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Sowell Schools AOC on Capitalism vs Socialism || Thomas Sowell Today
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capitalism is an to me is it's an ideology of capital It puts capital the most important thing is the concentration of capital and it means that we seek and prioritize profit and the accumulation of money above all else and we seek it at any human and environmental cost That is what that means And to me that ideology is not sustainable and cannot be redeemed Let me start with something I've said for years People who think they can remake the world to suit their visions usually end up breaking it instead Um Miss Oasiac Cortez statement is a textbook example of that a stew of buzzwords and moral posturing that collapses under the weight of facts and history She's not describing capitalism She's caricaturing it and badly Let's take this apart piece by piece because there's too much ignorance here to let it slide First she calls capitalism an ideology of capital that prioritizes profit above all else That's a slogan not an analysis Capitalism isn't about worshiping money It's about voluntary exchange People trade goods services and ideas because both sides benefit not because someone's hoarding a pile of gold Wealth isn't concentrated like some cosmic injustice It's created Take Henry Ford He didn't steal his fortune He built cars millions could afford revolutionizing transportation and employing thousands Or look at Steve Jobs Apple's innovations didn't concentrate wealth They generated it lifting living standards worldwide The World Bank says global extreme poverty fell from 36% in 1990 to under 10% by 2019 Over a billion people lifted up not by socialism's promises but by market spreading opportunity Compare that to Venezuela Under socialist rule since 1999 GDP per capita crashed over 60% by 2020 Inflation hit 1.7 million% in 2018 And people starved while oil wealth vanished That's not sustainability That's collapse She says capitalism seeks profit at any human and environmental cost That's another myth Greed exists in every system Socialism just redirects it to power instead of money Capitalists profit by meeting demands not destroying lives The US went from 94% extreme poverty in 1800 to 1% today because markets drove innovation electricity medicine sanitation not because of government edicts Socialist regimes the Soviet Union's ROC shrank 90% from forced irrigation schemes man-made ecological disaster China's great leap forward killed 30 to 45 million and left scarred landscapes Socialism's the one with the body count human and environmental AOC implies wealth accumulation comes at others expense Nonsense It's not a zero sum game Hong Kong had no resources in 1945 By 1997 its per capita GDP topped $36,000 higher than Britain's through free markets Singapore's went from $500 in 1965 to $82,000 Today wealth grew It didn't steal from anyone Socialism's alternative Cuba's average wage is $30 a month after 60 years of fairness The Soviet Union's GDP per capita peaked at $7,000 while the US hit $20,000 by the 1980s Socialism doesn't spread wealth it spreads misery and this unredeemable line She's enjoying capitalism's fruits her iPhone her Netflix her congressional salary while decrying it Hypocrisy aside socialism is the one with no redemption Every try Venezuela Cuba the USSR ends in rationing stagnation and tyranny Why it ignores reality But here's what she misses and I've said this for decades First capitalism isn't about concentrating wealth It creates it and society benefits The top 1% pay 40% of US taxes $600 billion a year funding roads schools hospitals Second government can't eliminate poverty It redistributes it stifling the innovation that actually solves it The US spent $22 trillion on welfare since the 60s Poverty still here Markets cut global poverty in half in 25 years Third socialism fails everywhere not from bad execution but because it denies scarcity in human nature People work for incentives not slogans Mrs Kaziocortez can clutch her pearls all she wants But history's not a suggestion It's a warning Capitalism's lifted more people than her ideology ever will she'd see that if she traded her rhetoric for a ledger and some numbers you know just as there's all of this fear-mongering that government is going to take over every corporation and government is going to take over every business or every form of production um we should be scared right now because corporations have taken over our government And in my opinion we should be wary of any entity in which both of those things are combined whether it's through one way or the other Um and that's why the emphasis in democratic socialism is on democracy And it's not about you know it it's it's just as much a transformation about bringing democracy to the workplace so that we have a say and that we don't check all of our rights at the door every time we cross the threshold into our workplace Because at the end of the day as workers and as people as society we're the ones creating wealth not a corporate CEO It's not a CEO that's make that's actually creating $4 billion a year It is the millions of workers in this country that's creating billions of dollars of economic productivity a year and our system should reflect that Mrs Aassiocortez keeps piling on the rhetoric but still light on facts and heavy on fantasy This idea of democratic socialism and workplace democracy sounds noble Who doesn't like democracy but it's a recipe for economic disaster wrapped in a feel-good slogan Let's cut through the noise and deal with reality because that's what matters She says workers alone create wealth and CEOs are just parasites skimming the profits That's a fairy tale Wealth isn't conjured up by labor in a vacuum It's the product of capital risk and vision working together Take a company like Ford Workers built the cars Sure But Henry Ford invented the assembly line invested his savings and took the gamble when 90% of new businesses fail US Census data shows over half collapse within 5 years CEOs aren't sitting in ivory towers twirling mustaches They're making decisions where to invest what to produce how to compete Jeff Bezos didn't steal Amazon's $4 billion in annual profit He built a system that employs 1.5 million people and delivers value worldwide Workers matter but without capital and leadership there's no factory no jobs no wealth Socialism's tried her experiment Soviet collective farms run by workers produced famine 5 to 10 million dead in 1921 to22 because no one's accountable when everyone's in charge Uh Venezuela's state-run oil industry once a global powerhouse now pumps less than Iraq under sanctions Outputs down 75% since 1999 Labor without direction is chaos not productivity Then there's this workplace democracy notion that businesses should be run like town halls Businesses aren't governments They're voluntary associations You don't vote on how to build a car You do it efficiently or lose to someone who does Imagine voting on every decision at Apple The markets would still be flip phones Markets reward merit and results not feelings Yugoslavia tried worker managed firms in the 20th century Productivity tanked inflation soared and the system crumbled by the '9s Why no one risks their own skin in a collective Incentives vanish Capitalism's voluntary exchange workers trade labor for wages owners risk capital for profit beats utopian experiments every time Now her claim that corporations have taken over government that's half right but she's got the wrong villain Free markets don't cause cronyism Government overreach does When politicians control $4 trillion in annual spending 20% of US GDP corporations lobby for favors That's not capitalism it's corporatism A distortion of markets by the state Look at the 2008 bailouts Banks got handouts because government picked winners not because markets demanded it Hong Kong thrived with a 15% tax rate and minimal meddling Per capita GDP hit 49,000 by 2020 Singapore is at 82,000 Contrast that with socialist meddling Venezuela's government owns everything Yet 96% of its people live in poverty today Perov data The threat isn't corporations It's bureaucrats with too much power Let me wrap this up with three truths she keeps dodging First wealth comes from capital risk-taking and labor combined not labor alone Workers need tools and direction CEOs provide them Second the real danger uh isn't corporate power It's government intervention that rigs the game creating cronyism Socialism loves to exploit Third businesses run on voluntary exchange not workplace democracy Force that and you kill efficiency and innovation Look at history East Germany's Turbons versus West Germany's BMWs One side voted with its feet over the wall Mr Okazo Cortez wants a system that reflects her vision Reality doesn't bend divisions it breaks them She'd see that if she looked at the numbers instead of the mirror
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