"Wealth,
when you get right down to it, is not the
cause of poverty." -- Mitchell B.
Pearlstein, paraphrasing George Gilder
"Ultimately it is only wealth that can
reduce poverty." --
Thomas Sowell
"If we want the
whole world to be rich, we need to start
loving wealth. In the difference
between poverty and plenty, the
problem is the poverty and not the
difference. Wealth is good. ...
wealth is not a world-wide round-robin
of purse snatching, and ... the thing
that makes you rich doesn't make me
poor. ... Without Productivity,
there wouldn't be any economics, or
any economic thinking, good or bad, or
any pizza, or anything else. We
would sit around and stare at rocks,
and maybe later have some for dinner.
... Wealth is based on productivity,
and productivity is expandable.
In fact, productivity is fabulously
expandable."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
(Again)
"Wealth
is
based on productivity, and
productivity is
expandable. In fact,
productivity is fabulously
expandable." --
P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
"of the vast
increase in the well-being of
hundreds of millions of people
that has occurred in the
200-year course of the
industrial revolution to date,
virtually none of it can be
attributed to the direct
redistribution of resources from
rich to poor. The
potential for improving the
lives of poor people by
finding different ways of
distributing current
production is nothing compared
to the apparently limitless
potential of increasing
production." --Robert Lucas
|
| "...evidence
abounds that the fundamental
cause of Third World poverty is
not First World greed ... it is
the economic, political and
social obstacles
that developing nations
themselves raise to progress by
their aspiring poor." -- Katherine
Kersten in the Minnesota Star Tribune,March
20,
1996
"The trade
barriers at the borders of
the rich world may have
disappeared, but if [a
banana picker in the Central
African Republic] wants to
sell his bananas abroad he
first has to get them onto a
ship bound for America or
Europe. That takes 116 days,
and an incredible 38
signatures -- each one an
opportunity for some
official to collect a
bribe." -- Tim Harford,
The New York Times
"Despite
the head-shaking of the foes of
free trade, it does seem that
the ability to actually sell
one's stuff would constitute an
immediate improvement in one's
economic prospects." -- David M. Brown
|
| "When government
will expropriate any wealth that
people create, the present value
of future output can actually be
less than the value of the
country's tangible resources. The
power of predatory government to
destroy wealth is truly awesome."
-- Arnold Kling |
| THE
JUSTICE OF INCOME
INEQUALITY UNDER
CAPITALISM |
"Look around: It
just isn't true that countries get rich
at each other's expense.Would America be better off
now if Europe and Japan had stayed
poor after 1945? Did its jobs migrate,
its economy stagnate, leaving rising
poverty and chronic unemployment? Not
exactly: America thrived. One of the
things that helped it after 1945 was
expanding opportunities for trade with
other rich countries. Americans would
be worse off today if Europe and Japan
had stayed poor. What's changed? Why
isn't this still true? In my view:
Nothing; it's still true. The faster
India grows, the better off every
other country will be... I do not regard
the prospect of global capitalism as
'harrowing.' I regard it as the
best opportunity for relieving human
misery the world has ever seen." -- Clive
Crook, deputy editor of The
Economist,in
the February 25th, 1997 issue of Slate, in
a letter to John Judis
"I
observed the talks and was shocked
not only by the riotous atmosphere,
but also by the protesters'
misconceptions about trade, the WTO
and the developing world. As an
Indian national, I
know only too well how lack of
trade, investment and freedom
keeps the world's developing
nations in a state of perpetual
poverty and environmental
degradation. Sadly,
the largely middle-class Americans
who trashed Seattle last week had
little if any comprehension of this
fact." --
Barun
Mitra, in a column in the Wall
Street
Journal 12-9-99.
Mitra
heads the The Liberty Institute,
in New Delhi, India
"The
'progressive' Left, even while
wailing about international poverty,
has long decried the Westernization
of the 'developing
world', the polite term for societies kept poor
by socialist governments."
-- from The Free Market
Means Civilization
by
Lew Rockwell, President of the Ludwig
von Mises Institute, originally
published in Spintechmag.com,12-22-2000.
"Fortunately, political freedom and
economic progress are natural
partners. Despite capitalism's
lingering reputation as the source
of all the world's evils, the fact
remains that every single democracy
is a capitalist country. Half
a century of economic
experimentation proved beyond doubt
that tyranny cannot yield
prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed
because it is a policy of
unrestrained intervention. It
tries to fix what is 'wrong' with
the spontaneous, self-organizing
phenomenon called capitalism.
