Difference between revisions of "Portal:Economic Freedom"

One way to understand American success is to look at wealth and poverty in the U.S. Americans have enormous wealth (though there are countries that rival us in that) and we also have poverty. Both are the direct result of the human condition, American society, our government as constructed by the constitution, and government policy quite apart from the constitution. Both wealth and poverty are badly misunderstood, which is a problem for honest politics. To understand them is to strengthen our basis for making intelligent political decisions and dispersing the fog of political marketing.
Wealth and poverty can be thought of as two sides of the same coin. If you understand wealth, you begin to understand poverty (and vice-versa). So, what is wealth? CW has its own concept of its meaning and it is that which we speak of here.
It will be helpful to first say what it isn't.

It is quite common to confound wealth and money. They are not the same. Suppose you have a large pile of gold coins. That makes you rich, but not wealthy if that is all you have. Gold is a static asset. You can use it to buy things, but it creates nothing unless it is used to enable assets that do produce wealth. Once spent for consumption, nothing is left behind to generate a continuing stream of spending power.

George Gilder^[1] uses the illustration of oil rich countries. Several countries with the highest per-capita spending power are in the middle east. Their spending power comes from their oil assets. They can buy Rolls Royces, private Boeings, and build office buildings. But those are perishable things which, in themselves, generate no further income unless they are put to use in wealth generating ways. When the oil is gone, those countries could become as poor as they were before the oil was discovered. They are rich, but have little wealth. Venezuela has much the same problem today, but is further down the road. They are a formerly rich country in the process of going broke.

Wealth is having assets (such as a capability) and capacity that will generate future income.

Example, Steve Jobs had wealth - arguably, long before he was rich. His assets were useful knowledge, the vision to use it, the capacity to work for that vision, faith in the market place and a government that guaranteed him the freedom to create something that we did not know we needed until he presented it to us. There are many millions of other such examples created by more ordinary Americans who started from nothing and built their own small (and large) fortunes. There is a small amount of truth to old adage that "it takes money to make money", but it would be completely untrue to say that it takes money to create wealth. This will be discussed within this topic.

Poverty can be thought of as lacking that which is wealth.

Okay, that is somewhat simplistic. One would not say that rich middle eastern countries are living in poverty. But, having little wealth (as CW uses the word), they have the potential to do so in the future if they are not able to transition to non-perishable income producing assets - all of which depend on knowledge, work, and a few other things that will be discussed in the articles assigned to this category.

Viewing poverty as the absence of wealth is more than simplistic. It also denies us the understanding to be gained by looking at the coin from both sides. And just as understanding wealth helps to understand poverty, understanding poverty provides insights into wealth.

This category is the place to insert articles about wealth, poverty, economics, and economic freedom in general and how they are effected by government policy and social customs and mores.
It is also the place to put articles that discuss capitalism and socialism as contrasting approaches.

1. ↑ Gilder, George. Wealth and Poverty. New York. Basic Books, Inc. 1981