Why We Are Republicans, again

Republicans believe in free-market capitalism based on private property and peaceful exchange. In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith noted that humans have a natural propensity to “truck, barter and exchange.” Commerce benefits society since it is a positive-sum game in contrast to the Marxist belief that one person’s gain is another person’s loss. By embracing capitalism America has thrived economically and socially.

Yet Democrats still believe in a host of myths about capitalism: American workers were rescued from abusive industrialists by government regulations and labor unions; the excesses of capitalism caused the Great Depression; Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” ended the depression; deregulation leads to chaos and excess.

These and other anti-capitalism myths are thoroughly exploded in How Capitalism Saved America by Thomas DiLorenzo.

Indeed, “capitalism is the source of the generational increase in the American standard of living.” On the other hand excessive government controls caused the problems that capitalism fixed in America. And excessive controls, coupled with high taxes, account for the Western European economies lagging so far behind the United States.