Rick Lowe
We shared some good news earlier in the week – at this post – and an Op-Ed by Steve Chapman in The Chicago Tribune on Sunday adds a few more details for consideration but points out that the Occupy Wall Street people might be misguided with a few of their views.
Here's a snippet:
"Steve Jobs did exceptionally well for himself, but he made the broad mass of consumers, here and abroad, better off in the process. Same for Sam Walton. What Oprah Winfrey created made her rich, but without her, those creations wouldn't have existed to entertain and gratify her audience.
"Ten years ago, the richest person on Earth couldn't buy a device that does what the iPhone does. Today, anyone can get one free upon signing a two-year carrier contract. Entry-level cars are vastly better in amenities and reliability than your father's Cadillac decades ago.
"Lifesaving and life-changing medicines and therapies once unknown are now commonplace. Food costs a fraction of what it once did. TV viewers used to have three channels to choose from. Now they have hundreds.
"The wealthy are far better off than they used to be. But their improvement has not come at the expense of those down the economic ladder. Economists Bruce D. Meyer of the University of Chicago and James X. Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame find that over the past three decades, both the poor and the middle class have made substantial material progress."
I concur. Capitalism has given us all a much better way of life and to protest against it seems poles apart from reality. And taxing the creators of wealth to the extent that it forces them to stop producing or move to a more understanding jurisdiction might well make us worse off.
Of course Crony Capitalism, where politicians take taxpayer funds and give it to their favoured set is what is wrong. But that is not what they seem to be protesting.
I'm compelled to paraphrase Dr. Boudreaux from his recent post about Luddism as it's so appropriate for the anti-Capitalism crowd: …Indeed, it's only because of Capitalsim that we today have the luxury to fret about just how we'll pay for junior's college education, dad's blood-pressure medicine, and next summer's family vacation to DisneyWorld.
