"You have two cows" is a political analogy and form of early 20th century American political satire to describe various economic systems of government. The setup of a typical joke of this kind is the assumption that the listener lives within a given system and has two cows, a very relatable occupation across countries and national boundaries. The punch line is what happens to the listener and the cows in the system; it offers a brief and humorous take on the subject or locale.
A newer variant of the joke cycle compares different peoples and countries.
An article in The Modern Language Journal lists the following classical ones: [1]
Bill Sherk mentions that such lists circulated throughout the United States since around 1936 under the title "Parable of the Isms". [2] A column in The Chicago Daily Tribune in 1938 attributes a version involving socialism, communism, fascism and New Dealism [nb 1] to an address by Silas Strawn to the Economic Club of Chicago on 29 November 1935. [3]
Richard M Steers and Luciara Nardon in their book about global economy use the "two cows" metaphor to illustrate the concept of cultural differences. They write that jokes of the kind are considered funny because they are "realistic but exaggerated caricatures" of various cultures, and the pervasiveness of such jokes stems from the significant cultural differences. Steers and Nardon also state that others believe such jokes present cultural stereotypes and must be viewed with caution. [4]
Jokes of this genre formed the base of a monologue by American comedian Pat Paulsen on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s. Satirising the satire, he appended this comment to capitalism: "...Then put both of them in your wife's name and declare bankruptcy." This material was later used as an element of his satirical US presidential campaign in 1968, and was included on his 1968 comedy album Pat Paulsen for President. [5]
The economics of the Enron scandal have been a target of the "two cows" joke, often describing the accounting fraud that took place in Enron's finances. Much of the beginning of the joke when used to describe Enron resembles the following:
Enronism: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by your CFO who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on six more. [6]
The ending of the joke varies in most interactions. The magazine Wired in 2008 ended the joke with Enron selling one cow to buy a new president of the United States, that no balance sheet was provided with the annual report, and ultimately the public buying Enron's bull. [7] In 2002, Power Engineering ended the joke by announcing Enron would start trading cows online using the platform COW (cows on web). [8]
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(help)In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority. Proponents of the free market as a normative ideal contrast it with a regulated market, in which a government intervenes in supply and demand by means of various methods such as taxes or regulations. In an idealized free market economy, prices for goods and services are set solely by the bids and offers of the participants.
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Bolshevism is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".
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Articles in social and political philosophy include:
-ism is a suffix in many English words, originally derived from the Ancient Greek suffix -ισμός (-ismós), and reached English through the Latin -ismus, and the French -isme. It is used to create abstract nouns of action, state, condition, or doctrine, and is often used to describe philosophies, theories, religions, social movements, artistic movements, lifestyles, behaviors, scientific phenomena, or medical conditions.
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...included in this collection: "Two Cows," where the various systems of government are explained with the useful illustration of two cows...