Criminalizing Capitalism

by Jim Robinson

Americans seem to have a love-hate relationship with capitalism. We love it when we personally benefit. We hate it when our investments don't work out as we hoped. When they don't work out it must be because somebody cheated.

When we personally operate according to the profit motive -- start a new business, invest in a hot stock or property, leave one job for a big raise in another job, sell our car or house at the highest possible profit -- all that's okay. It's right and proper and moral. When others do it -- especially wealthy people -- we call it greed.

There was surely wrongdoing at Enron, criminal wrongdoing. It would be wrong to make the same assumption every time a company goes south, an economy turns down, or a market goes sour.

Comments

[James]

Less than 1% of university graduates have participated in any serious schooling in economics. Econ majors are few at graduation. In this nation that has spawned free enterprise in a way that is stamped purely American; teaching economics with an open mind to actually educate students is almost unheard of at the secondary level. It is no wonder that Obama and Clinton gain traction with their anti-American, anti-capitalist nostrums. They decry profit, and yet, it is they who personally profit through beggaring for political contributions. There is a jail cell for a private citizen who would profit in a similar manner. Their ideas are bad, and their example is destructive to our nation.