The American Economy - Mixed Or Mixed-Up

As a follow up to the last posting entitled The Poverty Deception I thank our SC businessman for providing this link for the video that was presented to him by one of his local Tea Parties.  The video illustrates that living standards around the world are a function of economic liberty.  Common sense isn't it?

 

John Goodman wrote in 2008 that Professor "Friedman believed that capitalism confers its greatest benefits on people @ the bottom of the income ladder.  People @ the top would have done well under any system.  It is people @ the bottom who are most liberated by markets."

 

Mr. Goodman may very well have based his remarks on Professor Friedman's writings in one of his classics – Free To Choose – where the Professor wrote "Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to obtain levels of living never dreamed of before.  Nowhere is the gap between rich & poor wider, nowhere are the rich richer or the poor poorer, than in those societies that do not permit the free market to operate." 

 

If I may be so bold (humbly) to paraphrase Professor Friedman – the rich do not exploit the poor – the poor come along for the ride of an enriched life in America.  If you don't believe me just look @ the list of comforts of what is considered poverty in America presented by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation in the last posting.  No where in the history of the world has the poor in society benefited or lived so well like they do in America.

 

Now even with all of this said, it is important to realize that @ no time in Professor Friedman's adult life did we have a totally free economy in America.  We had as Susan Lee wrote a quarter of a century ago "A mixed economy - an economic system that falls somewhere between a totally free market & a government directed one; that is, an economic system that has characteristics of both capitalism & socialism....the United States has a more equal portion of both."

 

Now just imagine the unlimited possibilities & potential of human endeavor if we could only find a presidential candidate who would return us to the excellence of our free market founding.