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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
17:24
Larry Elder SHUTS DOWN Democratic Socialism | Larry Elder
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Democrats have a more positive view of socialism than they do of capitalism.
I kid you not.
Attitudes towards socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view.
The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year, lower than in any of the three previous measures.
Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism than about socialism, with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010." You know, it wasn't all that long ago when both parties were pro-growth, as when JFK advocated a substantial tax cut.
This is the guy who once said, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Today, they would dismiss this as trickle-down.
The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy.
Every dollar released from taxation that is spared or invested will help create a new job and a new salary.
And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries.
Again, Republicans are about growth.
Democrats?
Democrats are about redistribution of resources, taking money from those who produce and giving it to those whom the Democrats deem to be far more worthy.
And when President Obama came into office, the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, tried to explain to him how you produce growth, and by doing so, it produces greater prosperity and therefore greater happiness.
For everybody?
Too bad he didn't listen.
There's no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy.
That is not the settled opinion by a long shot.
The Cato Institute put 200 economists on the full page ad in the New York Times denouncing that.
The Cato Institute.
The Cato Institute, famous for being a libertarian think tank here in Washington.
The Cato Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation, brought an ad in today's New York Times.
250 other economists who signed on this week to this ad in the New York Times and Washington Post.
We took out a full-page ad in the New York Times.
It was a full-page ad taken out by the Cato Institute.
They've taken out a full-page ad in some major newspapers in the Washington Post, in the New York Times, and Roll Call Magazine.
Cato Institute, Libertarian Research Group.
Not a big surprise, but they don't think government does things well, obviously.
Full-page ad today in the Washington Post.
315 leading economists.
Government spending is not the way to improve economic performance.
Lower tax rates and a reduction of the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.
What is it about the president's stimulus plan that you don't like?
The basic fact is that I don't think it's going to stimulate anything.
The problem with our economy is not that we're not borrowing and spending enough and we need the government to do some more of that for us.
The fact is that both the government and consumers have been living beyond their means for some time now.
This is a problem that was caused by spending and borrowing, and by engaging in more spending and borrowing, you're not going to solve it.
A lot of bad government policies got us into this mess, and we don't have a magic wand that's just going to get us out right away.
Even without a stimulus package, we've already got about a trillion dollar deficit this year, an absolutely unprecedented number.
A trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste.
They're pushing costs onto people in the future, and so this is not just an economics question, there's a real ethical or moral question here.
When you borrow from Peter to pay Paul, you've got to pay Peter some interest.
Government just doesn't work very well.
We tried big spending under Bush, it didn't work.
We tried big spending under Hoover, it didn't work.
One of the points made is that more government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and it also didn't solve Japan's, quote, lost decade in the 1990s.
The New Deal failed.
It prolonged the Depression.
It deepened the Depression.
If bigger spending and more intervention was a recipe for economic growth, Then France should be an economic tiger, and Hong Kong should be in the toilet.
But instead, it's the other way around.
I urge the president to call a meeting With leading economists such as these and get their views on what might work.
The thing to do now is to cut taxes and reduce the size of government, not expand the size of government, which is what Obama and the Democrats want to do.
What's ironic is that Obama promised to bring change, and yet he's giving us the same big spending interventionist approach as Bush.
Government is the number one growth industry.
When you're spending other people's money, it's easy to grow, but you're growing at the expense of economic freedom and personal freedom.
This is just basically wasting money.
And Obama didn't listen.
And under Obama, we got the worst economic recovery since 1949.
For the first time, a president presided over a recovery without at least one year reaching at least 3% GDP growth.
Now, Democrats believe that capitalism is synonymous with greed.
And Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman tried to explain this to Phil Donahue.
Too bad Phil Donahue didn't seem to grasp it.
When you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea to run on?
Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?
You think Russia doesn't run on greed?
You think China doesn't run on greed?
What is greed?
Of course, none of us are greedy.
It's only the other fellow who's greedy.
The world runs on individuals pursuing their separators.
The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat.
Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade.
If you want to know where the masses are worse off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that.
So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear.
That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
But it seems to reward, not virtue, as much as ability to manipulate the system.
And what does reward virtue?
You think the communist commissar rewards virtue?
You think a Hitler rewards virtue?
You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, do you think American presidents reward virtue?
Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
You know, I think you're taking a lot of things for granted.
Just tell me, where in the world do you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?
Well, I don't even trust you to do that.
Now one of the first things you learn in Economics 101 is tan snaffle.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Here is Bernie Sanders at an airport in Sweden talking about free stuff.
Countries have never gotten the credit in this country that they deserve.
Look, you know there are problems in Sweden, there are problems in Denmark, problems in Norway.
But when they guarantee health care to all of their people, how much do you pay for a doctor when you go to a doctor?
Like nothing.
Like nothing.
That's pretty good.
Did you go to college?
I did, yeah.
How much did I cost?
Nothing.
What about childcare in Sweden?
It's almost free.
That's pretty good.
And your rate of childhood poverty in Scandinavia is much lower than in the United States.
So, you know, I think that those are programs and ideas that we should take a hard look at.
And I think there's a lot to admire in what the governments of Sweden and Denmark and Norway and Finland have accomplished.
The brilliant economist Tom Sowell, not amused.
