Capitalism makes us all rich.

  America runs (mostly) on free market capitalist principles.  And it works.  We have plenty of food, fuel, clothing, new cars, electronics, housing, electricity, clean running water, movies, schools, roads, every material thing imaginable.  We have it.  The socialist countries go hungry. 

   Part of our plenty comes from the free market regulating how much of each thing should be produced.  If we don’t have enough of something, the price goes up, and people produce more of it.  If we have too much of something, the price goes down, and people produce less of it.  This works, and we have just the right amount of everything.  The Russians used to have a bureau in Moscow that set production quotas for the entire country.  They never got it right, and the Russians were constantly plagued with shortages or surpluses.  There are so many different things needed by a modern industrial economy, nuts and bolts, gasoline, corn, spark plugs, broccoli, automobiles, etc, etc,) that no bureau can keep track of all of them, let alone figure out how much of each to produce.  The free market system, working on supply and demand gets it right automatically, no central bureau required (or wanted).

    The second thing about capitalism is that it puts its money into the right things.  Society only has a limited amount of capital.  Just operating a business, let along starting one up from scratch, requires capital.  Here we raise that capital by borrowing from banks or selling stocks and bonds.  Investors and banks put their capital (money) into things that look like they will turn a profit, and refuse to loan to things that look like losers.  Being that we have a lot of banks, and a lot of investors, they mostly get it right.  Capital is available for successful enterprises like Apple and Amazon.  Losers like Sears cannot get any.  We direct our limited capital into the right things and don’t waste it on boondoggles. 

   And finally we offer incentives for hard work.  Starting up a new business is a lot of hard work.  The entrepreneur has to put in 60 and 70 hour work weeks for years and years before it pays off.  He has to work so hard that he endangers his marriage, looses touch with his children and his friends, develops ulcers.  People, guys mostly, only put themselves thru this sort of ordeal because they can see a handsome reward, maybe not as handsome as Bill Gates, but at least enough to put all their kids thru college.  And without all these entrepreneurs working their hearts out we would be much poorer. 

    I am hearing that the youngest generation wants to convert to socialism, which is just a nicer name for communism.  Those kids are either misinformed, or just plain stupid.