Posted on 12/21/2013 8:02:47 AM PST by Kaslin
Attacking capitalism never seems to go out of style. Over the past 100 years, few institutions of been attacked so fiercely, so falsely and so foolishly.
Yet capitalism’s resilience continues. Governments based on the idea that capitalism is evil, and that the state can create in controlling entire economy, have risen and fallen during this period, but capitalism continues to thrive.
Today, it is no longer beyond the pale to say that capitalism has done more good for more people than any other economic arrangement ever devised by man. Capitalist economies such as the United States are prosperous, growing and expansive, creating opportunities and wealth for ever-increasing numbers of people.
“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty,” Thomas Jefferson said, and our Constitution was a major step in that direction. Capitalism is based on free markets, on the opportunities for anyone to enter any market at any time to produce and offer products and services that people want, need, and will purchase.
Capitalism is really savings-ism. Fixed capital consists of real estate, factories, machinery, equipment and all other factors of production that can be used to produce and distribute products and services to ever more people. Capital is accumulated only when people refrain from spending everything they earn, saving it instead, and reinvesting it to produce even more goods and services in the future.
America is great because it offers the opportunity for almost everyone to work, save, invest and build capital over time. This accumulated capital can be used to start a business or can be combined with the capital of others to help fund the creation of larger corporations.
Stock markets represent a place where people can pool their capital, invest it in enterprises, along with the capital of others, to produce and sell products and services and earn profits and dividends, which are then distributed to the stockholders as the owners of the business.
Capitalism depends on a combination of productivity and self-discipline or self-denial. It requires the ability to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term. It accepts and helps tame human nature.
As Steve Forbes once observed in a lecture to The Heritage Foundation, capitalism “encourages ambitious individuals to engage in peaceful pursuit instead of plundering their neighbors. An entrepreneur offers something -- a product or service. You do not have to accept it. It is a voluntary transaction. It encourages cooperation.”
America is great because it provides a legal and social framework consisting of clearly understood laws, legally sanctioned contracts, and a stable currency that creates sufficient security for people to save, invest and risk their capital in the anticipation of achieving greater wealth in the future.
America is great because its capitalist system enables the average person to start with little and build a substantial estate over the course of a working lifetime. America has more millionaires and billionaires than all the other countries in the world. Fully 80 percent of wealthy American started at the bottom and earned their money in one generation as the result of starting in building capitalistic enterprises.
Where some nations have age-old caste systems or entrenched class systems from which escape to a better life is next to impossible, the free-market capitalist system in the United States presents opportunities for every individual to improve his or her life.
America is great because America is free, and should we ever lose the economic freedom that capitalism secures, our political freedom will also be gravely threatened.
This is why conservatives always champion smaller government. It’s the only way to bring more innovation, more new jobs, and more opportunities for more people.
That’s something that capitalism’s critics always seem to overlook. But it helps explain why capitalism has outlasted all of its challengers over the last century.
Bring back jobs from China.
Give more jobs to Americans.
Just saying.
Capitalism - Oingo Boingo
There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don’t try to make me feel guilty
I’m so tired of hearing you cry
There’s nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask me I’ll say it’s just fine
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
I’m so tired of hearing you whine
About the revolution
Bringin’ down the rich
When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby!
If it ain’t one thing
Then it’s the other
Any cause that crosses your path
Your heart bleeds for anyone’s brother
I’ve got to tell you you’re a pain in the ass
You criticize with plenty of vigor
You rationalize everything that you do
With catchy phrases and heavy quotations
And everybody is crazy but you
You’re just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you never really had to work
And you tell me that we’ve got to get back
To the struggling masses (whoever they are)
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain
What the hell do you know about suffering and pain . . .
(Repeat first verse)
(Repeat chorus)
There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism
The free market stops at the water’s edge, eh?
There isn’t a free market in China.
We are competing against countries like China, which has a system totally biased toward its own companies, with what?
“Freedom”?
When we are the only ones competing without rules. China uses restrictive laws to BRING JOBS TO CHINA.
We do nothing to defend America.