Here's a quotation from Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who nearly won the Democratic presidential nomination.
Quote, quoting Bernie Sanders, while there are some great corporations, this is the question of causation versus blame, while there are some great corporations trying to do the right thing, in my view, and I say this very seriously, the greed of the billionaire class This is not supposed to be funny.
I say this very seriously.
The greed of the billionaire class, the greed of Wall Street, is destroying the lives of millions of Americans.
What do we make of that?
It's astonishing, but I think even more astonishing is how many people voted for Bernie Sanders at a time where in socialist Venezuela, people are starving.
They're breaking into stores in their desperation to get some food.
They're crossing the borders into other countries to stave off starvation.
In a country that has one of the world's largest supplies of oil, that they've managed to do that in that country.
And people are so...
Utterly insulated from facts, that the fact that Bernie Sanders paints a very beautiful picture is all that matters.
Senator Sanders, meet this new Republican Congresswoman-elect.
Well, I, you know, I grew up in a socialistic country.
It actually was, you know, Socialistic Republic of Ukraine.
I was saying, you know, in my 42 years, I grew up in socialism.
I saw what happens when it runs out of money and it's not pretty.
And now I came to America 20 years ago with a suitcase after meeting my husband in a train in Europe, and he is a raised and born Hoosier, you know, and now we're building socialism.
I'm We're kind of going full circles.
I can tell you what is going to be next.
It's very sad for me to see that.
And that made me, as a mother of two daughters, it made me get involved and do something about it because that's not very good for our country.
I think that we need to be good students of history.
Our country, for the last century, we fought against socialism, and a lot of young kids died.
I took my kids to the beaches of Normandy, and you can see how many young kids died fighting for freedoms, how many wars we fought, and we won.
And let's look at any country that had socialism.
Every country failed because this system is not sustainable.
This system created a lot of distractions and misery.
So we have to be smarter than that.
You know, we're not going to change.
There are only two systems.
You have freedom and free enterprise, and you have systems where government decides, and political elites on top, how we're going to live and what we're going to do.
And, you know, if you think about it, We're not equal.
We all want different things.
We want to have equal rights to pursue happiness, but we want all different things.
We don't even want to go to travel to the same countries.
If the government forces us to be equal, you have to suppress.
So every socialistic system, it's about suppression.
And we have to value our freedoms because we're the greatest republic that ever existed.
Bernie Sanders never fails to extol the virtues of the Scandinavian countries, socialist countries, he says.
Don't tell that to the president of Denmark.
I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism.
Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear.
Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy.
Denmark is a market economy.
The Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security for its citizens, but it is also a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.
Socialism means government ownership of means of production, as when the Democrats want the government essentially to take over and run healthcare.
A welfare state means transferring money from those who produce to those whom the politicians deem to be worthy of receiving the money.
That's a very different proposition.
And as the president of Denmark says, there's a huge trade-off.
But what does it mean to have a welfare state, you could ask?
Well, for instance, we have universal health coverage.
You don't pay to see your doctor or go to the hospital.
We have a high degree of social security.
You are entitled to benefits if you lose your job, if you get sick, if you are disabled.
We have one year of maternity leave.
We have subsidized early childhood education and care.
And we ensure care for our elderly if they cannot manage on their own.
We also have a strong and free educational system.
Students in institutions for higher education and universities don't pay tuition.
On the contrary, they receive educational grants for studying.
So what is the catch, you could ask?
And the most obvious one is, of course, the high taxes.
The top income tax in Denmark is almost 60%.
We have a 25% sales tax, and on cars, the excise duties is up to 180%.
So in total, Danish taxes come to almost half of our national income compared to around 25% in the US. Quite a substantial difference, you could say.
Finally, leave it to rock star slash world philanthropist Bono to explain to people like Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden and the Democratic Party what creates growth, what creates wealth.
It's not giving somebody something.
It's not taking from somebody and giving it to somebody else.
It's this.
So some of Africa is rising, and some of Africa is stuck.
The question is whether the rising bit will pull the rest of Africa up, or whether the other Africa will weigh the continent down.
Which will it be?
Stakes here aren't just about them.
Imagine for a second this last global recession.
But without the economic growth of China and India.
Without the hundreds of millions of newly minted middle class folks who now buy American and European goods.
Imagine that.
Think about the last five years.
Rockstar preaches capitalism.
Wow!
Sometimes I hear myself and I just can't believe it.
But commerce is real.
That's what you're about here.
It's real.
Aid is just a stopgap.
Commerce, entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid.
Of course we know that.
For reasons that escaped me, Governor Andrew Cuomo somehow, someway got a daytime Emmy, presumably for his press conferences he had every day about the coronavirus.
This New Yorker was less than impressed.
Grandma, did you know that Governor Cuomo is getting an Emmy?
Uh, Emmy?
Yeah.
That stupid son of a is getting an Emmy?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, man.
Him and that brother of his on CNN, people are dying, and they're giving him an Emmy for the way he ran the coronavirus.
Oh, my God.
They're laughing on TV about...
Who's the best looking?
Who's the strongest?
Like, who gives a s*** about those two?
It takes two of them to make one idiot.
And they give it a man, Emmy.
Oh my God.
Jeez.
God must love stupid people.
They sure made a lot of them.
I'm Larry Elder, and we've got a country to save.
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