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Statism: Pope Francis seemed to have an economic blind spot, to say the least, when he urged more "state control" to cut global poverty Thursday. On the contrary — the biggest poverty-killer in history is free enterprise.Before we go further, let us say that we know that the pope does seem to have the best intentions and his devotion to the poor is indisputable. But it appears he has been infected by the local economic pathologies of his homeland, Argentina, and its liberation theology among the Jesuits, at least when he warned ambassadors about "the tyranny of money" and called...

Pope Francis has called on world leaders to put an end to the "cult of money" He said free-market capitalism had created a “tyranny” and that human beings were being judged purely by their ability to consume goods. Money should be made to “serve” people, not to “rule” them, he said, calling for a more ethical financial system and curbs on financial speculation.

"This is called slave labor," said Pope Francis. The Holy Father was referring to the $40 a month paid to apparel workers at that eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed on top of them, killing more than 400. "Not paying a just wage ... focusing exclusively on the balance books, on financial statements, only looking at personal profit. That goes against God!" The pope is describing the dark side of globalism Why is Bangladesh, after China, the second-largest producer of apparel in the world? Why are there 4,000 garment factories in that impoverished country which, a few decades ago,...

"This is called slave labor," said Pope Francis. The Holy Father was referring to the $40 a month paid to apparel workers at that eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed on top of them, killing more than 400. "Not paying a just wage ... focusing exclusively on the balance books, on financial statements, only looking at personal profit. That goes against God!" The pope is describing the dark side of globalism. Why is Bangladesh, after China, the second-largest producer of apparel in the world? Why are there 4,000 garment factories in that impoverished country which, a few decades ago,...

Author's Note: If you don't get this, then you aren't reading enough Walter Williams. Of course, one can never read enough Walter Williams.I used to be caring and compassionate and liberal. I supported gun control and the “right” of the government to seize a large chunk of my paycheck in order to plan my retirement for me. But, somewhere, somehow, along life's twisted way, I became a greedy capitalist pig. And, truth be known, it's affecting my entire neighborhood. It all started on New Year's Eve when my friend Adam came by to help me with a small project inside...

Every Fresh & Easy has been in the western U.S. Tesco seemed to want to avoid battling for customers with Walmart in its Midwest heartland, and also skipped over the East Coast, which is dense with shoppers and supermarkets alike. Instead, the approach was to primarily target neighborhood “food deserts,” which were sometimes in the literal deserts of Arizona, California, and Nevada.

A previously poor man who built up his seasoning business from scratch is now helping those less fortunate. Tran Trong Trung reports Sixty-four-year-old Huynh Van Be is well known across the southern province of Dong Thap for his famous seasoning. He was the pioneer who brought white salt from coastal regions to Dong Thap to process, and set up the successful "Ngoc Yen" brand name in his home town of Thanh B�nh. The main ingredients for processing his seasoning are sea salt, sugar, garlic, chilli and monosodium glutamate. His delicious seasoning has been praised by many consumers, particularly when sprinkled...

While most regular people don’t really know or care who he is, Rupert Murdoch is among a small handful of individuals who is most despised by the far left in this country. Unlike many others, he also has the great distinction of being loathed by exponents of socialism worldwide. After reading (or watching) the speech which he recently gave to an Australian think tank called the Institute of Public Affairs about the moral superiority of free markets, it’s not hard to see why those who would enslave markets because they believe them to be based on greed would despise Murdoch,...

Environmental activists and politicians would like you to think that we must love their regulations -- or hate trees and animals. I love trees and animals. But you can love nature and still hate the tyranny that environmental regulations bring. The Environmental Protection Agency just announced it will boost gas prices ("only" a penny, although industry says 6 to 9 cents) to make another minuscule improvement to air quality. In New York City, my mayor wants to ban Styrofoam cups, saying, "I think it's something we can do without." Congress already dictates the design of our cars, toilets and light...

Folks, the pendulum is swinging in the right direction. In recent weeks, I’ve shared a bunch of examples to support my hypothesis that libertarians, small-government conservatives, and classical liberals are finally making some progress. This trend actually started with the fiscal cliff, though that was simply a smaller-than-expected defeat. Since then, we’ve enjoyed victories on the sequester, the IMF, and dynamic scoring. I’ve also posted some evidence showing that the Tea Party has made a positive difference and specifically shared data showing that the burden of government fiscal policy has been reduced since the 2010 elections. Well, here’s another feel-good...

