We need to understand how a free market and freedom generated the economic prosperity we have enjoyed over the last 200 years
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4ERbC7JyCfU#t=67]
A few notes after watching the video:
Milton Friedman demolishes the socialist rhetoric of Phil Donohue. Over 2 million views.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A&feature=player_detailpage]
Here’s the text for the obliteration of the capitalism-is-evil-and-causes-poverty concept: (more…)
The story of how the Pilgrims went from starving to plenty that I didn’t hear in school. In William Bradford’s own words: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=66QdQErc8JQ#t=135] The video title is The Pilgrims and Property Rights: How our ancestors got fat & happy. Communal property was not acceptable to the married menfolk or the Read more…
Video of Milton Friedman explaining why there are no helpful features of minimum wage laws.
Who is hurt? People whose skill sets have economic value less than the arbitrary minimum wage. Those people will be unemployed.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hY0t4Q-TyPI#t=7]
Some key ideas from the video:
(Cross-post from my other blog, Outrun Change.)
World War I generated most of the horrible disasters we’ve seen in the last 100 years.
With the possible exception of the decline of the Roman Empire, World War I was the greatest disaster in human history.
It contributed mightily to the Great Depression, which fed the Nazi revolution. That in turn led to WWII.
The war unleashed the totalitarian ideologies of communism, fascism and Naziism, which very nearly destroyed Western civilization. Their poisonous legacy lives on in radical Islamic extremism.
There is a huge amount of blame to be spread for the Great Recession that started in 2008. While the recession technically ended four years ago back in June of 2009, most people in California and lots of charities here are still feeling the effects.
I see exquisitely little discussion of how intentional federal policies created the distortions that led to the financial crisis. An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Phil Gramm and Mike Solon help explain why much of the blame belongs to the federal government: The Clinton-Era Roots of the Financial Crisis.
To make this non-partisan, I’ll point out that the flawed policies from the Clinton administration were ratified, continued, and extended by the Bush administration. Not to worry, both parties have worked lots of overtime to earn their share of blame.
While you can argue on the proportionate blame between the two parties, I’ll point out that regardless of the allocation you determine, 100% of that particular allocation falls on deliberate federal policy.
Initial efforts to persuade private pension plans to fund low-income housing failed. The administration forced
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Café Hayek explains why Capitalism is Awesome – the amazing performance of capitalism fools us into thinking that wonderful living standards we see today are the world-wide norm across history instead of an aberration compared to what happened during preceding thousands of generations.
Wish I could quote the full comment, but that isn’t right, so consider just this. The free market can
..fool us modern folk into thinking that the lives we lead are normal – fool us into thinking that poverty (rather than wealth) has causes; fool us into supposing that people my age (almost 55), because we still have all of our teeth and aren’t remotely yet decrepit, are “middle-aged” rather than old, ancient, nearly dead by historical standards; …
We also forget that (more…)
That is the core point made by Dr. Mo Ibrahim on how to develop the economies of all 57 African countries. He explains his ideas at: Mo Ibrahim On How (And Why) Africa Should Solve Its Own Problems.
(Why am I cross-posting this article from my other blog, Nonprofit Update? Because the core of the comments from Dr. Ibrahim are related to the idea that economic freedom and political freedom are more moral than any alternatives and provide the best results for the people living in a country. Back to his comments.)
He wonders why African people are so poor. He thinks of where Ghana, Egypt, China, India, and Singapore were 50 years ago. Then, Ghana and Egypt were the richest countries of those five. Look how far the other three have advanced.
The problem is bad governance in both the public and private sectors.