by Harvey Golub

Posted in Facebook  early 2020

A common criticism of the magnificent economic progress under President Trump’s policies, prior to the pandemic striking has a couple of ways of being  presented.  One is ‘the economy is working well for the rich and connected but not the poor”.  Another is “we need a system that works for everyone”. Their solution is to reduce the role of a market-based approach in favor of greater governmental intervention and control. As Elizabeth Warren puts it: “I’m a capitalist but I want our capitalism to work for everyone”. I’m not sure whether she means not everyone prospers under capitalism or not everyone has an opportunity to prosper under capitalism or if her comment has any meaning at all. No system ever “works” for everyone, but that wouldn’t stop her anyway.

In the history of the world, people have tried every conceivable way of organizing society and the ones that have succeeded in creating the most societal wealth and well-being have only a few key elements: a market-based economy in which people who buy or sell something do so freely and as independent agents; the rule of law, clear and fairly administered; appropriate laws and regulations which establish the boundaries of acceptable behavior; protection of human and property rights. A society that adopts these approaches and lives within these principles will prosper and create the excess wealth needed to provide for those incapable of taking care of themselves. It will have differential outcomes: some will have more income and greater wealth better outcomes than others. That is not unfair because it reflects intelligence, energy, work ethic, and overall ability. It will also be because of differences in luck. But this fact does not mean that we should try to manage out these difference by destroying the factors that lead to the prosperity in the first place as Progressives want to do.

With regard to the question of inequality of opportunity, much of the differences are caused by the choices individuals make.  How they choose to live, whether they choose to work hard, whether they choose to learn and get educated will affect their range of opportunities.  Opportunity will also be determined by their social environment. In this, most important is whether they have good parents with good parenting skills and importantly whether they have an intact family with a mother and a father who inculcate values that are important in our society.