| "Wealth, when you get right down to it, is not the cause of poverty." -- Mitchell B. Pearlstein, paraphrasing George Gilder "Ultimately it is only wealth that can reduce poverty." -- Thomas Sowell "If we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the poverty and not the difference. Wealth is good. ... wealth is not a world-wide round-robin of purse snatching, and ... the thing that makes you rich doesn't make me poor. ... Without Productivity, there wouldn't be any economics, or any economic thinking, good or bad, or any pizza, or anything else. We would sit around and stare at rocks, and maybe later have some for dinner. ... Wealth is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable. In fact, productivity is fabulously expandable."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
(Again) "Wealth is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable. In fact, productivity is fabulously expandable." -- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
"of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production." --Robert Lucas
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| "When government will expropriate any wealth that people create, the present value of future output can actually be less than the value of the country's tangible resources. The power of predatory government to destroy wealth is truly awesome." -- Arnold Kling |
"Look around: It just isn't true that countries get rich at each other's expense.Would America be better off now if Europe and Japan had stayed poor after 1945? Did its jobs migrate, its economy stagnate, leaving rising poverty and chronic unemployment? Not exactly: America thrived. One of the things that helped it after 1945 was expanding opportunities for trade with other rich countries. Americans would be worse off today if Europe and Japan had stayed poor. What's changed? Why isn't this still true? In my view: Nothing; it's still true. The faster India grows, the better off every other country will be... I do not regard the prospect of global capitalism as 'harrowing.' I regard it as the best opportunity for relieving human misery the world has ever seen." -- Clive Crook, deputy editor of The Economist,in the February 25th, 1997 issue of Slate, in a letter to John Judis
"I observed the talks and was shocked not only by the riotous atmosphere, but also by the protesters' misconceptions about trade, the WTO and the developing world. As an Indian national, I know only too well how lack of trade, investment and freedom keeps the world's developing nations in a state of perpetual poverty and environmental degradation. Sadly, the largely middle-class Americans who trashed Seattle last week had little if any comprehension of this fact." -- Barun Mitra, in a column in the Wall Street Journal 12-9-99. Mitra heads the The Liberty Institute, in New Delhi, India "The 'progressive' Left, even while wailing about international poverty, has long decried the Westernization of the 'developing world', the polite term for societies kept poor by socialist governments." -- from The Free Market Means Civilizationby Lew Rockwell, President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, originally published in Spintechmag.com,12-22-2000.
"Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon." -- Michael Rothschild in BIONOMICS: Economy as Ecosystem "Capitalism is not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism,' because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
"Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth." -- Julian Simon "The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization." -- Mikhail Gorbachev, June 8, 1990 "How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing." -- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich "In terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland as well as other natural resources. Despite the natural wealth, Africa is home to the world's most impoverished and abused people. Of the 41 black African nations, only three (Senegal, Botswana and Mauritius) allow their people the right to vote and choose their own leaders. Only two (Botswana and Senegal) permit freedom of expression and criticism of government policies. In countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Sudan, Chad and others, ethnic genocide has taken the lives of untold millions of innocent victims. Slavery is still practiced in the Sudan and Mauritania." -- Dr. Walter E. Williams "Capitalism is not just a system for producing wealth. It is, above all else, a system based on the noblest moral principle: the protection of the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Free markets are founded on the individual's right to pursue a career, trade the products of his effort, and enjoy the wealth he has earned without having to seek permission from others or pay ransom for the privilege of living." --Robert W. Tracinski "Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon." -- Michael Rothschild "Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind -- and ... no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun." -- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged "Cuba's poverty is caused by the crackpot Marxist doctrines imposed by its sociopathic ruler and promoted by half the liberal arts professors on American faculties." -- David Horowitz
| "If concern for human poverty and suffering were one's primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask : Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in sub-human misery? History and specifically the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the 19th century would give an immediate answer : capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance - and the key to capitalism is individual freedom." -- Ayn Rand, "Requiem for Man", Chapter 24 of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal |
| "The benefits of securing the freedom to create wealth are significant -- especially for the poor. 'In nations in the top fifth of economic freedom, the average income of the poorest 10 percent of the population was $6,877 compared to just $823 in the least free nations,' according to the 2004 Economic Freedom Report, which ranks 123 countries on such policies as taxation, property-rights protection, and freedom to trade internationally. The report also shows that poor countries that embrace economic freedom accumulate wealth faster: From 1980 to 2000 poor countries whose economies were relatively free of government interference had economic growth rates of 5.2 percent per year, compared to 3.4 percent for all economically free countries." -- Gabriel Gasave |
http://freedomkeys.com/gap.htm
"Western civilization was the child and product of reason -- via ancient Greece. In all other civilizations, reason has always been the menial servant -- the handmaiden -- of mysticism. You may observe the results. It is only Western culture that has ever been dominated -- imperfectly, incompletely, precariously and at rare intervals -- but still, dominated by reason. You may observe the results of that." -- Ayn Rand
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"Today, in the Twenty-First Century, an age of jet aircraft, personal computers, wireless telecommunications, laser surgery, and incipient space travel, the mentality with which many presumably educated, intelligent people approach matters of economics and business is, however astonishing it may seem, still that of the Dark Ages."-- George Reisman
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"Most Americans living below the official poverty line have air conditioning, microwaves and VCRs. About half have a car or truck. Moreover, most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some point since then. ... People who are genuinely poor all their lives still exist, but only about 3 percent of the American population remains in the bottom 20 percent for as long as a decade." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
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"Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth." -- Julian Simon
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"America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." -- Ayn Rand "Scratch the surface of an endemic problem -- famine, illness, poverty -- and you invariably find a politician at the source."-- Simon Carr, in his review of The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto "You can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming consumers. ... Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil. Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil." -- Walter E. Williams
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"From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time." -- F. A. Hayek
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"If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet, striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality." -- Tibor R. Machan in Private Rights and Public Illusions .
"Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew Rockwell
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"I consider socialism an obscene ideology, doomed to end in either total self destruction or total dictatorship." -- Pamela Hemelrijk, Leiden, Holland, April 3, 2004.04.16 "All socialism involves slavery." -- Herbert Spencer
"Many Western journalists, in contrast to revolutionaries, do not treat ideas seriously, and therefore fail to recognize the power of ideas in action. They don't realize that chaos and brutality must accompany a determined effort to implement ... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof. Morgan O. Reynolds
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"Scratch the surface of an endemic problem -- famine, illness, poverty -- and you invariably find a politician at the source."-- Simon Carr, in his review of The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto "You can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming consumers. ... Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil. Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil." -- Walter E. Williams
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"Many Western journalists, in contrast to revolutionaries, do not treat ideas seriously, and therefore fail to recognize the power of ideas in action. They don't realize that chaos and brutality must accompany a determined effort to implement ... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof. Morgan O. Reynolds "No 'middle class' worth the name aspires to economic benefits without bothering to acquire the skills to produce the wealth to make those benefits sustainable." -- Holman Jenkins
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"To embrace a collectivist system ... and thereby jeopardize sustained economic growth, inevitably misallocate scarce resources, and almost necessarily perpetuate destitution, hardly merits moral acclaim. Indeed, intellectuals in general and church leaders in particular who bewail the continued existence of poverty absolutely defined, and who state that they yearn for a world in which the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, and the destitute housed, yet who ceaselessly undermine the very system which, to date, has best done what they claim to value most, are, surely, moral imbeciles." -- The Reverend Doctor John K. Williams "Capitalism is not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism,' because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to." -- Dr.Thomas Sowell "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas Sowell |
