Let's Hear It For Capitalism

When your kid comes home from her government school today, she will probably be parroting some nonsense they taught her. At school these days, writes James Bartholomew, author of The Welfare State We’re In,

They teach that capitalists destroy rainforests, insidiously control American foreign policy and spread the human vices of greed and selfishness. Anti-capitalism is now the subtext of history and geography lessons, as well as politics, economics and sociology. Capitalism is said to have given rise to slavery. The state is depicted as a hero that has tempered the cruelty of the beast with laws, regulations and interventions.

All lies, of course. Nor is it true that capitalism “promotes inequality” except in the sense that it rewards people who give other people what they want.

Let us rehearse three big things that capitalism has done, in food, clothing, and cars. Capitalism, not government.

Two centuries ago, food was the biggest part in a family's budget. It was hard for a poor family to get enough to eat. Even in the 1920s, people on average spent a third of their income on food.



Now they spend only a tenth... Shortages, hunger and famine became history. That is what capitalism did. To sneer at it is to sneer at the abolition of hunger in this country.

Then there is clothing. Used to be that the poor could hardly afford any clothes. Today,

new and much cheaper methods of production have been put in place by individuals importing cotton, improving textile production techniques, deploying new kinds of transport and distributing the raw material and final products more cheaply. No longer do children share shoes.

Not government. Capitalism. And as for cars. Well, we know how many cars they had in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, and today in Castro’s Cuba.

Who invented cars? Who refined their design and manufacture to the point where they are affordable by millions of people? Not governments. The diverse, resourceful, determined power of capitalism.

And it goes on and on. The astonishing thing is that, in the light of this overwhelming evidence, there are still so many people that worship the state and their benefits. What are they thinking?

They are thinking that it is much easier to demand your rights using the political system than to earn it by serving the consumer.