|
"Wealth, when you get right down to it, is not the cause of poverty." --
Mitchell
B. Pearlstein, paraphrasing George Gilder
"Ultimately it is only wealth that can reduce poverty."
-- Thomas Sowell
"If
we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In
the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the poverty and
not the difference. Wealth is good. ... wealth is not a world-wide
round-robin of purse snatching, and ... the thing that makes you rich doesn't
make me poor.
... Without Productivity, there wouldn't be any economics, or any economic
thinking, good or bad, or any pizza, or anything else. We would sit
around and stare at rocks, and maybe later have some for dinner. ... Wealth
is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable. In fact,
productivity is fabulously expandable."--
P.J.
O'Rourke in Eat
the Rich
(Again) "Wealth
is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable. In fact,
productivity is fabulously expandable." -- P.J.
O'Rourke in Eat
the Rich
"of
the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that
has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date,
virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of
resources from rich to poor. The
potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways
of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently
limitless potential of increasing production." --Robert
Lucas
|
"...evidence
abounds that the fundamental cause of Third World poverty is not First
World greed ... it is the economic, political and social obstacles
that developing nations themselves raise to progress by their aspiring
poor."
-- Katherine
Kersten in the Minnesota
Star Tribune,March
20, 1996
"The
trade barriers at the borders of the rich world may have disappeared, but
if [a banana picker in the Central African Republic] wants to sell his
bananas abroad he first has to get them onto a ship bound for America or
Europe. That takes 116 days, and an incredible 38 signatures -- each one
an opportunity for some official to collect a bribe." -- Tim
Harford, The New York Times
"Despite
the head-shaking of the foes of free trade, it does seem that the ability
to actually sell one's stuff would constitute an immediate improvement
in one's economic prospects." -- David
M. Brown
| "When
government will expropriate any wealth that people create, the present
value of future output can actually be less than the value of the country's
tangible resources. The power of predatory government to destroy wealth
is truly awesome." -- Arnold
Kling |
"Look
around: It just isn't true that countries get rich at each other's expense.
Would
America be better off now if Europe and Japan had stayed poor after 1945?
Did its jobs migrate, its economy stagnate, leaving rising poverty and
chronic unemployment? Not exactly: America thrived. One of the things that
helped it after 1945 was expanding opportunities for trade with other rich
countries. Americans would be worse off today if Europe and Japan had stayed
poor. What's changed? Why isn't this still true? In my view: Nothing; it's
still true. The faster India grows, the better off every other country
will be... I do not regard the prospect of global capitalism as "harrowing."
I regard it as the best opportunity for relieving human misery the world
has ever seen." -- Clive
Crook, deputy editor of The
Economist,in
the February 25th, 1997 issue of Slate,
in a letter to John Judis
"I
observed the talks and was shocked not only by the riotous atmosphere,
but also by the protesters' misconceptions about trade, the WTO and the
developing world. As an Indian national, I know only too well how lack
of trade, investment and freedom keeps the world's developing nations in
a state of perpetual poverty and environmental degradation. Sadly,
the largely middle-class Americans who trashed Seattle last week had little
if any comprehension of this fact."
-- Barun
Mitra, in a column in the Wall
Street Journal 12-9-99.
Mitra heads the The
Liberty Institute, in New Delhi, India
"The
'progressive' Left, even while wailing about international poverty, has
long decried the Westernization of the 'developing world', the polite
term for societies
kept poor by socialist governments."
-- from
The
Free Market Means Civilizationby
Lew Rockwell, President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, originally published
in Spintechmag.com,12-22-2000.
"Fortunately, political freedom and economic progress are natural partners.
Despite capitalism's lingering reputation as the source of all the world's
evils, the fact remains that every single democracy is a capitalist country.
Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny
cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy
of unrestrained intervention. It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with
the spontaneous, self-organizing phenomenon called capitalism. But,
of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism
is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon."
-- Michael
Rothschild in BIONOMICS:
Economy as Ecosystem
"Capitalism
is not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism,' because
it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions
they can mutually agree to." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
"Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered
economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources
and wealth." -- Julian
Simon
"The
market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries.
It is an invention of civilization."
-- Mikhail
Gorbachev, June 8, 1990
"How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources
whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned
Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing." -- P.J.
