Capitalism: The Holy Grail of Economics

[PoliticalChic]

1. As we live in an 'Alice in Wonderland' world....let's begin at the end.
This man, Barack Obama, is a fool.

And so are any others who hate success, and fail to recognize capitalism as the single greatest advance in the economic history of the human race.


Guided by the proven false beliefs of Gracchus Babeuf’s Plebeian Manifesto, and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, Obama demands the right to take from the successful and give the spoils of said theft to those who can't or won't earn their own success....after government dips it's beak into said spoils.



2. "Marxism rested on the assumption that the condition of the working classes would grow ever worse under capitalism, that there would be but two classes: one small and rich, the other vast and increasingly impoverished, and revolution would be the anodyne that would result in the “common good.”

But by the early 20th century, it was clear that this assumption was completely wrong! Under capitalism, the standard of living of all was improving: prices falling, incomes rising, health and sanitation improving, lengthening of life spans, diets becoming more varied, the new jobs created in industry paid more than most could make in agriculture, housing improved, and middle class industrialists and business owners displaced nobility and gentry as heroes." From a speech by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, President, Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
Delivered at Hillsdale College, October 27, 2006




3. Obama: spread the wealth






4. Lest any are still deceived into believing that some iteration of goodness and charity are behind the versions of socialism, Marxism (communism), and its spin-off, Nazism, were foursquare behind coercion, oppression, andmass killings.....by bullets, by state-engineered famine, by working prisoners to death....death to millions upon millions.

Yet....we have Barack Obama and the Democrats.

The secret knowledge is that even the Soviet Communists found out early on that "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." (Karl Marx) was a flawed concept.

Human nature demands that one's work be rewarded commensurate with one's worth. And different individuals are worth differences in recompense.


a. Communist Russia acquiesced to this view as a result of the Stakhanovite Revolution...

"On the night of August 31, 1935, it was reported that Stakhanov had mined a record 102 tonnes of coal in less than six hours (14 times his quota). This sparked the so-called Stakhanovite movement, encouraging the rise of worker productivity."
Aleksey Stakhanov – Russiapedia History and mythology Prominent Russians


b. " Anxious to reward any individual achievements in production that might serve as stimulus to other workers, the Party launched the Stakhanovite movement.... Output above the norm was remunerated at higher rates of pay according to a progressive system. In this way, earnings reached dizzying heights. Some conference participants indicated what sort of consumer goods they would buy with their earnings. "
STAKHANOV – CELEBRITY OF SOVIET WORKING CLASS | Plotki


Guess what that's called? Right....capitalism.
Get it?
They ditched "economic equality" as a goal in favor of success.


Guess who never learned this lesson?

Who was the dunce who said "spread the wealth around"?

 

[Jroc]

Capitalism has brought more people out of poverty then any other system ever devised at the leftist want to destroy it.

 

[TNHarley]

Ambition is for racists and bigots.

 

[Jroc]

 

[PoliticalChic]

Yup....and he said it this way,too:


“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

― Ronald Reagan

 

[DGS49]

Well, that's one way of looking at it.

Ever read, "The Jungle," by Upton Sinclair? While fictional, it does describe with some accuracy the expected conduct of "capitalists" in the presence of a labor surplus. Jobs are controlled by corrupt low-level supervisors, who auction them to the individuals willing to work for the least amount of money.

Capitalism has done nothing for the working class. Capitalists were forced, kicking and screaming, by unions and government regulators, to provide pay and benefits that raised the workingman from bare subsistence into the middle class. Gradually, non union employers and employees came to realize that employers COULD provide these things, and they began to move in similar directions, but the fact REMAINS that any employer will always pay as little as possible for the work that it needs.

To claim that "capitalism" raised the status of the workingman into the Middle Class is pure poppycock. True capitalists would - to this day - be perfectly content if their workers were living in caves.

 

[AquaAthena]

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman was an extraordinary genius whose ideas helped underpin modern conservative economic theory. May his legacy of contributions to economics and the conservative movement never be underestimated. Now to just get his writings to our millennials.
---------

Milton Friedman quotes:

"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."

"When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union -- like public housing in the United States -- look decrepit within a year or two of their construction..."

 

[PoliticalChic]

Well, that's one way of looking at it.

Ever read, "The Jungle," by Upton Sinclair? While fictional, it does describe with some accuracy the expected conduct of "capitalists" in the presence of a labor surplus. Jobs are controlled by corrupt low-level supervisors, who auction them to the individuals willing to work for the least amount of money.