But, of course, a natural process
cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism
is an ideology. Capitalism is a
natural phenomenon."
-- Michael
Rothschild
in BIONOMICS: Economy as
Ecosystem
"Capitalism
is not an 'ism.' It is closer to
being the opposite of an 'ism,'
because it is simply the freedom of
ordinary people to make whatever
economic transactions they can
mutually agree to." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
"Not understanding the process
of a spontaneously-ordered
economy goes hand-in-hand with not
understanding the creation of resources
and wealth." -- Julian Simon
"The market is not
an invention of capitalism. It
has existed for centuries. It
is an invention of civilization." -- Mikhail
Gorbachev,
June 8, 1990
"How a conflict-ridden, grossly
over-populated place with no resources
whatsoever gets rich is simple. The
British colonial government turned Hong
Kong into an economic miracle by doing
nothing." -- P.J.
O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
"In
terms of natural resources, Africa is
the world's richest continent. It has
50 percent of the world's gold, most
of the world's diamonds and chromium,
90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent
of the world's potential hydroelectric
power, 65 percent of the manganese,
millions of acres of untilled farmland
as well as other natural
resources. Despite the natural
wealth, Africa is home to the world's
most impoverished and abused people.
Of the 41 black African nations, only
three (Senegal, Botswana and
Mauritius) allow their people the
right to vote and choose their own
leaders. Only two (Botswana and
Senegal) permit freedom of expression
and criticism of government policies.
In countries like Uganda, Rwanda,
Burundi, Mozambique, Sudan, Chad and
others, ethnic genocide has taken the
lives of untold millions of innocent
victims. Slavery is still practiced in
the Sudan and Mauritania." -- Dr. Walter E. Williams
"Another current
catch-phrase is the complaint that the
nations of the world are divided into
'haves' and the 'have-nots.'
Observe that the 'haves' are those who
have freedom, and that it is freedom
that the 'have-nots' have not."
-- Ayn
Rand
"What transformed the world
of horse-drawn carriages, sailing
ships, and windmills step by step
into a world of airplanes and
electronics was the laissez-faire
principle." -- Ludwig von Mises in The Ultimate
Foundation of Economic Science
"Capitalism
is not just a system for producing
wealth. It is, above all else, a system
based on the noblest moral principle:
the protection of the individual's right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. Free markets are founded on
the individual's right to pursue a
career, trade the products of his
effort, and enjoy the wealth he has
earned without having to seek permission
from others or pay ransom for the
privilege of living." --Robert W. Tracinski
"For years, statist
development experts had sought
top-down solutions, operating under
the implicit assumption that poor
people in the Third World were largely
incapable of entrepreneurship. De Soto
utterly rejected that patronizing
viewpoint, and, beginning in his
native Peru, focused on the lack of
formal property rights as the source
of poverty in poor countries." --Gene
Healy
"The poor of India
are far better off than they would have
been if India’s economic liberalisation
had not taken place, and there are far
less of them than there would have been.
This is not because they have died of
starvation, but because of ... 'the
explosive growth of the middle class'.
Free markets aren’t magic, and past
inequities don’t disappear as soon as
the economy is opened up, but they are
better than any alternative. ... One of
the most pernicious myths of the last
two centuries is of the unequal gains
from capitalism. A landmark study titled
'Growth Is Good for the Poor', by David
Dollar and Aart Kraay, surveys available
economic information from 137 countries,
over four decades, and demolishes the
myth of the 'trickle-down effect'. In an
open economy, wealth does not trickle
down gradually from the rich to the poor
simultaneously. Instead, 'incomes of the
poor rise proportionately with average
incomes'. Read the full report..." -- Amit Varma
"Socialism is
an ideology. Capitalism is a natural
phenomenon." -- Michael
Rothschild
"Any stray mediocrity
rushes into print with plans to control
the production of mankind -- and ... no
one questions his right to enforce his
plans by means of a gun."
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"Cuba's poverty is
caused by the crackpot Marxist doctrines
imposed by its sociopathic ruler and
promoted by half the liberal arts professors
on American faculties." -- David
Horowitz
.
"Bad and
discredited ideas, it seems, never
die. Neither do they fade
away. Instead, they keep turning
up, like bad pennies or Godzilla in
the old Japanese movies."
-- Murray
N. Rothbard
.
"One
of the most important reasons for
studying history is that virtually
every stupid idea that is in vogue
today has been tried before and
proved disastrous before, time and
again." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
.
"There is no error so
monstrous that it fails to find defenders
among the ablest men." -- Prof. John E. E.
D. Acton
.
