A few decades ago, a book called “Super Money” (by George Goodman, aka “Adam Smith”) described how American entrepreneurship was creating super money every time their start-up companies issued initial public offerings (IPOs) and then the prices of these new stocks went up ... manufacturing enormous wealth out of thin air. New products and services are imagined, created and marketed to people to propel these new companies to success. This is the power of our free-market economic system in a nutshell.
Dear reader, this is a magical way that the “invisible hand” of capitalism creates wealth ... lots and lots of wealth. Jeff Bazos has, by himself created almost a trillion dollars of super money. And he and his ex-wife have been rewarded with about 10% of this super wealth. This is not accidental. It has happened over and over to American go-getters to create our “golden city on the hill.” And yes this wealth that capitalism creates does get re-distributed to others as it is spent ... and these new companies hire people ... and their taxes pay for our government and to build infrastructure. (Hear that Elizabeth Warren and BHO?)
But there is always a problem wrapped up in capitalism. That is that the dispersion of this super money doesn’t happen fast enough and to the taste of many proto-Socialists. Jealousy, dear reader jealousy, rears it’s ugly head ... fanned by the likes of Bernie Sanders and his fellow travelers. (Funny though how Bernie seems to be enjoying his entry into the cult of millionaires.) But this super money does get spread around ... which is why America is so wealthy and can afford our social programs ... and so is where many of the worls’s needy want to live ... and some even want to be given the opportunity to prosper like Bezos, the son of Cuban immigrants.
But when these social programs become more important than capitalism and its super money ... that is when the golden goose is strangled. Funny how so few people ... even many recipients of super money ... understand this simple truth.
Nobody's strangling any golden goose. Maybe cut back on their rations so that they stop trending toward explosively fat. And maybe harvest most of the eggs they lay. Recall that the top tax rate throughout the 1970's was 70%. The USA has been at war for two decades and yet taxes get slashed while the military needs yet more recovery from being 'depleted.'
ReplyDeleteI think most Democrat candidates for president would love to see our capitalist goose captut ... at least if would get them elected.
DeleteWhat’s “captut? If it is kaput... destroyed, that is no ones quest. If it is captured, sure, much as the farmer seeks optimal health and productivity for every golden goose. And we the workers and shareholders are the farmers: we all share in those golden omelettes.
ReplyDeleteKaput it is ..
DeleteSo that leaves only Trump. Sole keeper of the golden goose President for life.
ReplyDelete