Politicians and basketball coaches know that you never answer the question a reporter asks you; you answer the question you want to answer. So it was with an opinion piece in the March 17 edition of The Washington Post titled “Is Capitalism Moral?” The newspaper assigned Steven Pearlstein, a business columnist who doesn’t seem to care much for businesses, to answer that question. But Pearlstein didn’t seem to want to. Instead, he made his piece broader, writing about the broad problems in American politics today. “Careening from debt-ceiling crisis to sequestration to a looming government shutdown, the nation is...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday handed a setback to publishers, ruling in favor of a Thai student who bought inexpensive foreign-edition textbooks and resold them to U.S. students on eBay. The high court rejected arguments by publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc., which accused Supap Kirtsaeng, a former University of Southern California Ph.D. student, of infringing its copyrights on several works, including textbooks on physics, organic chemistry and engineering. The Asian versions of those books were marked with warnings that they were intended for sale only in certain foreign regions. U.S. law has long held that in principle, once...

Somewhere in the first half of Moscow on the Hudson, a bedraggled Robin Williams huddles on the luxurious first floor of Bloomingdale's clamoring in an unconvincing Russian accent that he wants to defect. Standing between him and a furious KGB officer is a minimum wage store security guard in a red blazer. The KGB officer hisses that he protests the defection the name of the Soviet Union. The security guard retorts that his own jurisdiction runs "from Style Boutique, through Denim Den, all the way up to Personal Fragrances." And the Soviet Union and the KGB have no jurisdiction in...

Seagate Technology on Friday unveiled a $180 million cutting-edge research and development complex at the former Solyndra solar factory in Fremont, a site the company will use to invent next-generation disk drives. Up to 600 people could work at the facility, depending on product demand, Seagate executives said. "It's a big deal to be keeping high-tech research and development jobs in Silicon Valley," said Mark Re, a Seagate senior vice president and R&D executive. "This is going to be a state-of-the-art facility." Late Thursday, Seagate installed a huge sign with its name and logo on the side of the 411,000-square-foot...

Start-up mania hits San Quentin prison as inmates turn entrepreneurs One by one, the entrepreneurs, clad in crisp blue jeans and armed with PowerPoint presentations, stood before a roomful of investors and tech bloggers to explain their dreams of changing the world. For these exuberant times in Silicon Valley, the scene was familiar; the setting, less so. With the young and ambitious flocking again to northern California to launch Internet companies, there were signs one recent morning that start-up mania has taken hold even behind the faded granite walls of California's most notorious prison. 'Live stream has gone mainstream. Mobile...

History shows that the destruction of affluent societies is often self-induced. Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline? Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, when historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs, and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure — and who gets the most of both — more often than poverty and exhaustion, cause civilization to implode. One...

In the current economic climate, politicians and interest groups have encouraged the public to view businesses, especially corporations, as exploitative entities taking advantage of human suffering and even engineering the Great Recession. Thus, increased government intervention is necessary to “tame” the marketplace. Some consider the recent re-election of President Obama a vindication of this perspective. John Mackey, Co-CEO of Whole Foods, courageously shares an opposing view in his latest book, Conscious Capitalism, co-authored by Rajendra Sisodia. “We paint business for what it truly is: heroic,” said Mackey at a recent Cato event. “Business is the greatest value creator in the...

Our former U.S. Vice President Al Gore just sold one of his business holdings and earned a bit profit – and he contradicted himself while doing it. Gosh, I am shocked! Aren’t you? The headlines tell us that Gore is being pummeled with criticism from his fellow liberal-progressives because he sold Current TV, a television network that he co-founded, to Al Jazeera, a television network based in Qatar. In the liberal-progressive worldview, this transaction is problematic on two accounts. For one, Gore did business in an oil-producing country (Qatar), and for liberal-progressives, this is an un-forgivable sin. In their view,...