"The study of history is a
powerful antidote to contemporary
arrogance. It is humbling to discover how
many of our glib assumptions, which seem
to us noble and plausible, have been
tested before, not once but many times and
in innumerable guises; and discovered to
be, at great human cost, wholly false."
-- Celebrated Historian Paul Johnson
.
"Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it." ~ George
Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1906
.
"When Western countries
in the past were as poor as Third World
countries are today, these Western
countries nevertheless had one big
advantage: There was no large and influential
class of the intelligentsia to
impede their progress with
unsubstantiated theories and
counterproductive propaganda." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
"Incessant
preoccupation with statistical
disparities is one of the luxuries of
an affluent and sheltered life.
Do not expect someone who has ever had
to go hungry to get upset because some
people can only afford pizza while
others can afford caviar." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell (who began life hungry)
.
"It is no crime to be
ignorant of economics,
which is, after all, a specialized
discipline and one that most people consider
to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally
irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous
opinion on economic subjects while remaining
in this state of ignorance."-- Murray
N. Rothbard
.
"Our supplies of natural
resources are not finite in any economic
sense. Nor does past experience give reason
to expect natural resources to become more
scarce. Rather, if history is any guide,
natural resources will progressively become
less costly, hence less scarce, and will
constitute a smaller proportion of our
expenses in future years." -- Julian Simon
.
"It is your mind that matters
economically, as much or more than your
mouth or hands. In the long run, the most
important economic effect of population size
and growth is the contribution of additional
people to our stock of useful knowledge. And
this contribution is large enough in the
long run to overcome all the costs of
population growth." -- Julian Simon
.
"Wealth
may provoke envy, but it seldom
provokes the truly venomous levels of
resentment provoked by achievement.
There is no surer way for a minority
group to become hated than to enter a
country as destitute immigrants and
then, through long hours of hard work,
rise to a level of prosperity above
that of the indigenous population."
-- Dr. Thomas Sowell
.
"Those who say that all cultures are
equal never explain why the results of
those cultures are so grossly
unequal." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
"Arnold writes:
'If you think that culture matters
but institutions do not, look at
North and South Korea. If you
think that culture does not matter
at all, look at differences among
different ethnic groups within
countries.'
"South Korea/North
Korea per capita income ratio: 14.[14 to 1] (Source:
CIA World Factbook)
"American
Asian/American black average
household income ratio: 1.9.[1.9 to 1] (Source:
U.S. Census)
"From a global
standpoint, it sure looks like
economic policy (a term I prefer to
the vague 'institutions') matters a
lot more than culture." -- Bryan Caplan
See:
"where the mainstream development
economists' writings drip with
condescension for the apparently
helpless poor, Bauer's words glow
with good will and respect. The
inhabitants of the developing world
are people, he reminded us. They
need freedom too." HERE.
-
"The idea that foreign aid is a route out of
poverty and political instability is not only
bankrupted but a cruel and evil hoax as well."
-- Dr. Walter E. Williams
"Foreign aid might be
defined as a transfer from poor people in
rich countries to rich people in poor
countries." -- Douglas Casey
| "If concern for human poverty
and suffering were one's primary
motive, one would seek to
discover their cause. One
would not fail to ask : Why did
some nations develop, while
others did not? Why have
some nations achieved material
abundance, while others have
remained stagnant in sub-human
misery? History and specifically
the unprecedented
prosperity-explosion of the 19th
century would give an immediate
answer : capitalism is the only
system that enables men to
produce abundance - and the key
to capitalism is individual
freedom." -- Ayn Rand, "Requiem for
Man", Chapter 24 of Capitalism: The
Unknown Ideal |
| "The benefits of securing the
freedom to create wealth are
significant -- especially for the
poor. 'In nations in the top fifth
of economic freedom, the average
income of the poorest 10 percent of
the population was $6,877 compared
to just $823 in the least free
nations,' according to the 2004
Economic Freedom Report,
which ranks 123 countries on such
policies as taxation, property-rights
protection, and freedom to trade
internationally. The report also shows
that poor countries that embrace
economic freedom accumulate
wealth faster: From 1980 to 2000
poor countries whose economies were
relatively free of government
interference had economic growth rates
of 5.2 percent per year, compared to
3.4 percent for all economically free
countries." -- Gabriel Gasave |
http://freedomkeys.com/gap.htm
"Western civilization was the child and
product of reason -- via ancient Greece.
