreyer, three referees and Roger Gordon (the Editor) are gratefully acknowledged. defensive or repair expenditures.Not surprisingly, the construction of better indicators of social welfare is also, recurrently, a hot issue in public debate and a concern for politicians and governments. The last two decades have witnessed an explosion in the number of alternative indicators and a surge of initiatives from important institutions such as the OECD, the UNDP, the European Union—more recently the French government has appointed a committee, chaired by Joseph E. Stiglitz and including four other Nobel Prize winners, to propose new indicators of â€Å"economic perfo rmance and social progress. In the meantime, welfare economics1 has burgeoned in various directions, involving the theory of social choice, the theory of 1 The expression â€Å"welfare economics† is used here in a very broad sense, including all branches of economics that bear on the definition of criteria for the evaluation of social states and public policies. It is not restricted to the narrow confines of Old and New (or New New) Welfare Economics. 1029 1030 Journal of Economic Literature, Vol.XLVII (December 2009) is much less supported by economic theory than is commonly assumed. The extension of this approach to intertemporal welfare as attempted in â€Å"green† accounting adds even more complications. In view of recent developments in the theory of social choice and fairness, it will be argued that the idea of a â€Å"corrected GDP† is still defendable but implies different accounting methods than usually thought. Second, there is the idea of â€Å"Gross National Happiness,† which has been revived by the burgeoning happiness studies.It will be argued here that the happiness revolution might, instead of bringing about the return of â€Å"utility,† ultimately condemn this concept for being simplistic, and reveal that subjective well-being cannot serve as a metric for social evaluation without serious precautions. Third, there is the â€Å"capability approach † proposed by Amartya Sen, primarily as a framework for thinking rather than a precise method of measurement. This approach has now inspired a vvariety of applications, but most of its premoters are reluctant to seek a synthetic index, a famous exception being the Human Development Index (HDI).It will be argued here that a key aspect of this problem is whether individual valuations of the relevant dimensions of capability can and should be taken into account— an issue over which a dialogue with the two previous approaches might prove very useful. Fourth , there is the growing number of â€Å"synthetic indicators† that, following the lead of the HDI, are constructed as weighted averages of summary measures of social performance in various domains.It will be argued here that, if the three other approaches were fully exploited, there would be little reason to keep this fourth approach alive because it is ill-equipped to take account of the distribution of well-being and advantage among the members of society. The paper is structured as follows. Sections 2–4 deal with monetary measures that are linked to the project of a corrected fair allocation, the capability approach, the study of happiness and its determinants, in conjunction with new developments in the philosophy of social justice and the psychology of well-being.These conceptual developments provide new analytical tools that may be directly useful for concrete measurements. About a decade ago, Daniel T. Slesnick (1998) made the following observation: â€Å"While centrally important to many problems of economic analysis, confusion persists concerning the relationship between commonly used welfare indicators and well-established theoretical formulations† (p. 2108). It is probably safe to say that much the same now holds about the relationship between concrete measures of welfare—old, new, and potential—and upto-date theories.It appears timely to ask what the existing academic literature has to say about alternatives to GDP. The practical importance of a measure of social welfare can hardly be overstated. Ppolicy decisions, cost–benefit analyses, international comparisons, measures of growth, and inequality studies constantly refer to evaluations of individual and collective wellbeing. The fact that monetary measures still predominate in all such contexts is usually interpreted as imposed by the lack of a better index rather than reflecting a positive consensus.The purpose of this paper is, in the light of state-of-t he-art welfare economics, to examine the pros and cons of the main alternative approaches to the measurement of social welfare from the perspective of ppolicy evaluation as well as international and intertemporal comparisons. Four approaches are discussed here. First, there is the idea of a â€Å"corrected GDP † that would take account, in particular, of nonmarket aspects of well-being and of sustainability concerns. As will be explained here, a basic problem for this approach is that its starting point, national income, as a candidate for a measure of social welfare,Fleurbaey: Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare GDP. Section 2 revisits the classical results involving the value of total consumption and usually invoked in justification of GDP-like measures. This appears important because some of these results are often exaggerated, while others are little known or even susceptible of developments in future research. Section 3 is devoted to the intertemporal e xtension of this approach, as featured in the Net National Product (NNP) and â€Å"green† accounting.Section 4 turns to measures based on willingness-to-pay and moneymetric utilities, highlighting the connection with recent developments in the theory of social choice and fairness. This section also briefly discusses cost–benefit analysis, which is an important tool for ppolicy evaluation. Sections 5–7 are devoted to the nonmonetary approaches, namely, synthetic indicators such as the HDI (section 5), happiness studies and the various possible indexes of subjective well-being (section 6), and the capability approach (section 7).Section 8 makes concluding remarks about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches analyzed in the paper and the prospects for future developments and applications. 2. Monetary Aggregates Revisited The project of correcting GDP has been often understood, after William D. Nordhaus and James Tobin’s (1973) semina l work, as adding or subtracting terms that have the same structure as GDP, i. e. , monetary aggregates computed as quantities valued at market prices or at imputed prices in case market prices are not available. As we will see in this section, economic theory is much less supportive of this approach than usually 2 Nordhaus and Tobin (1973) set out to compute â€Å"a comprehensive measure of the annual real consumption of households. Consumption is intended to include all goods and services, marketed or not, valued at market prices or at their equivalent in oopportunity costs to consumers† (p. 24). 1031 thought by most users of national accounts. Many official reports swiftly gloss over the fact that economic theory has established total income as a good index of social welfare under some assumptions (which are usually left unspecified).To be sure, there is a venerable tradition of economic theory that seeks to relate social welfare to the value of total income or total consu mption. 3 Most of that theory, however, deals with the limited issue of determining the sign of the welfare change rather than its magnitude, not to mention the level of welfare itself. In this perspective, the widespread use of GDP per capita, corrected or uncorrected, as a cardinal measure allowing ppercentage scaling of differences and variations appears problematic. 4 In this section, I review the old and recent arguments for and against monetary aggregates as social welfare indicators. . 1 A Revealed Preference Argument Start from the revealed preference argument that, assuming local nonsatiation, if a consumer chooses a commodity bundle x (with ? different commodities) in a budget set defined by the price vector p, then x is revealed preferred to all bundles y such that py < px. If x is interior and assuming differentiability, for an infinitesimal change dx, x + dx is strictly preferred to x by the consumer if and only if pdx > 0. Note the importance of the interiority assumpt ion here.

