Is Socialism Better Than Capitalism?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns socialism versus capitalism. When New York City voters elected Zohran Mamdani, they elected a socialist and joined other people who believe what John Stossel calls “absurd myths” about socialism. He wrote, “College students prefer socialism to capitalism … Because they believe absurd myths -- like the claim that the Soviet Union wasn’t real socialism.” 

Why do they believe such myths? Because professors are feeding them myths instead of teaching them knowledge. Socialism guru Noam Chomsky “says the Soviet Union ‘was about as remote from socialism as you could imagine.’” Well, the Soviet Union did the same thing that Mamdani is threatening to do in New York City: make “private business illegal.” Stossel continued his article:

“Socialism means abolishing private property and … replacing it with some form of collective ownership,” explains economist Ben Powell. “The Soviet Union had an abundance of that.”

Socialism always fails. Look at Venezuela, the richest country in Latin America about 40 years ago. Now people there face food shortages, poverty, misery and election outcomes the regime ignores.

But Al Jazeera claims Venezuela’s failure has “little to do with socialism, and a lot to do with poor governance … economic policies have failed to adjust to reality.”

“That’s the nature of socialism!” exclaims Powell. “Economic policies fail to adjust to reality. Economic reality evolves every day. Millions of decentralized entrepreneurs and consumers make fine tuning adjustments.”

Another myth fed to the gullible is that socialism works in the Scandinavian countries. Stossel quoted “Mad Money’s” Jim Cramer as calling Norway “as socialist as they come!”

I know for myself that this is not true because I visited Norway, and the tour guide said that it is not socialist. He added that the government does what it does for its citizens because Norway has a lot of oil that they use for the benefit of the citizenry. He also said that Norway taxes its citizens at 50% to pay for the “free” college. Stossel debunked this myth also.

“Sweden isn’t socialist,” says Powell. “Volvo is a private company. Restaurants, hotels, they’re privately owned.”

Norway, Denmark and Sweden are all free market economies.

Denmark’s former prime minister was so annoyed with economically ignorant Americans like Bernie Sanders calling Scandinavia “socialist,” he came to America to tell Harvard students that his country “is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”

Powell says young people “hear the preaching of socialism, about equality, but they don’t look on what it actually delivers: poverty, starvation, early death.”

For thousands of years, the world had almost no wealth creation. Then, some countries tried capitalism. That changed everything.

“In the last 20 years, we’ve seen more humans escape extreme poverty than any other time in human history, and that’s because of markets,” says Powell.

Capitalism makes poor people richer.

Still another myth being taught to gullible people is that there is a “fixed amount” of wealth in the world. They think that “when someone gets rich, others” get poorer. That is not true. “In a free market, the only way entrepreneurs can get rich is by creating new wealth.”

[Wealth is not like a pie: If someone gets a bigger slice, other people get smaller slices. Creating wealth is like making a bigger pie and giving a bigger slice to everyone.]

Yes, Steve Jobs pocketed billions, but by creating Apple, he gave the rest of us even more. He invented technology that makes all of us better off.

“I hope that we get 100 new super billionaires,” says economist Dan Mitchell, “because that means 100 new people figured out ways to make the rest of our lives better off.” …

… under capitalism, the poor and middle class get richer, too.

“The economic pie grows,” says Mitchell. “We are much richer than our grandparents.”

When the media says the “middle class is in decline,” they’re technically right, but they don’t understand why it’s shrinking.

“It’s shrinking because more and more people are moving into upper income quintiles,” says Mitchell. “The rich get richer in a capitalist society. But guess what? The rest of us get richer as well.”

How Can Americans Create Better Education Systems?

In an article published at the Deseret News, Gitanjali Poonia discussed remarks made by Representative Burgess Owens (R-Utah). She summarized Owens as saying that meritocracy and the free market are important in creating better education systems in the United States. Owens stressed this idea while speaking to students at the University of Utah at the Hinckley Institute of Politics as part of the Sutherland Institute’s 2024 Congressional Series. He also claimed that American can gain respite from the partisan climate of today by bringing back American values. 

“Utah is very, very unique,” Owens said. The state’s young residents who serve missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints come back not just with knowledge of different cultures, but also an appreciation for their country, Owens said.

The Beehive State also embodies a culture of compassion and hard work, he said, noting the state’s status as one with the highest number of entrepreneurs.

His work on the House Education and Workforce Committee focuses on making sure the next generation is “capable of generating businesses here and supporting businesses here,” Owens said. “We don’t want to export our kids. We want our kids to grow and stay with us here.”

“We have the kind of educational system that allows our kids to choose and pick, whether it be higher ed, (or) a high-tech career. We have all those options here, and that choice is very important. We’re going to continue to be better at that,” Owens said. While there’s room for improvement, Utah gets a lot right and can serve as a model for the rest of the country, he added….