In all other civilizations, reason has always
been the menial servant -- the handmaiden --
of mysticism. You may observe the
results. It is only Western culture that
has ever been dominated -- imperfectly,
incompletely, precariously and at rare
intervals -- but still, dominated by
reason. You may observe the results of
that." -- Ayn Rand
.
"Today, in the Twenty-First
Century, an age of jet aircraft, personal
computers, wireless telecommunications, laser
surgery, and incipient space travel, the
mentality with which many presumably educated,
intelligent people approach matters of
economics and business is, however astonishing
it may seem, still that of the Dark Ages."-- George Reisman
.
"Most Americans living below the
official poverty line have air conditioning,
microwaves and VCRs. About half have a car or
truck. Moreover, most of the people in the
bottom 20 percent of the income distribution
in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent
at some point since then. ... People who are
genuinely poor all their lives still exist,
but only about 3 percent of the American
population remains in the bottom 20 percent
for as long as a decade." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
.
"Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered
economy goes hand-in-hand with not
understanding the creation of resources and
wealth." -- Julian Simon
.
"America's abundance was not
created by public sacrifices to the common
good, but by the productive genius of free men
who pursued their own personal interests and
the making of their own private fortunes." --
Ayn Rand
"Scratch the surface of an
endemic problem -- famine, illness, poverty
-- and you invariably find a politician at
the source."-- Simon Carr, in his
review of The Mystery of Capital
by Hernando de Soto
"You can bet the rent money
that whatever politicians do will end up
harming consumers. ... Economic
ignorance is to politicians what idle
hands are to the devil. Both
provide the workshop for the creation of
evil." -- Walter E. Williams
.
"From the fact that people are
very different it follows that, if we treat
them equally, the result must be inequality in
their actual position, and that the only way
to place them in an equal position would be to
treat them differently. Equality before
the law and material equality are therefore
not only different but are in conflict with
each other; and we can achieve either one or
the other, but not both at the same time." --
F. A. Hayek
.
"If
welfare and equality are to be primary
aims of law, some people must
necessarily possess a greater power of
coercion in order to force
redistribution of material goods.
Political power alone should be equal
among human beings; yet, striving for
other kinds of equality absolutely
requires political inequality."
-- Tibor
R. Machan in Private
Rights
and Public Illusions
.
"There is all the difference in
the world between treating people equally and
attempting to make them equal." -- F.A. Hayek
"Here is
a truism about the wealth of nations:
Zero-sum games do not increase it.
Historically, the welfare of the poor
always--always--depends on putting
people in a position where their best
shot at prosperity is to find a way of
making other people better off. The
key to long-run welfare never has been
and never will be a matter of making
sure the game’s best players lose." --
David Schmidtz
.
"...the
question becomes, are you going to have
everyone play by the same rules, or are
you going to try to rectify the
shortcomings, errors and failures of the
entire cosmos? Because those things are
wholly incompatible. If you're going to
have people play by the same rules, that
can be enforced with a minimum amount of
interference with people's freedom. But if
you're going to try to make the entire
cosmos right and just, somebody has got to
have an awful lot of power to impose what
they think is right on an awful lot of
other people. What we've seen,
particularly in the 20th century, is that
putting that much power in anyone's hands
is enormously dangerous." -- Thomas
Sowell, in an interview in Salon11-10-99
.
"The idea that 'the public
interest' supersedes private interests and
rights can have but one meaning: that the
interests and rights of some individuals take
precedence over the interests and rights of
others." -- Ayn Rand
.
"So many
idealistic political movements for a
better world have ended in
mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving
leaders enough power to create 'social
justice' is giving them enough power to
destroy all justice, all freedom, and
all human dignity." -- Thomas Sowell
.
"Anything other than free
enterprise always means a society of
compulsion and lower living standards,
and any form of socialism strictly
enforced means dictatorship and the
total state. That this statement
is still widely disputed only
illustrates the degree to which
malignant fantasy can capture the
imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew Rockwell
.
"I consider socialism an
obscene ideology, doomed to end in either
total self destruction or total
dictatorship." -- Pamela Hemelrijk, Leiden,
Holland, April 3, 2004.04.16
"All socialism involves
slavery." -- Herbert Spencer
"Many Western journalists, in
contrast to revolutionaries, do not treat
ideas seriously, and therefore fail to
recognize the power of ideas in action. They
don't realize that chaos and brutality must
accompany a determined effort to implement
... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof.
Morgan
O. Reynolds
.
"There is no error so monstrous that
it fails to find defenders among the ablest
men." -- Prof. John E. E. D. Acton
.
