Posted on 03/16/2013 6:26:19 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
Careening from debt-ceiling crisis to sequestration to a looming government shutdown, the nation is caught up in a historic debate over the proper size and role of government.
That’s certainly one way to think about it. Another is that we are caught up in a historic debate over free-market capitalism. After all, if markets were making most of us better off, regulating their own excesses, guaranteeing equal opportunity and fairly dividing the economic pie, then we wouldn’t need government to take on all the things it does.
For most of the past 30 years, the world has been moving in the direction of markets. The grand experiment with communism has been thoroughly discredited, a billion people have been lifted from poverty through free-market competition, and even European socialists have given up on state ownership and the nanny state.
Here at home, large swaths of the economy have been deregulated, and tax rates have been cut. A good portion of what is left of government has been outsourced, while even education is moving toward school choice. In embracing welfare reform, Americans have acknowledged that numerous programs meant to lift up the poor instead trapped them in permanent dependency and poverty.
But more recently, we’ve seen another side of free markets: stagnant incomes, gaping inequality, a string of crippling financial crises and 20-somethings still living in their parents’ basements. These realities are forcing free-market advocates and their allies in the Republican Party to pursue a new strategy. Instead of arguing that free markets are good for you, they’re saying that they’re good — mounting a moral defense of free-market capitalism.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Not one of those effects have free market economics as their cause.
"Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message. But that is like saying that calculus does not contain carbohydrates, amino acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrelevant standards. Yet no one regards this as making calculus invalid or illegitimate. Once again, the selective application of arbitrary standards is invoked only when it promotes the vision of the anointed1."
1 "The Vision of the Anointed" by Thomas Sowell
pp 207
We are in the dawn of a BRAVE NEW WORLD under this buffoonish clown currently sleeping in the WH.
What utter and complete bullshat. A government that keeps adding 8% to it's own budget annually (despite declining revenue), combined with OVER REGULATION of businesses cannot sustain itself. It's just a matter of time.
Our government now only exists to feed itself. The majority of federal employes are enemies of the American citizen.
Show me the evidence. You've made a lot of blanket statements without corroboration. Simply stating that because some bankers are crooks we should overhaul the whole system is ridiculous.
Global “capitalism” is a sick puppy. It is corrupted and bent out of shape by the elite and sick governments of the globe. There is no “American” capitalism in today’s capitalism and that is why small business and the middle class in America is contracting.
Capitalism fails to the degree it is trammeled by regulation and manipulation. It certainly defies logic to argue that communism — which is nothing BUT regulation of markets — succeeds in discharging any of the inequities of capitalism. So while capitalism is not perfect, it at least allows its members to seek their own level. Communism arrogantly equates uniformity with equality and forces all its citizens onto the Procrustean bed of collectivism.
Simply put, capitalism is a system where a person owns "the fruit of their labors," where individualism and independence are not just tolerated, but lauded.
So this is the basis we should now 'regulate good genes and equalize opportunities'?
Since a government can do NOTHING to improve someones' genes or parentage, the only way to "equalize" things is to make conditions worse for everyone.
Mark
As for our present predicament, acquiring capitol is still a good thing but difficult to do in a semi socialist society like we have.
“But more recently, we’ve seen another side of free markets: stagnant incomes, gaping inequality, a string of crippling financial crises and 20-somethings still living in their parents’ basements. “
Author shows his left wing bias here. All of those things were in fact caused by government meddling in the market.
Real free market capitalism is by far the best way to have a vibrant powerful economy that benefits the whole society. It’s also true that some will have more than others and that is what the leftists hate. Despite all the lefts screaming otherwise it is true that some people are smarter than others, some people are more creative than others, and some people just work harder, and smarter, than others.
Capitalism is moral.
It is the RESPONSIBILITY of the INDIVIDUAL to take charge of their own life. it is the RESPONSIBILITY of the INDIVIDUAL to attend to those basic three needs: shelter, clothing, and food.
There is NO governmental idiot, nor egghead professor, that can more clearly see, than the INDIVIDUAL, at their own level in life, what is the severity of those three needs.
The governmental idiot already has their needs addressed through the function of government, which is NOT at the same level as the individual, because THERE IS NO INDIVIDUAL - THEY ARE ALL PART OF THE ENTITY CALLED GOVERNMENT.
The egghead professor cannot see at the level of the individual, because he has become blinded by the masses that have poured through his environment, which he has consistently pigeonholed into successful or non-successful STUDENTS, who by that very name and definition, are not yet able to fend for themselves without his mentoring, teachings, and guidance. An individual separate from his continuous input, is part of a world in which he no longer interacts, nor has communication, by choice, preferring other intelligentsia as his counterparts.
‘But more recently, we’ve seen another side of free markets: stagnant incomes, gaping inequality, a string of crippling financial crises and 20-somethings still living in their parents’ basements.’
No, that has nothing to do with ‘free markets’: it is simply evidence that government meddlers can’t stand to see anyone truly free.
And, by the way, it’s properly labeled ‘state socialism’ NOT capitalism.
free market capitalism is morally good because it is the economic system that is compatible with:
1) God-given natural rights
2) God-given human nature
3) God-given Biblical concept of justice
Capitalism/Free Markets = Equal Opportunity...for ALL!
The problem is not capitalism per se, it is a combination of other things, such as:
1) Bad government tax and financial policies that discourage productive investments in things like R&D, and encourage investment in things approaching dishonest gambling in market extrapolations like derivatives. Often this is done by blithely ignoring the Laffer curve
2) The willingness of nations and corporations to exploit other nations with dictators, giving them huge bribes in exchange for looting their nation’s resources and potential for prosperity.
3) The over-reliance of government using short-term macroeconomic ideas like “productivity” to imagine national prosperity. A company that outsources for $100m more profit may end up costing its home country half a billion dollars in lost prosperity. Likewise, government can be blamed for this by creating a hostile business environment.
4) Despite the insistence of some, like the CATO Institute, that monopolies cannot evolve or exist any length of time without government support, the truth is that anti-monopoly and anti-oligopoly regulation are of immense economic help to a country across the board.
Some still bemoan the bust up of AT&T, but without it, most of our Internet, cable and communications technology would not exist today. Standardized inefficiency is still inefficient.
I've not heard of Diamond, but I have heard of Saez. Every few years he trots out bogus studies that twist statistics as far as he can twist them to "prove" income inequality or stagnation or any other BS the left is trying to pedal.
Thomas Sowell's book "Economic Facts and Fallacies" relies heavily on Alan Reynolds book "Income and Wealth". The Reynolds book takes apart the reports generated by Saez (often with Thomas Piketty) and show that they are flat out lies in some cases and at the very least extreme distortions of fact.
ANY study that has Saez's name on it is pure BS.
Only liberals would support cutting off the legs of an athlete and then blaming him because he can't run fast.
It's isn't the whole of morality, though.
That may be where Ayn Rand went wrong.
People need to understand the difference between the two.
"Capitalism" is a pejorative meant to reduce "free market trade" to a discussion of who has what. We need to stop calling the free market "capitalism".
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