Chinese businessman sells canned air to smog-choked citizens Recently, we told you about the horrendous air pollution problems in Beijing that have forced the Chinese government to advise citizens to stay indoors and has residents wearing facemasks in an attempt to protect their lungs from the smog. In the true spirit of Chinese entrepreneurialism, a Chinese businessman has decided to cash in on the "airpocalypse" by selling his own brand of canned air. Chen Guangbiao, a local entrepreneur known for his publicity stunts, claims he's selling the cans of air in part as a way to bring attention to the...

In Washington, the best way to get good press is to announce you’re leaving. Case in point: Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (call him Jay), D-W.Va., is stepping down when his term ends. And The Washington Post makes haste to bring him laud. “Jay Rockefeller wasn’t ever going to be just some Democratic senator from West Virginia,” writes Manuel Roig-Franzia. The story intimates this is because Rockefeller, as an heir to a vast fortune earned through unbridled capitalism, needed to make amends. “He found a way to be a Rockefeller that was about serving people,” the senator’s longtime political adviser,...

Progressivism in America has always been a thuggish ideology. It rests on the notion that laws require no evidence to support their implementation, that intentions are all that matter and that those who oppose "change" of the sort progressives like are morally deficient. Progressivism requires Americans to separate off certain groups in American life as evil -- the rich ("greedy!"), gun owners ("hooligans!"), traditionally religious people ("sexists!"), Constitutional government advocates ("bigots!"). It requires that certain Americans be cast as good -- racial and ethnic minorities, low income earners and women ("victimized!"), irreligious people ("rationalists!") and big government advocates ("experts!"). Progressivism...

Here are twelve comical but true resolutions that every liberal should make for 2013: 1.) Resolve to spend time with gun-owners. I have a liberal friend who says she would rather be in the same room as a cobra snake than a gun, even an unloaded gun. Guns really, really scare her. But guns don’t kill. People kill. Whether the tool is a gun or a knife or a baseball bat, unconscionable people kill, not the inanimate objects in their hands. Banning all tools and machinery will not turn bad people into good people. Doing so would make us more...

A “Wants” based consumption = Satisfying Wants = Greed = Spending = Waste = Not Being Green = Being Mean = Socialism Or A “Needs” based consumption = Satisfying Needs = Conservation = Thrift = Saving = Investment = Increased Efficiency = Lower Prices = Less Waste = Being Green = Being Nice = Capitalism

We wish each other "peace on earth." Wishing is not enough. We must act on this wish by promoting capitalism on earth. Too many people (including some religious leaders) are promoting the idea that re-distribution of wealth or “social justice” is the best way to foster peace. But Christians and Jews need only read the Old Testament to see that God condemns stealing and envy so much that he gave Moses commandments like: “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.” And in the New Testament, Christ promoted capitalistic...

The tax on luxury will become reality for all Russians without exception next year. President Vladimir Putin reminded everyone of that in his annual Address to the Federal Assembly. According to experts, the new tax may send a definite message to wealthy citizens to redistribute their revenues. The head of state said in his speech that the decision on the so-called luxury tax should be made in the first half of 2013. According to the official website of the President of the Russian Federation, one should not give up on the "flat" income tax scale, since the progressive taxation of...

Greek mythology, with its tales of Zeus, Apollo and Hera doesn't have a thing on the mythology that liberals have created around themselves. There's Bubba, the President who can feel your pain, BO the leader who has the ability to never be blamed for anything and, of course, the wronged woman Fluke who the gods granted free birth control for the rest of her life for not being allowed to speak to a committee...or something. Still, as you're about to see, the real face of liberalism looks a lot more like Medusa than Aphrodite. 1) Liberals are pro-capitalism: Many liberals...

A Travel Channel episode of No Reservations, [..], took viewers to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I had heard that the show offered unique insight into the country and its troubles. I couldn't imagine how. But it turns out to be true. Through the lens of food, we can gain an insight into culture, and from culture to economy, and from economy to politics and finally to what's wrong in this country and what can be done about it. Through this micro lens, we gain more insight than we would have if the program were entirely focused on economic issues. Such an episode...

I post this item not to mock Mika Brzezinski. But her comments this morning were so illustrative of the liberal mindset--in ignoring fundamental principles of economics--that they are worth highlighting here. An entire Morning Joe segment had been devoted to discussing the wage dilemma in America. In the context of analyzing the right-to-work law soon to be signed in Michigan, the panel—apparently excepting Mika—agreed that we face hard choices here. We can artificially preserve high wages for a relative few, or let wages seek their natural level, providing more jobs at lower pay. As Joe Scarborough put it, we have...