Capitalism has done nothing for the working class. Capitalists were forced, kicking and screaming, by unions and government regulators, to provide pay and benefits that raised the workingman from bare subsistence into the middle class. Gradually, non union employers and employees came to realize that employers COULD provide these things, and they began to move in similar directions, but the fact REMAINS that any employer will always pay as little as possible for the work that it needs.

To claim that "capitalism" raised the status of the workingman into the Middle Class is pure poppycock. True capitalists would - to this day - be perfectly content if their workers were living in caves.

Nonsense.

Outside the purview of this particular thread, there are capitalitst, and the Leftist crony capitalists, "government entrepreneurs," who band with the big government doctrinaire totalitarians who keep the citizenry dependent.



1. Entrepreneur: a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money; one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise entrepreneur | a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money

2. "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." Walter Isaacson, "Steve Jobs," p. 329

3. One example:
The special efforts of government on his behalf identifies Fulton as a "political entrepreneurs, using taxpayer money rather than risking his own."Due to his monopoly, other steamboat operators could not sail in New York waters, and, guess what effect a monopoly had on ticket prices.

4. "...on November 24, 1817, a ferry entrepreneur named Thomas Gibbons asked Vanderbilt to captain his steamboat between New Jersey and New York."Cornelius Vanderbilt - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

This meant breaking the Fulton monopoly!
First thing he did was lower the fares.

a. Gibbons brought the landmark case, (Gibbons v. Ogden), settled in 1824, with Chief Justice Marshall ruling that only the federal government could regulate interstate commerce.




5. "The triumph of free markets in steamboating led to improvements in technology....Once boatbuilders were freed from the Fulton-Livingston interests, they were quick to develop new ideas that before, had no encouragement from capital."
Folsom and Folsom, "Uncle Sam Can't Count," p. 36.

6. The immediate result of freeing the industry from government interference was a drop in the cost of traveling from NYC to Albany from $7 to $3. While Fulton's group went bankrupt, Gibbons and Vanderbilt adopted new technology, cut costs, and earned $40,000 profit each year during the late 1820's.
Wheaton Lane, "Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of the Steam Age," p. 43-49

7. Vanderbilt went on to branch out on his own, establishing trade routes all over the Northeast. Andto the benefit of the customer:on the NY to Philadelphia route, he cut fares from $3 to $1; New Brunswick to NYC, he charged six cents and provided free meals.

a. In NY, the Hudson River Steamboat Association had 10 ships, the largest line at the time (1830). They fixed prices: Vanderbilt came in and cut the rate to Albany from $3 to $1, and then to ten cents...and finally....to free!He figured out it cost him $200/day to operate his ship, he could fill it with 100 passengers, and calculated that they would eat over $2 each of food and drink. Legend has it that Vanderbilt was involved in the invention of the potato chip! (Potato Chips History

b. The Steamboat Association made a deal with Vanderbilt: they gave him $100,000, plus $5,000/year for ten years, if he would stay out of the Hudson River for the next ten years. He agreed, and the Association promptly raised the fare back to $3. Seeing what Vanderbilt has accomplished, at least five other steamboat operators moved in- until they, too, were bought off. Lane, Op. Cit., p.56-62.


As long as you continue to see all entrepreneurs as the crony capitalists, you will be wrong.




Of course, this was before the Sherman Antitrust Act....because, you know,only government can act in restraint of trade.

 

[PoliticalChic]

5. "...America to Thank for the Global Decline in Poverty?

Arthur Brooks thinks the world's poor were motivated to "throw off their chains of poverty" because they envied Americans."

[Read 'capitalism"....that, of course, is before Barack Obama and the Liberals/Democrats.]


....poverty, in which people live on less than $1 a day, has decreased by 80 percent since [Brook's] childhood.

And it wasn't the UN, World Bank, or foreign aid that was responsible for that decline, he argues. He believes there are five explanations, which he laid out for an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, organized by the Aspen Institute andThe Atlantic:


Globalization,

free trade,

property rights,

the rule of law,

and innovative entrepreneurship, ....."
Is America to Thank for the Global Decline in Poverty?



All based on American capitalism.

 

[danielpalos]

1. As we live in an 'Alice in Wonderland' world....let's begin at the end.
This man, Barack Obama, is a fool.

And so are any others who hate success, and fail to recognize capitalism as the single greatest advance in the economic history of the human race.


Guided by the proven false beliefs of Gracchus Babeuf’s Plebeian Manifesto, and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, Obama demands the right to take from the successful and give the spoils of said theft to those who can't or won't earn their own success....after government dips it's beak into said spoils.



2. "Marxism rested on the assumption that the condition of the working classes would grow ever worse under capitalism, that there would be but two classes: one small and rich, the other vast and increasingly impoverished, and revolution would be the anodyne that would result in the “common good.”

