No economic system is perfect but American capitalism is arguably the most admired on earth. With all its flaws it has created more wealth for more people than any other economy in human history, and in the process, has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system as well.
Simply put: American free-market capitalism is the most powerful economic machine in the history of the world.
Stephen Moore and Julian Simon, in “It’s Getting Better All The Time” write: “America’s hospitals schools, universities, technoligies, inventions, churches, courts, businesses, highways, airlines, cities, farms water systems, food chains, money, military, governent structure are the envy of the world.”
Bill Bennett, in “Why We Fight,” writes: “Whatever may be America’s many faults, we have provided more freedom to more people than any nation in the history of mankind, that we have provided a greater degree of equality to more people than any nation in the history of mankind, that we have created more prosperity, and spread it more widely, than any nation in the history of mankind, that we have brought more justice to more people than any nation in the history of mankind, that our open, tolerant, prosperous, peacable society is the marvel and envy of the ages.”
As to helping minorities, in a nation of over 315 million people, with blacks constituting eleven percent of the population, the richest talk-show host (Oprah Winfrey) is a black woman, our highest paid athlete (Tiger Woods) is black, the highest paid pop-singer (Michael Jackson) is black, and, even though dead, remains the highest-paid, although some say a poor white lad from Memphis beats him in some years. The chief law-enforcement officer who is ultimately responsible for the execution of every single law of the most powerful nation on earth (Eric Holder) is a black man, and our highest elective office which houses the leader of the entire free world (Barack Obama) is black.
It is always to be remembered: the poor of the third world possess almost nothing; the American poor have cars, televisions, and cell phones.
When Europe was totally devastated following WWII, America had thirteen million men under arms, possessed the A-bomb and had the most powerful military on earth, but she did not conquer the world; she disarmed. And then, under the Marshall Plan (which see!) America rescued the entirety of western Europe financially from the wreckage of its economies, and prevented Russia from owning western Europe as she did eastern Europe. And that is not to mention America’s protection of Europe and the world from the two other “isms” which, together with the Bolsheviks, took the lives of over 172 million people(!)—Fascism and Nazism. The financial cost of the Marshall plan alone? Over 13.3 billion American dollars—in mid-1940 dollars! And none of that is to mention the countless billions which America has given in foreign aid, in many cases, to people who despise our wealth, but need it to survive. Think “Israel”—who does not hate us,” “Egypt,” “Greece,” etc., etc.) Consider the fact that neither NATO nor the UN could survive without American dollars in the face of socialisms which simply does not produce enough financially to save their own countries, much less others. All thoughtful Americans expect more pleas for financial bail-outs because of our economic power—even in what we call “difficult” times financially.
Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair wrote about America coming to the financial aid of hurting people. He said, “I can name you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?” He said that, when fifty-nine American communities were flattened by tornadoes, nobody helped.” (“’Let’s Hear It!’ for the U.S.”)
Bill O’Reilly stated on “The Bill O’Reilly Factor” that America has liberated over 400 million people. And that at the cost of hundreds of billions of Amrican dollars produced by free-market capitalism. That statement was made before our rescue of Kuwait (3 million people), Iraq (38 million people) and Afghanistan (32 million people. That happened because Americans believe all humans possess certain “unalienable” rights, that is, rights which no man but God gave us and that no man or group of men should be able to take away from us, AND because she had sufficient capitalism-produced dollars to pull it all off financially.
A Fox News contributor, Ziad Abdelnour, writes about American “Exceptionalism:” “’Exceptional’ is a nation that can rise in less than 200 years to become the strongest, most dynamic economy in history, a nation born not of ancient tribes but of the best and hardest-working the rest of the world’s nations has to offer. That is what makes America ‘exceptional.’ There is no other such nation on Earth. There never has been and there will probbly never be again….We must have a second American Revolution. We must retain our economic freedom.” He then says, “You can do it yourself, by creating wealth for yourself.”
A footnote: free-market capitalism works everywhere it is turned loose. “In Asia, the turn to the capitalist way has raised up more than a half billion human beings out of an immemorial poverty just in the past twenty years.” (Michael Novak, “An Apology for Democratic Capitalism,” in “First Things,” February, 2009, p. 41.)
The danger to the world’s most powerful economic engine? A proliferation of onerous governmental regulations in an effort to redistribute American wealth which will kill jobs, produce a drag on business expansion, and destroy incentives to take entrepreneurial financial risks. Americans do not fear taking financial risks; they do fear punitive government financial policies which guarantee risk failure.