Share the wealth?
If there is anything that drives conservatives up the wall, it is the suggestion of wealth redistribution. This is the taking of some of the wealth of the more acquisitive members of society and dividing it among the less-well-off. Creeping socialism? It depends on one’s perspective.
In countries with expansive government-provided social services (the Scandinavian social democracies, Germany, Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) free-market capitalism is alive, well and prospering. Even socialist-lite China, though reluctant to admit it, has benefited enormously from the introduction of capitalist free-market policies into its economy, especially its failing agriculture.
My point is simply this: government-provided social services such as health care, public education, job re-training and Social Security are not mutually exclusive to a capitalist free-market economy. A recent example is the millions of Chinese who were dying of starvation under Chairman Mao’s collectivized agriculture until free-market policies were introduced into their planned economy. Although still politically a socialist state, China has its share of profitable corporations today.
While many Americans still fear a war with China, I do not. We owe them too much money and they make too much of our stuff. We two are too interdependent to risk a mutually-destructive war in which there would be no winner. Today we depend on China’s servicing of our outrageous debt and producing cheap consumer goods. In turn they depend on an increasing flow of dollars from a thriving American consumer market.
Free market capitalism helped the western world overcome widespread poverty in the last two centuries. And today expanding globalized trade has begun to upgrade the economies of Asia and Africa. Conversely, over time socialism usually increases poverty and famine and foments megadeath revolutions. Today’s globalized economy has already rescued millions of Asian workers from
... Societies that can successfully combine free market economies with intelligent regulation, equitable taxation and social spending generally thrive.
poverty. This was not done by redistributing existing wealth but by growing that wealth so that everyone’s share is larger. The proportions have remained essentially unchanged, but the wealth itself has grown exponentially so that today there is a much bigger pie to cut.
Today most Asian workers would gladly leave their back-breaking dawn-to dusk toil in the rice paddies for so-called “sweatshop” jobs in the factories. While their standard of living is still considered intolerable by most western standards, it is luxurious compared to their recent past. Most human progress is relative and will probably continue to be.
Autocratic governments often emerge from welfare states gone bad. But societies that can successfully combine free market economies with intelligent regulation, equitable taxation and social spending generally thrive. The U.S., Canada, New Zealand and most of Western Europe have turned out to be places where the rest of the world would like to live. Conversely, there is no prosperous developed country today that operates on right-wing libertarian principles; none. But we in the Free World must continue to guard against extremism-political, social and economic.
British philosopher, economist and civil servant John Stuart Mill once warned: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” In today’s volatile, complex world these sage words ring especially true.
George B. Reed Jr., who lives in Rossville, can be reached by email at reed1600@ bellsouth.net.