But by the early 20th century, it was clear that this assumption was completely wrong! Under capitalism, the standard of living of all was improving: prices falling, incomes rising, health and sanitation improving, lengthening of life spans, diets becoming more varied, the new jobs created in industry paid more than most could make in agriculture, housing improved, and middle class industrialists and business owners displaced nobility and gentry as heroes." From a speech by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, President, Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
Delivered at Hillsdale College, October 27, 2006




3. Obama: spread the wealth






4. Lest any are still deceived into believing that some iteration of goodness and charity are behind the versions of socialism, Marxism (communism), and its spin-off, Nazism, were foursquare behind coercion, oppression, andmass killings.....by bullets, by state-engineered famine, by working prisoners to death....death to millions upon millions.

Yet....we have Barack Obama and the Democrats.

The secret knowledge is that even the Soviet Communists found out early on that "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." (Karl Marx) was a flawed concept.

Human nature demands that one's work be rewarded commensurate with one's worth. And different individuals are worth differences in recompense.


a. Communist Russia acquiesced to this view as a result of the Stakhanovite Revolution...

"On the night of August 31, 1935, it was reported that Stakhanov had mined a record 102 tonnes of coal in less than six hours (14 times his quota). This sparked the so-called Stakhanovite movement, encouraging the rise of worker productivity."
Aleksey Stakhanov – Russiapedia History and mythology Prominent Russians


b. " Anxious to reward any individual achievements in production that might serve as stimulus to other workers, the Party launched the Stakhanovite movement.... Output above the norm was remunerated at higher rates of pay according to a progressive system. In this way, earnings reached dizzying heights. Some conference participants indicated what sort of consumer goods they would buy with their earnings. "
STAKHANOV – CELEBRITY OF SOVIET WORKING CLASS | Plotki


Guess what that's called? Right....capitalism.
Get it?
They ditched "economic equality" as a goal in favor of success.


Guess who never learned this lesson?

Who was the dunce who said "spread the wealth around"?

Dear, it is Perfection in Capital Management that is the Holy Grail.

 

[PoliticalChic]

6. "Brooks used the precipitous drop in poverty rates as a data point in his broader argument that work is one of the most important factors in generating happiness. And not just creative, fun work—any work, even Walmart jobs, he says. It doesn't matter if you make minimum wage or Brooks's own$645,000 salary—the important thing is experiencing "earned success," he explains, or "the belief that you're creating value with your life and that you're creating value in the lives of other people." Is America to Thank for the Global Decline in Poverty?





7. Let's look at the opposite doctrine....that of the fool/ideologue, Barack Obama: do away with the work requirement in the welfare bill:

"Obama kills welfare reform
Determined to destroy Bill Clinton’s signature achievement, President Obama’s administration has opened a loophole in the 1996 welfare reform legislation big enough to make the law ineffective. Its work requirement — the central feature of the legislation — has been diluted beyond recognition by the bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

On Thursday of last week, HHS issued regulations that modified — gutted — the work requirement. ... The regs say that “vocational educational training or jobsearch/readiness programs” “count as well” in meeting the basic condition that recipients work in order to receive welfare benefits." Obama kills welfare reform

 

[danielpalos]

6. "Brooks used the precipitous drop in poverty rates as a data point in his broader argument that work is one of the most important factors in generating happiness. And not just creative, fun work—any work, even Walmart jobs, he says. It doesn't matter if you make minimum wage or Brooks's own$645,000 salary—the important thing is experiencing "earned success," he explains, or "the belief that you're creating value with your life and that you're creating value in the lives of other people." Is America to Thank for the Global Decline in Poverty?





7. Let's look at the opposite doctrine....that of the fool/ideologue, Barack Obama: do away with the work requirement in the welfare bill:

"Obama kills welfare reform
Determined to destroy Bill Clinton’s signature achievement, President Obama’s administration has opened a loophole in the 1996 welfare reform legislation big enough to make the law ineffective. Its work requirement — the central feature of the legislation — has been diluted beyond recognition by the bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

On Thursday of last week, HHS issued regulations that modified — gutted — the work requirement. ... The regs say that “vocational educational training or jobsearch/readiness programs” “count as well” in meeting the basic condition that recipients work in order to receive welfare benefits." Obama kills welfare reform

Clinton had the lowest unemployment in thirty years during that time period; it should Only be effective during the conditions that created it manifest themselves in our economy.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Liberal, anti-capitalist policies destroy the American character. That aim goes back to the earliest time of the Progressive era:

Socialist John Dewey, the man who changed the name of the Socialist Party to "Liberals," reveled in his writings, that the war might force Americans to “give up much of our economic freedom…we shall have to lay by our good-natured individualism and march in step.”

