One of the negative results of the wealth created by capitalism is that ignorant, lazy, and/or jealous people have time to complain about capitalism. Typically they do this from comfortable homes filled with indoor plumbing, labor-saving and entertaining appliances; eat good food; drive their car(s) on public roads; receive public education; and keep in touch with friends, family, and information via cell phones; all provided by capitalism or the money it generated.
The best thing about capitalism is that every dollar of wealth is created and every dollar is transferred because a person voluntarily exchanged his/her money for a product or service that he or she wanted more than the money.
The simple formula for becoming wealthy under capitalism is to provide products and/or services that people want at prices that satisfy both you and the buyer. If you do this and help billions of people like Bill Gates did/does, then you too can be super rich. Most Americans can do well by only providing value to a few people, their employers; but if you want to earn more money, provide more value to more people. Capitalism allows anyone to become rich by following the example of most rich people, spend decades providing value to customers.
There is no force in capitalism, every transaction is voluntary. (Only government can force people to do things, e.g., pay taxes, be forced into the military (fortunately in the past), or being forced to buy something such as health insurance (Obamacare).
Customers voluntarily buy or not based on the product’s price and value. If a price is too high, too few people will buy and the provider will lower the price, change, or withdraw the product (maybe losing peoples’ invested money). If the price is right for the buyer and seller and indicates significant demand, then competitors are likely to offer alternatives, improvements, and lower prices.
Nevertheless, some people feel entitled to products they want even if they aren’t willing or able to pay the price. Although they are no worse off than if the product didn’t exist, they complain about capitalism. (Unfortunately some politicians, for their own benefit, encourage, and sometimes reward, this behavior.)
One area where some people feel entitled to products they don’t want to pay for is pharmaceuticals (drugs). (Many companies help poor people obtain costly drugs (paid for by higher prices to others).) But, companies need to recover their costs and earn the profit, usually many years in the future, which is the incentive for risking their money on the average $2 billion investment, years of effort needed to bring each new drug to market, cover the cost of many failed experiments, cover production and marketing costs, and accept the risk of lawsuits from people who claim to be harmed by the drug, etc. Without the potential for profit, few of these businesses and the drugs they create would exist.
(I wish drug companies made larger profits because this would entice more investment and more companies to develop more and better drugs to extend and improve the quality of the lives of more people, maybe your life, maybe mine.)
Recently an enormous price increase was announced for the drug Duraprim. Although the customers or potential customers were no worse off than if the drug didn’t exist, there was a public outcry.
But, capitalism works (although not always so quickly). Another company, Imprimis Pharmaceuticals saw an opportunity and is offering an alternative drug even cheaper than Duraprim originally was. Now the Duraprim product owner sees the possible loss of all sales/income/investment and is reconsidering its price increase. Capitalism rewards and capitalism punishes.
Capitalism is often accused of causing pollution, but, more accurately, pollution is a by-product of modern living. Wealth enables cleaning up and reducing environmental impacts; and capitalism is the best way to generate wealth and a healthy environment for most people. The wealth generated by capitalism paid for the tremendous improvements in our environment in the last 50 years.
I am sure there will always be ignorant, lazy, or jealous people who want an ever larger share, their “fair share”, of the earnings of hardworking people, especially since politicians like President Obama encourage this socialist thinking. Yet after seven years of President Obama’s socialist policies, the rich are much richer but most of us are poorer, many much poorer. This is no surprise to anyone who knows the history of socialist countries, e.g., the Soviet Union, China, or can see current socialist examples, e.g., Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea.
Capitalism is the golden goose that enables people to rise from poverty to wealth. A recent example is the quick rise of hundreds of millions of Chinese people from poverty in the 20-30 years since China embraced capitalism. Capitalism has given the American people a very high standard of living and enabled many people to become fabulously wealthy.
Unfortunately politicians have been slowly killing American capitalism with regulations and taxes designed to favor the special interests that reward the politicians. As a result many millions of good American jobs have been and are still being destroyed, investment slowed, and our labor markets flooded with immigrants. The resulting long term wage stagnation, recent median wage reduction, and loss of wealth has hurt most Americans.
Join a TEA Party and help elect people who will stop controlling capitalism to reward supporters and unleash it to provide opportunities for all Americans.