O'Rourke in Eat
the Rich
"In
terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest continent. It
has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium,
90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric
power, 65 percent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland
as well as other natural resources. Despite the natural wealth, Africa
is home to the world's most impoverished and abused people. Of the 41 black
African nations, only three (Senegal, Botswana and Mauritius) allow their
people the right to vote and choose their own leaders. Only two (Botswana
and Senegal) permit freedom of expression and criticism of government policies.
In countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Sudan, Chad and
others, ethnic genocide has taken the lives of untold millions of innocent
victims. Slavery is still practiced in the Sudan and Mauritania."
-- Dr.
Walter E. Williams
"Another
current catch-phrase is the complaint that the nations of the world are
divided into 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' Observe that the 'haves'
are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots'
have not." -- Ayn
Rand
"What
transformed the world of horse-drawn carriages, sailing ships, and windmills
step by step into a world of airplanes and electronics was the laissez-faire
principle." -- Ludwig
von Mises in The
Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
"Capitalism
is not just a system for producing wealth. It is, above all else, a system
based on the noblest moral principle: the protection of the individual's
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Free markets are
founded on the individual's right to pursue a career, trade the products
of his effort, and enjoy the wealth he has earned without having to seek
permission from others or pay ransom for the privilege of living." --
Robert
W. Tracinski
"For
years, statist development experts had sought top-down solutions, operating
under the implicit assumption that poor people in the Third World were
largely incapable of entrepreneurship. De Soto utterly rejected that patronizing
viewpoint, and, beginning in his native Peru, focused on the lack of formal
property rights as the source of poverty in poor countries." --Gene
Healy
"The
poor of India are far better off than they would have been if India’s economic
liberalisation had not taken place, and there are far less of them than
there would have been. This is not because they have died of starvation,
but because of ... 'the explosive growth of the middle class'. Free markets
aren’t magic, and past inequities don’t disappear as soon as the economy
is opened up, but they are better than any alternative. ... One of the
most pernicious myths of the last two centuries is of the unequal gains
from capitalism. A landmark study titled 'Growth Is Good for the Poor',
by David Dollar and Aart Kraay, surveys available economic information
from 137 countries, over four decades, and demolishes the myth of the 'trickle-down
effect'. In an open economy, wealth does not trickle down gradually from
the rich to the poor simultaneously. Instead, 'incomes of the poor rise
proportionately with average incomes'. Read the full report..." -- Amit
Varma
"Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism
is a natural phenomenon." -- Michael Rothschild
"Any stray mediocrity
rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind -- and
... no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun."
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas
Shrugged
"Cuba's poverty is caused by the crackpot Marxist
doctrines imposed by its sociopathic ruler and promoted by half the liberal
arts professors on American faculties." -- David Horowitz
"Bad and discredited ideas, it seems, never die. Neither do they
fade away. Instead, they keep turning up, like bad pennies or Godzilla
in the old Japanese movies." -- Murray
N. Rothbard
.
"One
of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every
stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous
before, time and again." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
.
"There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find
defenders among the ablest men." -- Prof. John E. E. D. Acton
.
"The study of history is a powerful antidote to
contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib
assumptions, which seem to us noble and plausible, have been tested before,
not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be,
at great human cost, wholly false." -- Celebrated Historian Paul
Johnson
.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it." ~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1906
.
"When Western countries in the past were as poor as Third World countries
are today, these Western countries nevertheless had one big advantage:
There was no large
and influential class of the intelligentsia to impede their progress
with unsubstantiated theories and counterproductive propaganda." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
"Incessant
preoccupation with statistical disparities is one of the luxuries of an
affluent and sheltered life. Do not expect someone who has ever had
to go hungry to get upset because some people can only afford pizza while
others can afford caviar." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell (who began life hungry)
.
"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics,
which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people
consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have
a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this
state of ignorance."-- Murray N. Rothbard
.
"Our supplies of natural resources are not finite in any
economic sense. Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural
resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural
resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and
will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in future years."
-- Julian
Simon
.
"It is your mind that matters economically, as much or
more than your mouth or hands. In the long run, the most important economic
effect of population size and growth is the contribution of additional
people to our stock of useful knowledge. And this contribution is large
enough in the long run to overcome all the costs of population growth."
-- Julian
Simon
.
"Wealth may provoke envy, but it seldom provokes the truly venomous levels
of resentment provoked by achievement. There is no surer way for a minority
group to become hated than to enter a country as destitute immigrants and
then, through long hours of hard work, rise to a level of prosperity above
that of the indigenous population." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
.