Transcribed from a speech given by Paul Singer of Elliott Management Investing is an art, more so than a science. And for me, what I get paid for is managing the “dark art,” if you will, of risk management and trying to be a visionary and having a dark vision at all times about what can go wrong. It’s a particularly fruitful and impactful time to be thinking about risk management and the thing I want talk about today is what I’ve described as “The Shape of the Next Crisis.” That doesn’t mean we’re going to be talking about the...

Capitalism is, by its nature, dynamic. George Osborne's attempt to engineer the 'perfect society’ undermines the logic of the free marketWhen the Edward Gibbon of the 22nd century comes to write his History of the Decline and Fall of the West, who will feature in his monumental study of the collapse of the most successful economic experiment in human history? In this saga of the mass suicide of the richest nations on earth, there may be particular reference to those national leaders who chose to deny the reality that was, from the vantage point of our future chronicler, so obviously...

Have you ever noticed that people who worry about inequality seem to be focused only on certain kinds of inequality? When they obsess about the income and wealth of the top 1%, they seem to be bothered by only some of those at the top, and not others. For example, have you ever seen Robert Reich or Paul Krugman or any like-minded complainer bemoan the huge salaries of professional athletes? What about the stratospheric incomes of rock stars? Or movie idols? Or super models?Even more puzzling, when is the last time you saw any of them assailing worthless heirs?...

Everyone knows we’re approaching a date that lives in infamy in American history – Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. But there’s another more recent date in American history that should live in infamy. It’s Dec. 16, 2008. That’s the date on which President George W. Bush admitted what he did with the bailouts of the major investment firms and banks that were “too big to fail.” Here’s what he said in that infamous admission: “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush told CNN, saying he had made the decision “to make sure the...

Given what we know in 2012, saying that capitalism will make a society richer than socialism should be about as controversial as saying the earth is round, not flat. Yet, a recent Gallup poll shows that more liberals have a positive view of socialism than capitalism. This is only possible because there are so many perverse incentives that drive the promotion of socialism. If you're a politician, socialism puts power in your hands while capitalism takes it away. If you want to use the government to control people's lives, socialism is a wonderful vehicle to do just that while capitalism...

This recalls a brilliant quote by Lady Margaret Thatcher: "People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is TONS of room at the top..."

Most Americans continue to have favorable opinions of capitalism and the free enterprise system. However, just 24% have a favorable opinion of socialism. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% have an unfavorable view of that economic system

<p>Most Cubans have not paid taxes for half a century, but that will change under a new code starting January 1.</p> <p>The landmark regulations will change the relations of Cubans with their government and are a signal that market-oriented reforms, launched since President Raul Castro succeeded his brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008, are here to stay.</p>

It's enough to make an MSMer nostalgic for the good old days of the Soviet Union, when the masses didn't stampede into stores because there was little of interest to buy and little money to buy it with, and the good stuff was reserved for the ruling elites at special shops. Here's how ABC's Dan Harris opened today's Good Morning America: "This morning, Black and Blue Friday. America's annual orgy of capitalism gets dicey." Capitalism? Really? Is that the problem? View the video here.

It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom. One of the earliest and arguably most historically significant North American colonies was Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. As I’ve outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a Capitalist Thanksgiving), the original colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor. As William Bradford recorded in his -- Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been...

In dealing with this system of economic organization — the market economy — we employ the term "economic freedom." Very often, people misunderstand what it means, believing that economic freedom is something quite apart from other freedoms, and that these other freedoms — which they hold to be more important — can be preserved even in the absence of economic freedom. The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society. The individual is able to choose his career; he...

Last week [Nov. 2004], there were several comments in Carnival of the Capitalists that people would like to see more articles highlighting the benefits of capitalism.  This got me thinking about a conversation I had years ago at the beach: Hanging out at the beach one day with a distant family member, we got into a discussion about capitalism and socialism.  In particular, we were arguing about whether brute labor, as socialism teaches, is the source of all wealth (which, socialism further argues, is in turn stolen by the capitalist masters).  The young woman, as were most people her age,...

