Capital Gains Tax is a tax paid to the Federal government on the sale of things such as land, stocks, bonds, property. It is a tax on the profit, or the amount of money you made (the gain), in the sale of capital.

An excise tax is a tax issued on the production or purchase of goods sold within a country. Often, excise taxes are issued by the government to try and prevent certain dangerous or unhealthy forms of behavior, so there are excise taxes on cigarettes for example.

To barter is to exchange goods or services with someone else without the use or exchange of money. Throughout human history, bartering has been a common means by which goods are exchanged between individuals or social groups.

Collective bargaining is the term given to negotiations between an employer and a group of employees—usually a union. The purpose is to agree upon terms of employment, wage, payment structure, and so on.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the Presidency in 1932 America was at the height of the Great Depression. He instituted a massive and sweeping series of programs designed to extend social security to a much larger proportion of the population and to rescue the economy. Collectively this series of programs is called the New Deal. Historians disagree about the success of these programs, but what is clear is that they dramatically changed the responsibilities and duties of the United States government.

Adam Smith is often referred to as “the father of modern economics” for his writings on laissez-faire and free market capitalism. Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that the government should try and avoid interfering in the economy and that the economy should be almost completely unregulated. His writings and ideas remain deeply influential.

In economics, a deficit occurs when the amount of money being spent (expenditures) exceeds the amount of money being collected (revenue) over a given period of time.

The Encomienda System was established by the Spanish in the New World chiefly to facilitate the abuse of the Native American population as a source of labor. A Spanish official was granted the right to effectively own a portion of the native population and was free to force them into whichever form of labor was most immediately profitable, at the expense of millions of native lives. In exchange, the Spanish official was supposed to indoctrinate the native population into the Christian faith.

Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors are responsible for overthrowing the Aztec Empire in the early part of the sixteenth century. If you did not know this you might have made a reasonable guess because the name Hernan Cortes sounds Spanish. The Spanish were the first to arrive in the New World en masse and overthrew the great Aztec and Incan Empires with their advanced technology and merciless military tactics. The Mayan Empire died out several hundred years before the arrival of the Spanish. The Portuguese Empire persisted for a long time during the European Age of Colonialism. The Mughal Empire existed in India before the arrival of the British. The Mongolian Empire conquered massive swathes of Europe and Asia before eventually succumbing to the difficulties of administering such a vast empire.

Throughout history, particularly in the twentieth century, there have been numerous attempts by governments to deliberately plan and carry out the complete extermination of ethnic, religious, or cultural groups. Most famous of these is the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany attempted to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe (as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally disabled, and communists). Other famous genocides include the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Cambodian Genocide.