Imperialism In Lower Burma Essay - 1515 Words

n Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young†¦show more content†¦All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty. One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism — the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone ‘must’. It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are whenShow MoreRelatedGeorge Orwells Style of Writing Essay example1038 Wor ds   |  5 PagesJust by a simple glance at George Orwells style of writing one can grasp a lot. He first starts the essay by discussing how the narrator was poorly treated in Lower Burma when serving as a police officer. More specifically the narrator states, I was hated by large numbers of people,, and anti-European feeling was very bitter. From there one could interpret that although he was a British soldier with much power he was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. He then goes into much detail andRead MoreBritish Imperialism In George Orwells Shooting An Elephant1042 Words   |  5 Pages Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell portrays the fictional life of Orwell during his time as sub-divisional police officer in Moulmein, Lower Burma. The essay unveils the identity crisis as a British man, where rising imperialism of British in Burma is becoming more dominant. The essay started off identifying who George Orwell was. A sub-divisional police officer of Moulmein, who developed a feeling of being anti-European towards the Burmese people. By claiming that no one is courageous enoughRead MoreAnalysis Of George Orwell s The Elephant 1034 Words   |  5 PagesOrwell began the essay with his perspective on British domination. He stated that it is evil and alongside of that it is oppressive. He felt hatred and guilt toward himself and the Burmese people. The people of Burma did not feel threatened because the narrator of the story had killed the elephant. The Burmese people have lost their dignity and integrity while trying to fight off the British imperialism. Orwell uses allegories to describe his experience of the British imperialism and he had his ownRead MoreShooting an Elephant938 Words   |  4 PagesGeorge Orwell’s â€Å"Shooting an Elephant† â€Å"Shooting an Elephant† is an essay written by George Orwell and published in 1936 (Orwell 66). Orwell was born June 25, 1903, as Eric Arthur Blair and passed away January 21, 1950, in India (â€Å"George Orwell Biography†). Orwell was known for his journals, novels, and essays published about his own political views (â€Å"George Orwell Biography†). Orwell traveled to Burma after not doing good enough in school to earn a scholarship and decided to join the imperialRead MoreShooting An Elephant By George Orwell1246 Words   |  5 PagesSalma Kingu Professor: Michael English: 1301 Essay 2 Summer: 06/26/2017 â€Å"Shooting an Elephant† by George Orwell In the 1950, George Orwell was a police officer during the British Empire in lower Burma, India who was ill- educated and secretly hated his job due to the dirty works and evil of colonialism; George Orwell wrote the story about shooting an elephant. Shooting an Elephant is a story which describes how the British occupiers were badly treating the Burmese by killing and terrorizedRead More Shooting an Elephant Essays1356 Words   |  6 PagesIn the essay, Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell illustrates his experiences as a British police officer in Lower Burma, and reflects it to the nature of imperialism. Since â€Å"anti-European feeling was very bitter† due to the British Empire’s dictatorship in Burma, Orwell is being treated disrespectfully by the Burmese (12). This allows him to hate his job and the British Empire. However, the incident of shooting of an elephant gives him a â€Å"better glimpse †¦ of the real nature of imperialism – the realR ead MoreWhy I Write: The Art of Writing Essays1249 Words   |  5 PagesGeorge Orwell in his essay â€Å"Why I write†, written in 1946 and published in London, addresses the reasons that made him become a writer and eventually sets four main general principles that are the main drive force for every piece of writing. â€Å"I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention and my initial concern is to get a hearing.† By showing his inner drive to write he portrays a greater picture about writing as he shows how one writes consciouslyRead MoreShooting an Elephant1125 Words   |  5 PagesShooting an elephant written by George Orwell brings to light the evil of imperialism. Being a police officer in the lower Burma, Orwell hated his job. The reason was because the people in Burma ridiculed, insulted and laughed at him whenever they felt safe to do so. Orwell opposed imperialism, and thus was able to feel the hatred of the people of Burma, but still resented them. The story starts with Orwell receiving a phone call about a tame elephant destroying bazaar. He carried with him an oldRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of George Orwell s Shooting An Elephant 1272 Words   |  6 Pagesnarrator and the main character. Orwell’s narrative essay of 1936 takes place in squalid, British-occupied Moulmein, lower Burma. To begin, in the opening of his piece, Orwell describes himself as a young, British police officer who, ironically, despises the British imperial project in Burma. Although he secretly sides with the Burmese, he is resentful of the way they torment him. Eventually, a previously chained elephant is introduced to the essay. It is when this elephant escapes that it begins ravagingRead MoreCritical Analysis Of Shooting An Elephant1165 Words   |  5 Pagesoppressor in the British Empire. Orwell, having undergone a significant personal experience, illustrates his experience of imperialism and the resounding effects is has on the ethical cond uct and ideals of man, not only of the oppressed but also in regards of the oppressor. Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’ attempts to convey the sacrifice of one’s morality in service of imperialism. Through the spread of the British Empire and the colonialization of the Burmese people, we view the overwhelming resentment