Economy: Does Capitalism Only Enrich The Few?

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - "Capitalism enriches the few at the expense of the many", claims Washington Post writer Harold Meyerson (washingtonpost). Really?

The liberal writer bases his claim upon his review of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty, a Paris-based professor of economics. It seems Meyerson is not alone. This book is glorified by the the left-wing and its author is celebrated like a rock star.

At least Meyerson´s interpretation and résumé are quite nonsense. Yes, the rich are getting richer, but so do the majority of the Americans & European, thanks to the capitalism.

In the last century happened a gigantic experiment. A whole country got split in 2 parts. One part was communistic organized, the other capitalistic. After around 40 years the experiment got aborted. Guess in which part the masses (average population) got much richer and in which the average citizen stayed poor?

The experiment was the division of Germany into the capitalistic Western Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) and the communistic part (Deutsche Demokratische Republik = DDR) in the  late 1940s. In the year 1990 both parts reunited. Then the Western part  (and its whole population) was much wealthier than the Eastern part. Even Western Berlin, which had been a capitalistic island in a socialistic ocean, was much richer than Eastern Berlin.

Capitalism is based on profits.They are the motivation to work, to save money, to invest and to innovate. Therefore capitalistic countries like the USA, but also Switzerland or Singapore, have been growing and their population is on average wealthier than the citizens of the rest of the world.

And: The average American - and European too - is today much wealthier than 100 years ago.  No wonder that China, still ruled by a monopolistic communist party, integrated capitalistic elements like stock markets in order to catch up to the Western and capitalistic standard of wealth.

It seems the cult around Piketty and his book is based on envy. The aversion against the extreme wealth of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and likes obstructs the vision of the wealth we all are enjoying.