Now China exports more than we do. And the situation is rapidly getting worse.
We need to look out for American jobs.
BTTT
The issue here is that liberals and socialists believe that good things like peace and prosperity are natural, and that bad things like war and depression occur only when evil men cause them to happen. This is the Utopian vision.
Those with the tragic vision of human life realize that the opposite is true. The natural state of humanity is isnorance, anarchy, poverty, war, disease and oppression. We have slowly climbed above this level in the last few centuries, but maintaining the level we have reached is a constant struggle.
Meanwhile, those with the Utopian vision strive to destroy the fragile mechanisms holding society together, due to their sincere belief that the natural goodness of things will automatically emerge once these are put out of the way.
I wish to do business with a company in China.
You want to use the power of the State to keep me from having that choice.
It didn’t take long for the free market bashers and other FINOs to show up. Thanks Kaslin.
The issue is not the state having control, if we set things up right.
That is where the issue resides however.
If the government’s control over things increases as a result I completely agree with you that there is no benefit to it other than bringing back US jobs (a good goal however)
I’m not advocating increased government control.
What that means is, every single thing imported into America will need to be tariffed - and every tariff much be exactly the same as every other import tariff.
What I am saying is everything imported, is levied exactly the (precisely) identical size taxation.
Imported oil. Imported food. Imported fishing equipment. Imported tools. Everything which is made outside of America.
If this were done, there would be ZERO government growth.
But there would be a very large, and very real effect on US manufacturing.
I say bring back US jobs.
Offset, of course, by considerable loss of purchasing power by consumers and companies, and resultant job loss.
IOW, somebody who must spend considerably more of their money on clothes, tools and fishing equipment because imports have been subjected to high tariffs will have less money available for things such as Starbucks or eating out at a nice place.
What I am saying is that any policy such as you propose would by definition result in both job losses and job creation. The net effect, which I don't claim to be able to predict, may not necessarily be as positive as you expect.
I have always been amazed by the way people will sneer at lower prices whereas nobody sneers at higher income. Yet a 10% drop in the cost of what I must buy due to the availability of imports is more valuable to me than a 10% increase in wages.
I also think you gloss over the loss of freedom imposed by protective tariffs as unimportant as long as it doesn't result in a larger government. So is a larger government bad in and of itself, or because it is likely to lead to reduced freedom? If the second, aren't other ways of reducing freedom also bad?
Right.
I agree with you. However China is (rapidly) gaining global power.
America businesses are on the wrong end of that part.
At some point China as an international threat, takes precedence over China as a force for growth.
In my opinion that time has arrived.
China now is the world’s largest exporter.
You may not feel this is important.
I feel it is more important to America and the globe, than continued “free trade”.
We find ourselves at opposing ends of this question.
I am not saying you are wrong.
But I’m not saying you are right either.
We are simply on opposing ends of a spectrum on the question of China.
I say we need to bring American production back to America.
How we do that is what I am working at conceptualizing.
I believe such an approach as I have detailed, is just about the only way to address Chinese competition, without leaving our government in control of way more than they currently are.
But we need to change the way things are done.
China is an emerging threat.
We need to treat them as such. Not making them ever stronger.
That doesn't encompass the argument, really. The argument is, "others don't have a free market, so we shouldn't, either."
Yup.
And remember, we have "free" healthcare now . . . and it hasn't affected employment AT ALL.
Free market capitalism has done amazing things. That’s why the globalists have worked so hard to kill it. It hasn’t been seen for at least a generation.
Thankfully a reasoned and well explained defense of capitalism and its benefits
Capitalist economies such as the United States WERE prosperous, growing and expansive, creating opportunities and wealth for ever-increasing numbers of people.
Not under the current leadership...
25% of our workers out of work
another 25% earning half what they used to
The evidence is in. It's a fixed jury. No way you're going to get a sound verdict.
You know, sex is great. 24/7/365? Not so much.
MODERATION IN ALL THINGS!
There’s nothing wrong and a whole lot right with FREE ENTERPRISE. But there is a helluva lot wrong with the crony capitalism that is currently in practice.
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