Regardless of whether a school is private or public, if it fails to teach children, “it needs to be out of business,” said Owens. According to him, the free market should be given a chance to weed out educational institutions that can’t teach children successfully.

Owens discussed the lack of success in U.S. schools over recent years: “one in three Black students in California’s public schools passed the standardized test for English, and only one in five achieved grade level in math” in 2017. If that was not bad enough, “Among 13 of the public high schools in Baltimore, Maryland, not one student scored a proficient score in math last year,” according to Owens. Now, students across the nation are showing learning loss in their test scores due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Owens.

Despite strong support for school choice among parents of color, Owens said, Democrats have time and again voted against allowing parents to pick the educational institution right for their child.

His Educational Choice for Children Act would give parents more autonomy over their children’s schooling. The bill would create scholarships for students in K-12 to pay for tutoring, special needs services, homeschooling curriculum materials, education technology, and other educational needs. Individuals and businesses would receive tax credits for contributing to the scholarships, and a school district’s funding would remain untouched.

The House Education and Workforce Committee has also proposed the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which would affirm parents’ right to know what goes on at school, whether it’s the curriculum, the school’s budget or a violent incident.

“We want to protect our children. We want to be heard as parents,” Owens said.

Owens is interested in education beyond the K-12 years and said that “parents need to consider their return on investment in four-year colleges that cost tens of thousands of dollars.” He also hit the cost of college graduation and that students should not be graduating with debt. Instead, colleges should be held accountable for offering degrees that mean nothing.

Owens discussed the College Cost Reduction Act, which he cosponsored and which would “double the maximum Pell Grant awards juniors and seniors can receive.”

According to the American Council on Education, a higher education association, it would also “prevent interest from capitalizing on student loans, simplify the student loan repayment process, and require students to only pay back what they would have owed on a 10-year standard repayment plan.” Owens said this bill would help level the playing field.

Owens discussed how the Black family unit has crumbled since he was a child and that “he worries family values are deteriorating among all young people.” He likened his early years to what is happening today, “I was so proud to be a Black American, so proud of America, and so excited about going out to prove myself, because that’s what our parents were teaching us.”

What Makes You Happy?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the free-market system that we enjoy here in the United States. Carlos Garcia posted an article at The Blaze sharing several blessings that we enjoy because of the free market. 

However, you define the happiness you seek in life, I can almost guarantee you that the free market has made it easier for you to obtain and enjoy happiness.

Obviously, nearly everything that you can buy has become better and cheaper over the last decades. Fantastic inventions that people couldn’t even imagine a hundred years ago so commonplace that we take them for granted…..

The miracle of fracking has made energy far less expensive. This incredible process has allowed humanity to extract far more gasoline from the earth than we used to believe even existed. In fact, all of those predictions that we would run out of oil in this century were obliterated by this one incredible operation.

The miracle of modern fertilizers allowed humanity to grow more produce per square inch than anyone could possibly have imagined before their invention. In fact, humanity was crashing against its farm-space limitations before that miraculous invention changed everything.

The incredible invention of anti-bacterial soap absolutely revolutionized medical efficacy. Soap has made our lives safer, good health cheaper, and medical care astoundingly better. Why aren’t we thanking God every day for soap? Because we take this miraculously commonplace advancement for granted….

Even considering things are more expensive than they were last year or the past two years, the free market has made them available to us when in past years, only wealthy people could afford them.

Garcia reminded his readers that there are some things that the free market cannot provide, blessings that bring us the most happiness. These blessings include “our families, our communities, our faiths, and all of those intangible things that you can’t buy.”

Thanksgiving is a great day to express gratitude for blessings, and gratitude brings additional happiness. Maybe gratitude should be part of every day.

Free-Market Economy

                    The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the importance of our free-market economy.  This principle tells us that we can obtain the highest level of prosperity with a free-market economy, a minimum of government regulations, and a climate that encourages economic freedom.

                    W. Cleon Skousen claimed that there is a simple formula comprised of "four laws of economic freedom which a nation must maintain if its people are to prosper at the maximum level.  These are: 1) The Freedom to try.  2) The Freedom to buy.  3) The Freedom to sell.  4) The Freedom to fail….

                    "The Founding Fathers agreed with Adam Smith that the greatest threat to economic prosperity is the arbitrary intervention of the government into the economic affairs of private business and the buying public.  Historically, this has usually involved fixing prices, fixing wages, controlling production, controlling distribution, granting monopolies, or subsidizing certain products.

                    "Nevertheless, there are four areas of legitimate responsibility which properly belong to government.  These involve the policing responsibilities of government to prevent:  1) Illegal force in the market place to compel purchase or sale of products. 