The opposite is dependency.




8. " The opposite of "earned success," [Brooks] said, is "learned helplessness." Getting something for nothing makes you "despondent and depressed." ...

"Free enterprise does that for everyone," he added. "That's the story of earned success. That's the story of helping people avoid their learned helplessness." Is America to Thank for the Global Decline in Poverty?

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly"
Thomas Paine





9. ‘Welfare’ as a wholly owned subsidiary of the government, and its main result is the incentivizing of a disrespect for oneself, and for the entity that provides the welfare. As more folks in a poor neighborhood languish with little or no work, entire local culture begins to change: daily work is no longer the expected social norm. Extended periods of hanging around the neighborhood, neither working nor going to school becoming more and more socially acceptable.


a. Since productive activity not making any economic sense because of the work disincentives of the welfare plantation, other kinds of activities proliferate: drug and alcohol abuse, crime, recreational sex, illegitimacy, and family breakup are the new social norms, as does the culture of violence.



b. "The lessons of history … show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

These searing words about Depression-era welfare are from Franklin Roosevelt's 1935 State of the Union Address.

 

[Indeependent]

Pure, unregulated Capitalism, as in the Industrial Revolution and modern day Supply Side Economics have resulted in dehumanization of those who don't have the best contract.
To state that one would rather live in poverty than die of starvation is an indictment of one's morality.
Capitalism is as old as mankind and continues to serves it's wonderful purpose.
Business deals that create slave labor should not be one of it's goals.

 

[PoliticalChic]

10. The lessons of history are clear: in the last century, the doctrines of communism, Liberalism, socialism, Progressivism, bear responsibility for the deaths of over 100 million human being.




But "....the percentage of the world’s population living at starvation levels has declined by 80 percent! At least 2 billion people have been pulled out of absolute poverty.
It was not progressive para-state entities such as the United Nations that did this; it was American conservative ideas that spread around the world, such as globalization, free trade, property rights, rule of law, and entrepreneurship.




Conservatives .... ideas have radically improved the lives of millions of poor people around the world. Yet here at home, we aren’t trusted to fight for poor and struggling Americans. Part of the problem is what others say about us, but let’s be honest — we have done a terrible job telling people about what free enterprise has truly accomplished. The rapid reduction of poverty driven by conservative values is among the greatest achievements in the history of mankind, but conservatives often treat it as some kind of state secret."
Arthur Brooks's Conservative Heart | National Review Online

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Pure, unregulated Capitalism, as in the Industrial Revolution and modern day Supply Side Economics have resulted in dehumanization of those who don't have the best contract.

The pure beauty of capitalism is that it forces a business to provide the best jobs, products and contracts in the entire world just to survive. This is why most Americans are paid enough to own, for example, the latest Iphone smart phone toys at $140/month when they couldn't in a million years make one themselves.

 

[jasonnfree]

Pure, unregulated Capitalism, as in the Industrial Revolution and modern day Supply Side Economics have resulted in dehumanization of those who don't have the best contract.

The pure beauty of capitalism is that it forces a business to provide the best jobs, products and contracts in the entire world just to survive. This is why most Americans are paid enough to own, for example, the latest Iphone smart phone toys at $140/month when they couldn't in a million years make one themselves.

Unfettered capitalism and the industrial revolution led to nightmarish working conditions and poverty for all, especially children. Dickens became wealthy writing about povery in England at the time. Jacob Riis has some pretty damning pictures of the horrible living conditions in this country at the time. Even slavery in this country was fixing to go out of business till the invention of the cotton gin. We need a government to regulate the industrialists and capitalists, that's for sure.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Unfettered capitalism and the industrial revolution led to nightmarish working conditions and poverty for all.

of course that's liberal, very stupid, and backwards. People would have stayed on their farms if the jobs they took make them poorer. A child could have figured that out, just not a liberal.

 

[jasonnfree]

Unfettered capitalism and the industrial revolution led to nightmarish working conditions and poverty for all.

of course that's liberal, very stupid, and backwards. People would have stayed on their farms if the jobs they took make them poorer. A child could have figured that out, just not a liberal.

Well, I'm leading you to the water but you don't want to drink, it looks like.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Unfettered capitalism and the industrial revolution led to nightmarish working conditions and poverty for all.

of course that's liberal, very stupid, and backwards. People would have stayed on their farms if the jobs they took make them poorer. A child could have figured that out, just not a liberal.

Well, I'm leading you to the water but you don't want to drink, it looks like.

translation: as a stupid liberal I lack the IQ to respond substantively