"The secret
dread of modern intellectuals, liberals
and conservatives alike, the unadmitted
terror at the root of their anxiety, which
all of their current irrationalities are
intended to stave off and to disguise, is
the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia
[was] the full, actual, literal,
consistent embodiment of the morality of
altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a
noble ideal, that this [total control of
all human activity and the brutalizing and
murder of millions of citizens] is the
only way altruism has to be or can ever be
practiced." -- Ayn
Rand
.
"The Nazis are well remembered
for murdering well over 11 million people
in the implementation of their slogan, 'The
public good before the private good,'
the Chinese Communists for murdering 62
million people in the implementation of
theirs, 'Serve the people,' and
the Soviet Communists for murdering more
than 60 million people in the
implementation of Karl Marx's slogan, 'from
each according to his ability, to each
according to his need.' " -- Rick
Gaber
"No amount of IMF, World Bank
and other handout interventions can bring
prosperity to repressive nations." -- Walter
Williams, here
.
"Scratch the surface of an
endemic problem -- famine, illness, poverty
-- and you invariably find a politician at
the source."-- Simon Carr, in his
review of The Mystery of Capital
by Hernando de Soto
"You can bet the rent money
that whatever politicians do will end up
harming consumers. ... Economic
ignorance is to politicians what idle
hands are to the devil. Both
provide the workshop for the creation of
evil." -- Walter E. Williams
.
"When will
the world wake up and realize that most
politicians, especially in the poorest
countries of the world, are nothing more
than glorified gangsters who view
government as simply a fiercely-guarded
monopoly on every form of compulsion and
extortion to be perpetrated in a
specific geographical area? Why do
you think the largest amounts of
'foreign aid' extracted from the
gullible diplomats of wealthier
countries wind up in those politicians'
pockets or Swiss bank accounts, despite
all the virtuous-sounding rhetoric?" -- Bert
Rand
.
"How
a peaceful, uncrowded place with ample
wherewithal stays poor is hard to
explain. How a conflict-ridden, grossly
over-populated place with no resources
whatsoever gets rich is simple. The
British colonial government turned Hong
Kong into an economic miracle by doing
nothing."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
.
"This
government never furthered any
enterprise but by the alacrity with
which it got out of its way."
-- Henry
David Thoreau in his essay, "Civil
Disobedience"
.
"I
own I am not a friend to a very
energetic government. It is always
oppressive." -- Thomas
Jefferson to James Madison, 12/20/1787
.
"The
trick, of course, is that doing
nothing in the public policy world
allows much more to be done in the
real world." -- Thomas
Hazlett in the March, 1997 issue of Reason
.
"Government does not
cause affluence. Citizens of
totalitarian countries have plenty of
government and nothing of anything
else." -- P.J. O’Rourke
.
"The
only justifiable purpose of political
institutions is to assure the
unhindered development of the
individual." -- Albert
Einstein
.
"One
of the sad signs of our times is that
we have demonized those who produce,
subsidized those who refuse to
produce, and canonized those who
complain." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
.
"Many
Western
journalists, in contrast to
revolutionaries, do not treat ideas
seriously, and therefore fail to recognize
the power of ideas in action. They don't
realize that chaos and brutality must
accompany a determined effort to implement
... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof. Morgan O. Reynolds
"No 'middle class' worth the name aspires to
economic benefits without bothering to acquire
the skills to produce the wealth to make those
benefits sustainable." -- Holman Jenkins
.
"To embrace a collectivist
system ... and thereby jeopardize
sustained economic growth, inevitably
misallocate scarce resources, and almost
necessarily perpetuate destitution,
hardly merits moral acclaim. Indeed,
intellectuals in general and church
leaders in particular who bewail the
continued existence of poverty
absolutely defined, and who state that
they yearn for a world in which the
hungry are fed, the naked clothed, and
the destitute housed, yet who
ceaselessly undermine the very system
which, to date, has best done what they
claim to value most, are, surely, moral
imbeciles." -- The Reverend
Doctor John K. Williams
"Capitalism
is
not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the
opposite of an 'ism,' because it is
simply the freedom of ordinary people to
make whatever economic transactions they
can mutually agree to." -- Dr.Thomas Sowell
"Socialism in
general has a record of failure so
blatant that only an intellectual
could ignore or evade it." --
Thomas
Sowell
"Anything other than free
enterprise always means a society of
compulsion and lower living standards, and
any form of socialism strictly enforced
means dictatorship and the total
state. That this statement is still
widely disputed only illustrates the
degree to which malignant fantasy can
capture the imagination of intellectuals."
-- Lew Rockwell
|