2) Fraud in misrepresenting the quality, location, or ownership of the item being sold or bought.  3) Monopoly which eliminates competition and results in restraint of trade.  4) Debauchery of the cultural standards and moral fiber of society by commercial exploitation of vice -- pornography, obscenity, drugs, liquor, prostitution, or commercial gambling" (The Five Thousand Year Leap - 28 Great Ideas That Changed the World, pp. 131-133).

                    Alexander Hamilton stated, "To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted."

                    In a recent speech in Roanoke, Virginia, President Barack Obama demonstrated his ignorance on what it takes to create jobs while making money.  Obama insulted all the small-business owners in America, people who provide nearly fifty-percent of all jobs.  "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that.  Somebody else made that happen."  Obama claimed that the government is the reason why businesses succeed because the government provides basic services and infrastructure such as roads and bridges used by businesses. 

                    In his effort to advance tax hikes to fund more failing companies and entitlement programs, he seemed to forget that roads, bridges, basic services, etc. are provided by the people who pay taxes - the successful businesses that pay taxes and employ other people who pay taxes.  He wants those same successful entrepreneurs to feel gratitude for the opportunity to finance this nation and to still be eager to pay more taxes!

                    Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney rebutted Obama's claims in a speech at a company in Pennsylvania.   "… President Obama exposed what he really thinks about free people and the American vision, and government, what he really thinks about America itself. … If you want to understand why his policies have failed, … you can look at what he said …:  "If you've got a business, you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen."  That somebody else is government in his view.  He goes on to describe the people who deserve the credit for building this business.  And, of course, he describes people who we care very deeply about, who make a difference in our lives, our school teachers, fire fighters, people who build roads.  We need those things, we value school teachers, fire fighters, people who build roads; you really couldn't have a business if you didn't have those things.  But, you know, we pay for those things.  The taxpayers pay for government.  It's not like government just provides those to all of us and we say oh thank you government for doing those things.  In fact we pay for them and we benefit from them and we appreciate the work that they do and the sacrifices that are done by people who work in government.  But they did not build this business.

                    "The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn't build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn't build McDonald's, that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft, you go on [down] the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn't build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America and it's wrong.  And by the way, the President's logic doesn't just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themselves up a little further, that goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who has, may have dropped out that decides to get back in school and go for it, people who reach to try and lift themselves up.  The President would say, well you didn't do that.  You couldn't have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you.  You couldn't have gone to school without teachers.  So you didn't, you are not responsible for that success.  President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that.  I've got to be honest, I don't think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business.  And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing.  I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a President of the United States.  It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign - that this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America.  Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?

                    "You understand, of course, what's going on.  What he is saying is his justification for raising taxes higher and higher, because government needs more.  What he is saying is his justification for Obamacare, which says that we need 2,300 pages of legislation to have government more intrusive in your life.  What he is saying is his justification for a larger and larger government.  This is very different, by the way, than the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton that said that the era of big-government was over, that reformed welfare.  You heard that story by the way, [that] he is trying to take work out of welfare requirements.  It is changing the nature of America, changing the nature of what the Democrats have fought for, and Republicans have fought for.  In the past people of both parties understood that encouraging achievement, encouraging success, encouraging people to lift themselves as high as they can, encouraging entrepreneurs, celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating, makes America strong.  That's the right course for this country.  His course is extraordinarily foreign."

                    In order for our nation to enjoy true liberty we must have economic freedom.  We must maintain our freedom to reach for our dreams.  We must maintain a totally free economy with government simply protecting our rights to do so.

Free Market

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is that a minimum of government regulations and a free-market economy brings about the highest levels of prosperity. Our Founding Fathers first obtained independence and then they organized a government based on natural laws. They received some assistance in writing laws about the marketplace from a college professor in Scotland named Adam Smith. Smith wrote a five volume work called The Wealth of Nations, which came out in 1776. This brilliant work was just what the Founders needed. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "In political economy, I think Smith's Wealth of Nations the best book extant." (Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 8:31.) The Founders structured the entire national economy of the new nation on the basis of natural law and Smith's ideas about a free-market economy.

According to W. Cleon Skousen, there are five parts to Smith's formula: 1) There is specialized production. 2) The government does not interfere in production, princes or wages. 3) The free-market operates on supply and demand with no government-imposed monopolies. 4) Competition based on supply and demand regulates prices. 5) Profits are an indication of whether the goods and services produced are worthwhile. 6) Competition improves quality and reduces prices.

Skousen also wrote that "there are four laws of economic freedom which a nation must maintain if its people are to prosper at the maximum level. These are: 1) The Freedom to try. 2) The Freedom to buy. 3) The Freedom to sell. 4) The Freedom to fail.

"By 1905 the United States had become the richest industrial nation in the world. With only five percent of the earth's continental land area and merely six percent of the world's population, the American people were producing over half of almost everything - clothes, food, houses, transportation, communications, even luxuries. It was a great tribute to Adam Smith." (See The Five Thousand Year Leap.)