"Those who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results
of those cultures are so grossly unequal." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
"Arnold
writes: 'If you think that culture matters but institutions do not, look
at North and South Korea. If you think that culture does not matter at
all, look at differences among different ethnic groups within countries.'
"South
Korea/North Korea per capita income ratio: 14.[14
to 1] (Source: CIA World Factbook)
"American
Asian/American black average household income ratio: 1.9.[1.9
to 1] (Source: U.S. Census)
"From
a global standpoint, it sure looks like economic policy (a term I prefer
to the vague 'institutions') matters a lot more than culture." -- Bryan
Caplan
See:
"where the mainstream development economists' writings drip with condescension
for the apparently helpless poor, Bauer's words glow with good will and
respect. The inhabitants of the developing world are people, he reminded
us. They need freedom too." HERE.
-
"The idea that foreign aid is a route out of poverty and political
instability is not only bankrupted but a cruel and evil hoax as well."
-- Dr.
Walter E. Williams
"Foreign
aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to
rich people in poor countries." -- Douglas Casey
| "If
concern
for human poverty and suffering were one's primary motive, one would seek
to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask : Why did some
nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved
material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in sub-human misery?
History and specifically the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the
19th century would give an immediate answer : capitalism is the only system
that enables men to produce abundance - and the key to capitalism is individual
freedom." -- Ayn
Rand, "Requiem for Man", Chapter 24 of Capitalism:
The Unknown Ideal |
| "The benefits of securing the freedom to create wealth are significant
-- especially for the poor. 'In nations iin the top fifth of economic
freedom, the average income of the poorest 10 percent of the population
was $6,877 compared to just $823 in the least free nations,' according
to the 2004
Economic Freedom Report, which ranks 123 countries on such policies
as taxation, property-rights protection, and freedom to trade internationally.
The report also shows that poor countries that embrace economic freedom
accumulate wealth faster: From 1980 to 2000 poor countries whose
economies were relatively free of government interference had economic
growth rates of 5.2 percent per year, compared to 3.4 percent for all economically
free countries." -- Gabriel
Gasave |
http://freedomkeys.com/gap.htm
"Western civilization was the child and product of reason -- via ancient
Greece. In all other civilizations, reason has always been the menial
servant -- the handmaiden -- of mysticism. You may observe the results.
It is only Western culture that has ever been dominated -- imperfectly,
incompletely, precariously and at rare intervals -- but still, dominated
by reason. You may observe the results of that." -- Ayn Rand
.
"Today, in the Twenty-First Century, an age of jet aircraft,
personal computers, wireless telecommunications, laser surgery, and incipient
space travel, the mentality with which many presumably educated, intelligent
people approach matters of economics and business is, however astonishing
it may seem, still that of the Dark Ages."-- George
Reisman
.
"Most Americans living below the official poverty line
have air conditioning, microwaves and VCRs. About half have a car or truck.
Moreover, most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution
in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some point since then.
... People who are genuinely poor all their lives still exist, but only
about 3 percent of the American population remains in the bottom 20 percent
for as long as a decade." -- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
.
"Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered
economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources
and wealth." -- Julian
Simon
.
"America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices
to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued
their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes."
-- Ayn Rand
.
"From the fact that people are very different it follows
that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their
actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position
would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material
equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each
other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the
same time." -- F. A. Hayek
.
"If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must
necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution
of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings;
yet, striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political
inequality."
-- Tibor
R. Machan in Private
Rights and Public Illusions
.
"There is all the difference in the world between treating
people equally and attempting to make them equal." -- F.A. Hayek
"Here
is a truism about the wealth of nations: Zero-sum games do not increase
it. Historically, the welfare of the poor always--always--depends on putting
people in a position where their best shot at prosperity is to find a way
of making other people better off. The key to long-run welfare never has
been and never will be a matter of making sure the game’s best players
lose." -- David
Schmidtz
.
"...the question becomes, are you going to have everyone play by the same
rules, or are you going to try to rectify the shortcomings, errors and
failures of the entire cosmos? Because those things are wholly incompatible.
If you're going to have people play by the same rules, that can be enforced
with a minimum amount of interference with people's freedom. But if you're
going to try to make the entire cosmos right and just, somebody has got
to have an awful lot of power to impose what they think is right on an
awful lot of other people. What we've seen, particularly in the 20th century,
is that putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous."
