Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. For many years, I hosted a TV show where that was always the opening line. Of course, it reflected my view of how best individuals and nations could prosper. And I have served two Presidents who fortunately agree with this point of view.
Let free people think for themselves, use their God-given talents to come up with earth-shattering ideas that can change the course of the economy. We’ve seen it happen, several times over in our lifetime. Here’s one: Nvidia and Microsoft are now each individually larger by market cap than any other national stock market in the world except Japan. Apple’s market value is about equal to China.
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nation is one of the Bibles of the free market capitalist movement. On the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, it’s important to note that many of our Founding Fathers communicated with Adam Smith, and were heavily influenced by his ideas. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not a bad place to start. And our freedom comes from our creator, not government. Another good place to start. And it’s also a good reminder that Adam Smith’s book The Theory of Moral Sentiment which preceded the wealth of nations, was if I may oversimplify, about playing by the rules and abiding by the laws of a civilized nation.
And I’m not going to draw on lots and lots of numbers right now, but I am going to say that Democratic capitalism always produces more than Democratic socialism. Certainly, communism where the godless state ran everything, was an abject Soviet failure. I know that it’s fashionable in some of these left-wing blue states and cities where Mamdani-ism is kicking up in New York, LA, Chicago, and Seattle. But it won’t work. Price controls, rent freeze, Soviet-style grocery stores, free everything, high confiscatory tax burdens, it won’t work. Incentives matter. Let’s not forget that.
My friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity periodically run economic comparisons of the success of red states and the failure of blue states. Take New York and New Jersey, where over the last 10 or so years, their left-wing statist policies have seen nearly 3 million people abandon those states. And where cumulatively have lost about $700 billion of income — and rising.
But here comes Donald Trump riffing at the Kennedy Center today about his supply side tax cuts, deregulation, drill baby drill, and reciprocal trade. He didn’t exactly say it, but what he was talking about was free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.
This on a day when the Atlanta Federal Reserve marked up its third quarter GDP to 4.2%, including a business boom and a lower trade deficit. Mr. Trump is not ideologically inclined, but as a former businessman, he knows what makes the economy tick. As the WSJ’s James Freeman put it so nicely in his column, let Americans produce more goods. Let the government produce less money. That’ll get us to virtually unlimited growth and affordability.
Mr. Trump is a commonsense capitalist. And he may well be raising $20 trillion of new investment money pouring into America, bolstering our currency, reducing our inflation, and balancing our trade. America is the hottest place in the world right now. And no matter how hard they try, Democrats are not gonna sabotage Mr. Trump’s version of free market capitalism and a peace through strength foreign policy.
Free market capitalism is worth fighting for.
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