Bono has learned much about music over more than three decades with U2. But alongside that has been a lifelong lesson in campaigning — the activist for poverty reduction in Africa spoke frankly on Friday about how his views about philanthropy had now stretched to include an appreciation for capitalism. The Irish singer and co-founder of ONE, a campaigning group that fights poverty and disease in Africa, said it had been “a humbling thing for me” to realize the importance of capitalism and entrepreneurialism in philanthropy, particularly as someone who “got into this as a righteous anger activist with all...

NEW DELHI: Notwithstanding the sagging economic situation, family businesses in India are thriving, as 74 per cent of firms have witnessed growth in sales in the last fiscal, says a survey by consultancy firm PwC. PwC calls the family business as a "resilient model" for the 21st century as the structure offers significant advantages and benefits - particularly with regards to their agility/flexibility, continuity and the longer-term perspective. Moreover, family businesses also have a stronger set of values than other businesses, it says. According to the Family Business Survey (FBS) 2012 conducted by PwC, 74 per cent of family businesses...

The Great Recession was primarily caused by the collapse in economic demand as 80 million “baby-boomers” born between 1946 and 1964 moved out of their peak spending years in their mid-30s to mid-50s and into retirement in their late 50s and early 60s. The U.S. government over the last five years squandered $7.6 trillion on Keynesian demand-side stimulus trying to resuscitate this demographically shrinking demand. With only 23 million born between 1995 and 2012 that comprise “Generation Z”, this population is just too small for demand-side stimulus to revive the economy. America is now deep in debt, facing 23 million...

Management consulting firm Grant Thornton recently released a ranking of countries by how well they encourage "dynamic growth" for businesses. We caught up with Stephen Chipman, CEO of Grant Thornton U.S., who says that "dynamism can be largely defined by a business' ability to act with speed, agility and flexibility. It’s about an organization's knack to move relatively fast in a productive manner, to grow, to take action without significant barriers — internal or external — getting in the way." It's not all about the economy. A variety of factors went into the model, including the availability of private credit,...

San Francisco: A new study showing that immigrants founded one quarter of U.S. technology start-up companies could fuel calls to relax immigration rules ahead of next month's U.S. presidential elections, where the economy and immigration are key issues. The study "America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Then and Now," shows that 24.3 percent of engineering and technology start-up companies have at least one immigrant founder serving in a key role. Indian-born entrepreneurs, representing 33 percent of the companies, dominated the group. The study paid particular attention to Silicon Valley, where it analyzed 335 engineering and technology start-ups. It found 43.9 percent were...

Earlier this month in the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney made an unusual argument by modern political standards: that long-term deficit spending is not just an economic issue, but a moral one. "I think it's . . . not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in, knowing those burdens are going to be passed on to the next generation." This is a notable occurrence, not just because Romney is frequently chided for being cool and detached, but because it represents a return to something our founders knew but succeeding generations have forgotten: Limited government...

My wife was on another person's FaceBook page where that other lady, and several others, were complaining about the cost of capitalism. Since Amazon was charging sales tax in Arizona, the lady said she could not afford to buy books through them and she blamed capitalism. She went on to say that is why she would not vote for Romney because he was a capitalist.

The pro-President Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is out with a memo this morning detailing its plans for the final days, including the return of one of its toughest spots about Mitt Romney's time at Bain.

Capitalism favors the rich. Socialism helps the poor. These are core beliefs of almost everybody on the left, including our president. Ah, but it turns out that this worldview is completely wrong. Economists associated with the Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute have actually found a way to measure "economic freedom" and investigate what difference it makes in 141 countries around the world. This work has been in progress for several decades now and the evidence is stark. Economies that rely on private property, free markets and free trade, and avoid high taxes, regulation and inflation, grow more rapidly than...

We are entering the final stages of another national election cycle at the close of one more difficult economic year. After four years of pursuing extraordinary fiscal and monetary policies, after eleven years at war, America is more than simply adrift. Change has certainly come under Obama, but hope seems lost. As we now look toward the election, three direct questions leap to mind. Which team is more likely to create private sector jobs and protect hard-won national wealth? Should America embrace insular “crony capitalists” or world-beating entrepreneurs? Which candidate is more likely to advance the interests of our rising...