There has never been a pure free market capitalistic system just as there has never been a pure communist or socialist system, where there is government ownership of the means of production and each individual has equal access to society’s resources. However, we can rank economies as to whether they are closer to capitalism or closer to communism or socialism. If one ranked countries according to whether they were closer to the capitalistic end of the spectrum or the socialistic or communistic end, then ranked countries according to per capita GDP and finally rank countries according to Freedom House’s “Map of Freedom in the World,” he would find a pattern that is by no means a coincidence. The people in those countries closer to the capitalist end of the economic spectrum have far greater income and enjoy greater human rights protections than those toward the socialist and communist end.

According to the London Telegraph article, Moore’s film features priests who say capitalism is anti-Christian by failing to protect the poor. This is pure nonsense and revealed as such by asking, “If you’re an unborn spirit, condemned by God to a life of poverty but allowed to choose the country in which to be poor, would you choose a country near the communist end of the economic spectrum or the capitalist end?” If you chose the United States, you’d find that according to the government surveys, the typical “poor” American has cable or satellite TV, two color TVs, and a DVD player or VCR. He has air conditioning, a car, a microwave, a refrigerator, a stove, and a clothes washer and dryer, and whether he has health insurance or not, he is able to obtain medical care when needed. Try to find that in Cuba, Russia, China or North Korea. If we buy into the nonsense of Moore’s priests, the world’s poor people are incredibly stupid. Whether fleeing legally or illegally, their destination country is likely to be closer to capitalism than their departure country.

Go read the whole article here.

We have a national Ponzi scheme where Congress collects about $785 billion in Social Security taxes from about 163 million workers to send out $585 billion to 50 million Social Security recipients. Social Security’s trustees tell us the surplus goes into a $2.2 trillion trust fund to meet future obligations. The problem is whatever difference between Social Security taxes and benefits paid out is spent by Congress. What the Treasury Department does is give the Social Security Trust Fund nonmarketable “special issue government securities” that are simply bookkeeping entries or IOUs.

According to Social Security trustee estimates, around 2016 the amount of Social Security benefits paid will exceed taxes collected. That means one of two things, or both, must happen: Congress will raise taxes and/or slash promised Social Security benefits. Each year the situation will worsen since the number of retirees is predicted to increase relative to the number in the work force paying taxes. In 1940, there were 42 workers per retiree, in 1950 there were 16, today there are 3 and in 20 or 30 years there will be 2 or fewer workers per retiree.

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President Obama can be forgiven for celebrating the hypocrisy of Abraham Lincoln because the victors of wars write their history and glorify the winners. The recognition that slavery is a despicable institution does not require hero worship of a president who made the largest contribution to the unraveling of our Constitution. After all when it is settled by brute force that states cannot secede, as they thought they had the right to in 1787, then the federal government can ride roughshod over states and their people’s right — in a word make meaningless the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

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It seems to me that fiddling around with interest rates and adding more and more regulation causes the problems. Then these same government sponsored meddlers are tasked with “fixing” the problems that they created themselves. This is dishonest. It is like the auto mechanic that punches a whole in your muffler then calls you to let you know that your muffler is in need of repair. If the mechanic would just leave the muffler alone it wouldn’t need fixing.

Back to the topic of inflation, in a recent column by Liberty Hero Walter E. Williams, inflation is defined:

Several prices rising are not inflation. Only when prices across the board rise is there inflation. But just as in the case of diseases, describing a symptom does not necessarily tell us the cause. That is the same with inflation; it is a symptom of something else. Nobel Laureate and noted monetary theorist Milton Friedman explained, “(I)nflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” Put another way, inflation results from an increase in the supply of money relative to the demand for money.

That being the case, who is responsible for inflation? It’s not you or I because if we privately increased the supply of money to finance profligate spending, we would be charged with counterfeiting and go to prison. The Federal Reserve Bank, our central bank, is the only entity legally permitted to increase the supply of money, to finance Congress’ profligate spending. The Federal Reserve Bank is supposed to be independent but it typically accommodates the wishes of Congress and the White House.

Central banks are villains in most countries; ours is just not as bad as others.

Ah yes, central banks like our Fed are villains. Thanks to Ron Paul and columnists like Williams this topic has been placed a bit further in to the main stream consciousness. In fact a FOX Business News anchorman for the show “Happy Hour” is now advocating abolishing the Fed. Wow. Yes, Cory Willard of FOX recently wrote an article with the title, “The Federal Reserve Is Ruining Us and Must Be Destroyed“. That is certainly not the kind of doublespeak beating around the bush rhetoric we expect to hear from the media.

If the Fed’s actions yesterday and recently end up pushing us down further into the financial inferno, maybe the country’s “government will save us” mentality will fall by the wayside. One can only hope.

Imagine there’s an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here’s my question to you that I’m almost afraid for the answer: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady’s lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment? I’m hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow’s lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn. I’d say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate’s mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Probably most Americans would have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced to put money in a government pot and a government agency would send the widow a weekly sum of $40 to hire someone to mow her lawn. This mechanism makes the particular victim invisible but it still boils down to one person being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. Putting the money into a government pot makes palatable acts that would otherwise be deemed morally offensive.

This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one’s fellow man. Helping one’s fellow man in need, by reaching into one’s own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another’s pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation.

Continue reading the article here.