This file includes the entirety of a capitalism K. That said, students may want to draw from other critique files to supplement the work here

Cap Good---Inequality

Their inequality impact is wrong—capitalism solves inequality

It is indeed true, in one specific sense, that we can say that capitalism causes poverty. It's also equally true that the statement "capitalism causes poverty" is entirely wrong given the way that it is generally meant. That general meaning being that the capitalist plutocrats (and a few lucky running dog lackeys like myself) get to scoop up the profits extorted from the brows of the workers, the bitter tears of their starving waiflings, and this is what makes poor people poor.

In this sense the statement is simply absurd. The poor in today's current world live as the human poor have done since the very invention of agricultures. That $1.90 a day which the World Bank uses as the definition of today's absolute poverty (and, as always, that is at today's U.S. retail prices--we are defining poverty as living in what you can buy in Walmart for less than two bucks per day per person, housing, clothing, healthcare, food, heating, everything, included) is the standard of living of the vast majority of humankind for almost all of the last ten millennia. A very few priests and aristocrats rose above it but not many in any generation.

This does not mean that we should ignore such poverty, nor not work to alleviate it. But it does mean that we've got to switch the question around: What was it that allowed some to leave that poverty behind and what is it allowing even more to do so? The answer being this odd mixture of capitalism and free markets that we have. Starting around and about 1750 in Britain, this is the only economic system ever which has appreciably and sustainably raised the standard of living of the average person. And if we acknowledge this then we can indeed start to say that capitalism causes poverty because the people who don't have it remain poor, while those oppressed by the capitalist plutocrats (and of course, their lackey dog runners such as myself) get rich, as have all of us in the currently rich countries.

All of which is a lead in to this same point being extremely well made by Ricardo Hausman:

Our research has uncovered that in the developing world, there are enormous differences in productivity within countries, across their different regions. For example, in the US, the richest state, which is probably Connecticut, is about twice as rich as the poorest state, which is either Mississippi or West Virginia. The difference is a factor of two. In Mexico, the difference between Chiapas and Nuevo León is a factor of nine. Similar differences exist between the Indian states of Bihar and Goa or between the cities of Patna and Bangalore. These differences in income are mainly differences in productivity. It’s not the result of what share of the pie goes to capital and what size of the pie goes to labor. It is differences in the sizes of the pie.

So there are these enormous differences in productivity that make the productive places rich and the unproductive places poor. The poor people are not being exploited. They’re being excluded from the higher productivity activities. It’s not that the capitalists are taking a very large share of what they produce. It’s just that they produce very little in the first place.

As Dierdrie McCloskey is wont to note, the only thing worse than being oppressed by a capitalist is not being oppressed by a capitalist (although that might originate with Joan Robinson if memory serves):

The alternative is woefully insufficient to resolve inequality—only capitalism solves inequality

Siebold 15 - Steve Siebold, one of the world’s foremost experts in the field of critical thinking and mental toughness training. He is the author of seven books, two of which are international bestsellers and have been called the gold standard in the field of psychological performance training. A former professional athlete (Top 500 tennis player in the world), Siebold could never understand why on some days he could triumph over the world’s top-ranked players, and other days would lose miserably. He started studying the mental aspects of performance to better understand the thoughts, beliefs, philosophies and actions of world-class performers. After his professional tennis days were over, he continued studying mental toughness and for the past 20 years has worked with Fortune 500 sales and management teams, professional athletes, entrepreneurs and other super achiever to improve performance. Steve’s clients include Fortune 500 companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Procter & Gamble and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as thousands of direct salespeople in 10 countries worldwide. As a professional speaker, Steve has been awarded the Certified Professional Speaker designation from the National Speakers Association. Steve ranks among the top 1% of income earners in the professional speaking industry worldwide. Steve has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, Good Morning America, Fox Business, BBC Television, CBS News, and hundreds of other television, radio, newspapers, magazine and online sites around the globe. His books, videos and audio programs have been sold in 30 countries around the world. In December 2001, Steve was appointed to the National Charity Awards Committee, Chaired by President George W. Bush, 15 ("Capitalism Can Defeat Economic Inequality," Huffington Post, 9-11-2015, Available Online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-siebold/capitalism-can-defeat-eco_b_8123186.html, Accessed on 7-1-2017 //JJ)

The answer to fixing the deficit and fixing income inequality is innovation driven through capitalism. Many of the best ideas that work in anything are the non-linear strategies, or the non-obvious ways of getting things done. When the obvious doesn’t work, which it isn’t right now, it’s time to look at the problem in a non-linear fashion.

If you want to help balance the budget and reduce the federal deficit, instead of putting a gun to the head of the wealthy and forcing them to pay more in taxes, play to the vanity of large corporations and sell them the naming writes to streets, parks and other publicly held properties. Instead of I-95 it could be Johnson & Johnson Highway (or whatever company). Imagine that: billions of dollars come trickling into the government and it’s some of the best advertising a large corporation could buy. It’s no different than legalized pot in Colorado and other states bringing in millions of dollars to help support the economy.

