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MAY DAY A DAY LATE

May 02, 2006

May 1 was the communist feast day, but in most of the world, only capitalists are left to "party." Celebrate May Day the free-market way at the Carnival of the Capitalists, a weekly roundup of economics and business blog posts. My favorite this week is Hank Stern's explanation of GM's "Viagra benefit." Too bad it doesn't work on share prices.

You can also celebrate the joys of private property at this week's Carnival of Personal Finance.

In using the word "communism," I am not exaggerating. It is not simply a metaphor for an overbright communist future: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." And so it is for those at the top of the party pyramid. I have already mentioned their abilities, which, alas, are not outstanding. But their needs! Their needs are so great that so far it has only been possible to create real communism for a couple of dozen people - communism is created for them by the ninth directorate of the KGB, and this all-powerful directorate can do anything. The life of a party leader is beneath its unsleeping, all-seeing eye, and it satisfies his every whim. A dacha behind a high green fence encircling spacious grounds alongside the Moscow River, with a garden, tennis courts, and playing fields, a body-guard under every window, and an alarm system. Even at my level as a candidate member of the Politburo, my domestic staff consisted of three cooks, three waitresses, a housemaid, and a gardener with his own team of assistant gardeners.

-Boris Yeltsin, describing how communism worked, except for almost everyone.

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