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Get Real About Capitalism!

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Get Real About Capitalism!

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 19 Jun 2019, 11:48:29

John Stossel: Get real about capitalism
2020 Dems, liberal media want you to believe it's wrong to be rich

Presidential candidates and the media keep telling people “it’s immoral” that a few rich people have so much more money than everyone else.

They talk as if it doesn’t matter what the rich did to get the money. Instead, the fact that they are rich is itself immoral.

Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute says this is lunacy. “They want to condemn the people that actually have moved civilization forward,” Brook complains. “People who improved the standard of living for everybody on the planet.”

Everybody? How is that possible? Isn’t there a certain amount of money in the world, so that when rich people grab a lot there’s less for everyone else?

No. Because wealth can be created.

But for thousands of years, that barely happened.

“We basically made about $2 a day for 100,000 years -- in other words, we could eat what we farmed,” recounts Brook. “Then (250 years ago) something amazing happened.”

That “amazing” thing was capitalism.

For the first time, ordinary people were allowed to profit from private property. Specialization of labor created efficiency that let people produce more with less. Then they traded to get more. That created wealth.

“Two-hundred and fifty years ago, we suddenly discovered the value of individual freedom,” says Brook in my new video. “The value of leaving individuals free to think, to innovate, to produce without asking for permission, without getting the state to sign off on it -- and we call that the Industrial Revolution.”

But ever since, politicians have complained about the profits. In the movie based on Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” state officials demand that steel magnate Hank Rearden justify his wealth.

“I do not owe you an answer, but I could tell you in a hundred ways,” replies Rearden. “Thousands of jobs, billions in revenue, fueling our economy despite your efforts.”

Rearden was very right. Capitalism created new wealth.

“We got much, much, much richer, it’s hard to imagine,” explains Brook. “We got electricity, running water, things we all take for granted today but we didn’t have 150 years ago. And yes, some people complain about inequality, but everybody got richer. Even the poor got richer.”

Much richer. That’s the key point.

Capitalism’s critics imply that rich industrialists “took” money from others -- as if the world’s wealth is one pie. If Amazon founder Jeff Bezos takes a big piece, then the rest of us have less.

But that’s not how life works. Bezos got rich by baking thousands of new pies. He created new wealth.

Capitalism creates wealth because under capitalism, unlike socialism, transactions are voluntary.

We see this every time we buy something.

At the coffee shop, I give a clerk a dollar and she hands me coffee. Then there’s a weird double “thank you!” moment: We both say “thank you.” Why?

Because both of us felt we were better off.

Under capitalism, we both must like the deal, or the transaction doesn’t happen. She wanted my dollar more than the coffee; I wanted the coffee more than the dollar. It’s a win-win.

The only way to get rich under capitalism (unless you cheat) is to serve your customers well.

We live with that kind of winning every day in capitalist countries, and it’s made almost everyone better off.

Since the Industrial Revolution, recounts Brook, “We have more than doubled our life expectancy. We have dramatically increased the quality of our life, and we are wealthier than anybody could have imagined.”

Today’s “democratic” socialists say government must aid the poor and sick because capitalists will only help themselves. But Brook points out, “the weak and poor under capitalism have done better than in any other system!”

Very true.

Capitalism, he concludes, “is a fantastic system that is fundamentally moral because it allows individuals to pursue their own happiness. Your pursuit of your own well-being -- a virtue in and of itself -- also helps the world be a better world.”


The video: https://youtu.be/bPI5zhiyg2Q

The original post: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/john-stossel-capitalism-2020-democrats-liberal-media-wealth-rich

John Stossel is the author of "No They Can't! Why Government Fails -- But Individuals Succeed." He is a noted Libertarian writer and a contributor to Fox News.
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Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
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Re: Get Real About Capitalism!

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 19 Jun 2019, 12:07:48

KaiserJeep wrote:
John Stossel: Get real about capitalism
Today’s “democratic” socialists say government must aid the poor and sick because capitalists will only help themselves. But Brook points out, “the weak and poor under capitalism have done better than in any other system!”


Leftists and socialists always say they are against the rich and they want to help the poor. But if not done properly leftist policies tend to have bad effects on the middle class AND on the poor.

You can see this clearly in the United States right now.

Go to those cities that have been controlled by liberal and leftist Ds like Detroit and New York, and the middle class is mostly gone. You've got rich people, and you've got all the poor people that the system there is designed to help. You can see this operating even on the statewide level in California now. The middle class is rapidly shrinking and the state has rich people, and more and more poor people who are dependent on the state's generous welfare policies.

californias-vexing-poverty-puzzle

In fact California now has the highest poverty rate in the USA. Worse then Mississippi. Worse then Arkansas. If you want bad public policies that create poverty, then look at California. California now has the worst homeless problem in the United States. The number of homeless people in LA just went up by 18%---in ONE YEAR.

The leftists and democratic socialists in California are clearly doing something wrong in California. Why should we let them do it to the rest of the United States?

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Re: Get Real About Capitalism!

Unread postby asg70 » Wed 19 Jun 2019, 14:35:58

Capitalism eventually brushes up against limits to growth. This is why the left/right divide eventually becomes meaningless. Of course, John Stossel will be the last to realize this, but I would expect more from people here.

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Re: Get Real About Capitalism!

Unread postby Cog » Wed 19 Jun 2019, 22:48:51

asg70 wrote:Capitalism eventually brushes up against limits to growth. This is why the left/right divide eventually becomes meaningless. Of course, John Stossel will be the last to realize this, but I would expect more from people here.


It's not meaningless when the history of the left is 100 million dead in the 20th century due to the embrace of communism.
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Re: Get Real About Capitalism!

Unread postby evilgenius » Fri 21 Jun 2019, 13:20:10

There's nothing wrong with capitalizing upon a good thing going for you in your life. There is everything wrong with convincing others that they shouldn't, their space for doing so may be within the one you have created, so that you can keep on capitalizing upon that thing. That's the basic problem with capitalism, that it lends itself to a viewpoint where exploitation is acceptable because a person can only see their own deal. I don't even know if that is a flaw that is actually inherent to capitalism so much as human nature. Just because it has hierarchies, shouldn't mean that only those situations on the outside, which contain descending situations, ought to take precedence always and at all times. That is to say, that situations, even those on the outside, can have lifespans, and natural life cycles. Most of the time, fighting against that can't be done successfully outside of exploitation.
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