We also need to educate the poor and the middle class on how to earn more money. Through capitalism, we can get the ultra-wealthy to sponsor the middle class for education purposes in exchange for a write off. It’s value for value. Capitalism built this country and it’s capitalism that will solve our problems.

The sustained rise in inequality is years in the making, but the truth is making money has never been easier because there are so many problems waiting to be solved. We just need to teach people how to do it.

The reality is that while higher education and even continuing education courses are certainly great accomplishments, they don’t teach the financial basics of how to get ahead and succeed in a free market economy. After studying the wealthy for more than 30 years, most millionaires will tell you the way they look at money compared to how the rest of the world looks at it is not even in the same ballpark. It’s like the two groups are operating on totally different planets.

If you’re one of those people whose financial situation isn’t quite where you want it to be, start focusing your mental energy where it belongs: on the big money! Making money is easy once you know how to do it.

In the meantime, the only way to close the income inequality gap is through non-linear ideas and strategies driven through capitalism.

Inequality is improving and it is thanks to capitalism

Boaz 16 - David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute and has played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement. He is the author of The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom and the editor of The Libertarian Reader. Boaz is a provocative commentator and a leading authority on domestic issues such as education choice, drug legalization, the growth of government, and the rise of libertarianism. Boaz is the former editor of New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981. The earlier edition of The Libertarian Mind, titled Libertarianism: A Primer, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “a well-researched manifesto of libertarian ideas.” His other books include The Politics of Freedom and the Cato Handbook for Policymakers. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Slate, and he wrote the entry on libertarianism for Encyclopedia Britannica. He is a frequent guest on national television and radio shows, and has appeared on ABC’s Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, CNN’s Crossfire, NPR’s Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered, The McLaughlin Group, Stossel, The Independents, Fox News Channel, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other media, 16 ("Capitalism, Global Trade, and the Reduction in Poverty and Inequality," Cato Institute, 4-14-2016, Available Online at https://www.cato.org/blog/capitalism-global-trade-reduction-poverty-inequality, Accessed on 7-1-2017 //JJ)

Drawing on a new World Bank study, Washington Post columnist Charles Lane today notes “a vast reduction in poverty and income inequality worldwide over the past quarter-century” – despite what you might think if you listen to Pope Francis, Bernie Sanders, and other voices prominent in the media.

Specifically, the world’s Gini coefficient — the most commonly used measure of income distribution — has fallen from 0.69 in 1988 to 0.63 in 2011. (A higher Gini coefficient connotes greater inequality, up to a maximum of 1.0.)

That may seem modest until you consider that the estimate’s author, former World Bank economist Branko Milanovic, thinks we may be witnessing the first period of declining global inequality since the Industrial Revolution.

Note that this hopeful figure applies to the world’s population as though every individual lived in one big country. When Milanovic assessed the distribution of income between nations, adjusted for population, the improvement was even more striking: a decline in the Gini coefficient from 0.60 in 1988 to 0.48 in 2014.

The global middle class expanded, as real income went up between 70 percent and 80 percent for those around the world who were already earning at or near the global median, including some 200 million Chinese, 90 million Indians and 30 million people each in Indonesia, Egypt and Brazil.

Those in the bottom third of the global income distribution registered real income gains between 40 percent and 70 percent, Milanovic reports. The share of the world’s population living on $1.25 or less per day — what the World Bank defines as “absolute poverty” — fell from 44 percent to 23 percent.

So maybe this is a result of all the agitation on behalf of a more moral or planned economy? No, says Lane, citing Milanovic:

Did this historic progress, with its overwhelmingly beneficial consequences for millions of the world’s humblest inhabitants, occur because everyone finally adopted “democratic socialism”? Was it due to a conscious, organized effort to construct a “moral economy” as per Vatican standards?

To the contrary: The big story after 1988 is the collapse of communism and the spread of market institutions, albeit imperfect ones, to India, China and Latin America. This was a process mightily abetted by freer flows of international trade and private capital, which were, in turn, promoted by a bipartisan succession of U.S. presidents and Congresses.

The extension of capitalism fueled economic growth, which Milanovic correctly calls “the most powerful tool for reducing global poverty and inequality.”

This is the good news about the world today. Indeed, it’s the most important news about our world. We hear so much about poverty, inequality, gaps, resource depletion, and the like, it’s a wonder any NPR listeners can bear to get out of bed in the morning. But as the economic historian Deirdre McCloskey says, this is the “Great Fact,” the most important fact about our world today – the enormous and unprecedented growth in living standards that began in the western world around 1700. She calls it “a factor of sixteen”: we moderns consume at least 16 times the food, clothing, housing, and education that our ancestors did in London in the 18th century. And this vast increase in wealth that began in northwestern Europe, mostly Britain and the Netherlands, has now spread to most of Europe, the United States, Japan, and increasingly to the rest of the world.

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