How Capitalism Will Save Us

by Katie Wilson

On Forbes a snip from Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames new book:

Antibusiness bias has long been rampant at our top universities, where Marx occupies iconic stature, where free-market thinkers are seldom taught--and where careers in nonprofit sectors like academia or the arts are widely regarded as morally superior to those in "money-grubbing" private industry...Capitalism's bad Rap has helped to shape a lot of bad economic policy. People who believe it look to government to "create jobs," whereas the most powerful job-creating machine has always been the private sector. They believe that the best way to generate more revenues for government is through raising taxes on the so-called rich and on "profit-hungry" corporations. Yet history shows, time and again, that punishing the entrepreneurs and businesses that create jobs and capital is a sure route to economic devastation, while lowering taxes--not with one-shot reductions that politicians like, but by substantially cutting rates--is always the best economic stimulus.

...Free-market economic reforms--especially since the fall of the Berlin wall--have brought an unprecedented explosion of wealth to India, China, Brazil, and nations in central and eastern Europe as well as in Latin America and Africa. Capitalism has helped to usher in an era of wealth and economic growth that failed foreign-aid programs since World War II were never able to accomplish. In China, for example, over two hundred million people now have discretionary income. The country has a burgeoning middle class. The current recession should be seen historically as an interruption, not an end, of this extraordinary economic expansion.

Along with bringing prosperity to millions, democratic capitalism has undermined political tyranny and promoted democracy and peace between nations of the world. It is, without doubt, the world's most moral system.