Consider: The United States puts the poverty line for an American living alone at about $11,500. A person living in the United States off this meager [annual] income, adjusting for the cost of living, is still among the richest 14% of people alive today, earning more than six times the income of the typical person worldwide. In contrast, the countries that tried socialism – the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and North Korea – were hellholes. Socialist governments murdered about 100 million (and perhaps many more) of their own citizens…. In socialist countries no one got rich, except maybe a few Communist Party officials. Socialism was especially bad for poor proletariat workers, the very people the system was supposed to help the most. So, sure, capitalism has problems, as [filmmaker] Michael Moore and OWS [Occupy Wall Street] can show you, with perhaps some exaggeration here and there. But socialism was a disaster. In short, we had the debate between capitalism and socialism, and capitalism won.
-Prof Jason Brennan (Why Not Capitalism?)
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