-- Thomas Sowell, in an interview
in Salon11-10-99
.
"The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private
interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights
of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others."
-- Ayn Rand
.
"So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in
mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create 'social
justice' is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom,
and all human dignity." -- Thomas Sowell
.
"Anything
other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower
living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship
and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed
only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the
imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew
Rockwell
.
"I consider socialism an obscene ideology, doomed to end
in either total self destruction or total dictatorship." -- Pamela
Hemelrijk, Leiden, Holland, April 3, 2004.04.16
"All socialism involves slavery." -- Herbert Spencer
.
"There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders
among the ablest men." -- Prof. John E. E. D. Acton
.
"The secret dread of modern intellectuals,
liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of
their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended
to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia
[was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality
of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this [total
control of all human activity and the brutalizing and murder of millions
of citizens] is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced."
-- Ayn Rand
"Many
Western journalists, in contrast to revolutionaries, do not treat ideas
seriously, and therefore fail to recognize the power of ideas in action.
They don't realize that chaos and brutality must accompany a determined
effort to implement ... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof.
Morgan O. Reynolds
.
"The
Nazis are well remembered for murdering well over 11 million people in
the implementation of their slogan, 'The public good before the private
good,' the Chinese Communists for murdering 62 million people in the
implementation of theirs, 'Serve the people,' and the Soviet Communists
for murdering more than 60 million people in the implementation of Karl
Marx's slogan,
'from each according to his ability, to each according
to his need.' "
--
Rick Gaber
"No amount of IMF, World Bank and other handout interventions
can bring prosperity to repressive nations." -- Walter Williams, here
.
"Scratch the surface of an endemic problem -- famine,
illness, poverty -- and you invariably find a politician at the source."--
Simon Carr, in his
review of The
Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto
"You
can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming
consumers. ... Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are
to the devil. Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil."
-- Walter
E. Williams
.
"When will the world wake up and realize that most politicians, especially
in the poorest countries of the world, are nothing more than glorified
gangsters who view government as simply a fiercely-guarded monopoly on
every form of compulsion and extortion to be perpetrated in a specific
geographical area? Why do you think the largest amounts of 'foreign
aid' extracted from the gullible diplomats of wealthier countries wind
up in those politicians' pockets or Swiss bank accounts, despite all the
virtuous-sounding rhetoric?" -- Bert
Rand
.
"How a peaceful, uncrowded place with ample wherewithal stays poor is hard
to explain. How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no
resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government
turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing."-- P.J.
O'Rourke in Eat
the Rich
.
"This
government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which
it got out of its way." -- Henry
David Thoreau in his essay, "Civil Disobedience"
.
"I
own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive."
-- Thomas
Jefferson to James Madison, 12/20/1787
.
"The
trick, of course, is that doing nothing in the public policy world allows
much more to be done in the real world." -- Thomas
Hazlett in the March, 1997 issue of Reason
.
"Government
does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have
plenty of government and nothing of anything else." -- P.J. O’Rourke
.
"The
only justifiable purpose of political institutions is to assure the unhindered
development of the individual." -- Albert
Einstein
.
"One
of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce,
subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain."
-- Dr.
Thomas Sowell
.
"Many
Western journalists, in contrast to revolutionaries, do not treat ideas
seriously, and therefore fail to recognize the power of ideas in action.
They don't realize that chaos and brutality must accompany a determined
effort to implement ... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof.
Morgan O. Reynolds
"No 'middle class' worth the name aspires to economic benefits without
bothering to acquire the skills to produce the wealth to make those benefits
sustainable." -- Holman Jenkins
.
"To
embrace a collectivist
system ... and thereby jeopardize sustained economic growth, inevitably
misallocate scarce resources, and almost necessarily perpetuate destitution,
hardly merits moral acclaim. Indeed, intellectuals in general and church
leaders in particular who bewail the continued existence of poverty absolutely
defined, and who state that they yearn for a world in which the hungry
are fed, the naked clothed, and the destitute housed, yet who ceaselessly
undermine the very system which, to date, has best done what they claim
to value most, are, surely, moral imbeciles." --The
Reverend Doctor John K. Williams
"Capitalism
is not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism,' because
it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions
they can mutually agree to." -- Dr.Thomas
Sowell
"Socialism
in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual
could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas
Sowell
"Anything
other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower
living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship
and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed
only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the
imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew
Rockwell |