Even though the United States was becoming the biggest and richest nation in the world, the system needed some adjustments. Many powerful leaders thought the system needed to be replaced. At the same time, the Founding Fathers and the Constitution were being criticized and the ideas of Adam Smith were considered old fashioned. The intellectual leaders were creating a vacuum in order to build a new system based on the teachings of Karl Marx. This new system was exactly what the Founders were trying to eliminate.

The colleges and universities in the 1920's stopped teaching anything about the heritage of our nation; therefore, there were no assignments to read The Federalist Papers or The Wealth of nations or anything similar. President Franklin Roosevelt did his best to trade the rights of the Republic - such as checks and balances, limited government, inalienable rights to liberty and property - for a centralized state and controls on industry.

The Founders wanted to "make the American dollar completely independent of any power or combination of powers outside of the American people" (Skousen). They gave exclusive responsibility to issue and control money to Congress because the people had control over who would represent them in Congress. All money was to be precious metal. This plan of the Founders never was completely implemented. First, the Bank of the United States was created to issue money, a task given to the Federal Reserve System today.

Thomas Jefferson stated, "If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs." (Quoted in Olive Cushing Dwinell, The Story of Our Money, p 84.)

Jefferson must have been looking at circumstances similar to our day when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own approximately 90 percent of all the home mortgages. I feel certain that the situation saddened Jefferson as it does many today. If we truly want to return to our First Principles, we must convince our political leaders to reform our economy to the point that Congress again has the exclusive responsibility to issue and control money.

Ideas and quotes for this post came from The Five Thousand Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen, pp 131-139. There is much more information on this principle in this book.

Free Market

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is that a minimum of government regulations and a free-market economy brings about the highest levels of prosperity. Our Founding Fathers first obtained independence and then they organized a government based on natural laws. They received some assistance in writing laws about the marketplace from a college professor in Scotland named Adam Smith. Smith wrote a five volume work called The Wealth of Nations, which came out in 1776. This brilliant work was just what the Founders needed. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "In political economy, I think Smith's Wealth of Nations the best book extant." (Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 8:31.) The Founders structured the entire national economy of the new nation on the basis of natural law and Smith's ideas about a free-market economy. According to W. Cleon Skousen, there are five parts to Smith's formula: 1) There is specialized production. 2) The government does not interfere in production, princes or wages. 3) The free-market operates on supply and demand with no government-imposed monopolies. 4) Competition based on supply and demand regulates prices. 5) Profits are an indication of whether the goods and services produced are worthwhile. 6) Competition improves quality and reduces prices. Skousen also wrote that "there are four laws of economic freedom which a nation must maintain if its people are to prosper at the maximum level. These are: 1) The Freedom to try. 2) The Freedom to buy. 3) The Freedom to sell. 4) The Freedom to fail. "By 1905 the United States had become the richest industrial nation in the world. With only five percent of the earth's continental land area and merely six percent of the world's population, the American people were producing over half of almost everything - clothes, food, houses, transportation, communications, even luxuries. It was a great tribute to Adam Smith." (See The Five Thousand Year Leap.) Even though the United States was becoming the biggest and richest nation in the world, the system needed some adjustments. Many powerful leaders thought the system needed to be replaced. At the same time, the Founding Fathers and the Constitution were being criticized and the ideas of Adam Smith were considered old fashioned. The intellectual leaders were creating a vacuum in order to build a new system based on the teachings of Karl Marx. This new system was exactly what the Founders were trying to eliminate. The colleges and universities in the 1920's stopped teaching anything about the heritage of our nation; therefore, there were no assignments to read The Federalist Papers or The Wealth of nations or anything similar. President Franklin Roosevelt did his best to trade the rights of the Republic - such as checks and balances, limited government, inalienable rights to liberty and property - for a centralized state and controls on industry. The Founders wanted to "make the American dollar completely independent of any power or combination of powers outside of the American people" (Skousen). They gave exclusive responsibility to issue and control money to Congress because the people had control over who would represent them in Congress. All money was to be precious metal. This plan of the Founders never was completely implemented. First, the Bank of the United States was created to issue money, a task given to the Federal Reserve System today. Thomas Jefferson stated, "If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs." (Quoted in Olive Cushing Dwinell, The Story of Our Money, p 84.) Jefferson must have been looking at circumstances similar to our day when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own approximately 90 percent of all the home mortgages. I feel certain that the situation saddened Jefferson as it does many today. If we truly want to return to our First Principles, we must convince our political leaders to reform our economy to the point that Congress again has the exclusive responsibility to issue and control money. Ideas and quotes for this post came from The Five Thousand Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen, pp 131-139. There is much more information on this principle in this book.