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Roughly half a million Colombians took to the streets of the nation's main cities on Sunday to protest against far-left President Gustavo Petro.
The post Half a Million Colombians Protest Against Socialist Healthcare Reform appeared first on Breitbart.
Police said they laid white roses on the anniversary of Hitler's birth and posed for photos and one gave the Nazi salute.
The post Four Germans to be Prosecuted After Caught by Police Laying Roses at Adolf Hitler Birthplace appeared first on Breitbart.
Venezuela's socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro attempted to issue a message in English to U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday to discuss the upcoming expiration of Biden's generous oil and gas sanctions relief package to his regime.
The post Venezuela’s Maduro Sends Devastating Message to Biden in English: ‘I You Want I Want I You to Want I Do Want’ appeared first on Breitbart.
The California economy should serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation, showcasing the negative impact of illegal immigration combined with liberal social welfare programs that discourage citizens from working.
The ‘Californication’ of the United States would exacerbate illegal immigration, depress market-driven labor rates, expand welfare rolls, significantly raise taxes on those employed, and prompt the government to address the diminished standard of living by imposing an exorbitant minimum wage.
Increasing the labor pool through illegal immigration drives down wages. The most basic law of economics, supply and demand, states that when supply increases and demand remains the same, price goes down.
You need water to live, but water is cheap because there is a large supply. Gold and diamonds are less of a necessity for maintaining life, but they are expensive because there is a large demand and limited supply. If tomorrow a new goldmine was discovered which quadrupled the supply of gold, the price of gold would go down.
Illegal immigrants increase the supply of workers, which brings down the price of labor, i.e., the wage. And although it is true that illegal immigrants are concentrated in certain industries, the decline in wages affects all industries.
The industries with the highest percentage of illegal immigrants are construction, cleaning, maintenance, food service, garment manufacturing, and agricultural occupations. The Americans who were displaced from those industries went to work in other industries, increasing the quantity of labor and driving down wages.
Using California as an example of what some people want to do to the entire country: illegal immigrants comprise 9% of the population. The market wage for workers was low because of the large pool of immigrants.
The Democratic legislation addressed this issue by imposing a draconian minimum wage of $16 an hour for all workers and $20 for those working in fast food.
The state also has liberal unemployment and welfare rules. As market wages drop and unemployment or welfare benefits increase, people are disincentivized to continue working.
In many Democrat-led states, workers can earn more on benefits than they can working. And a minimum wage of $20 an hour will not fix this problem. Jobs like landscaping and construction used to pay more than $20 an hour.
And jobs in maintenance and janitorial services, while not the highest paid, used to have job security and benefits when they were done on the books, by legal workers.
The Americans who lost those career jobs to illegals cannot make up the lost income by flipping burgers. Removing the illegal immigrants from the labor force will cause the natural rate of wages in landscaping, construction, and maintenance to increase, motivating people to go back to work.
Not surprisingly, as a result of its socialist policies, California has the highest poverty rate in the country when the cost of living is considered (the supplemental poverty measure).
The high taxes, high minimum wage, and lack of law enforcement have caused a steady exodus of companies, resulting in rising unemployment. However, the minimum wage only applies to legal workers, not illegals, so many of the unemployed citizens were replaced by illegal immigrants.
And now, the taxpayers are paying for it in the form of unemployment or welfare benefits. However, the illegals do not pay taxes. So, the tax burden on each legal worker is increasing, which then disincentivizes people from working. And the circle goes on and on, spiraling steadily downward.
At the national level, Democrats in favor of illegal immigration claim that low unemployment rates in the US are proof that “we need illegal immigrants” to fill those jobs. However, this claim ignores the labor force participation rate, which took a nosedive in 2020 and has never returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The labor force participation rate refers to the percentage of the working-age population (usually defined as individuals aged 16 and older) who are either employed or actively seeking employment.
People who are on unemployment are still counted as being part of the labor force because they are allegedly looking for a job. Only those who give up or go on permanent welfare or benefits are no longer counted.
There are two important points here. By liberalizing unemployment benefits, increasing the amount and the duration of the payments, the Biden Administration gets to count these people as part of the labor force.
And yet, the labor force participation rate is declining. This brings us to the second point. The federal government spent $1.3 trillion on welfare programs in 2023. If social benefits were not plentiful, more people would remain in the workforce.
In California, the labor force participation rate has been trending steadily downward since 1989. Currently, only 62% of legal adults are part of California’s labor force. Meanwhile, California has one of the highest incidences of tax in the country.
It also has 28% of the total homeless population of the United States, with the number having increased by 40% over the past 5 years. In short, California is a mess of outcomes that could not happen in a free-market economy that enforced immigration laws and was tough on crime.
According to Pew Research, 87% of Democrat voters agree that illegal immigrants only do jobs Americans won’t do. This notion is completely false. The reality is, there is no job Americans won’t do if they are paid for it.
Removing the illegals and canceling the benefits programs will bring about an equilibrium between wages and labor force participation. Taxes could be cut, and the minimum wage for unskilled work could go back to a reasonable market rate.
People would be incentivized to work and to better themselves, while the burger-flipping jobs would revert to the high school and college students who previously held them.
The post Illegal Immigrants Do Jobs Americans Collecting Benefits Won’t Do appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The ruling socialist regime in Venezuela documented an 18-percent increase in oil output in the first trimester of 2024 when compared to the same period in 2023, according to information published by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in its latest April 2024 report.
The post Venezuela Oil Production Grew 18% After Biden Sanctions Relief appeared first on Breitbart.
Venezuela's socialist regime announced this week the launching of a reality television show called M Factor, where local musicians will compete to have their songs become part of dictator Nicolás Maduro's official soundtrack for the upcoming sham presidential election.
The post ‘The M Factor’: Venezuela Launches Reality Show to Pick Theme Songs for Maduro’s Sham Election appeared first on Breitbart.
Tareck El Aissami, former Venezuelan oil minister, has resurfaced in handcuffs, charged with treason, money laundering, and corruption.
The post Socialist Purge: Venezuela Charges Hezbollah-Linked Former Oil Minister with ‘Treason’ appeared first on Breitbart.
“The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” – JFK
Capitalism and free markets are the primary drivers of wealth creation while also protecting personal freedoms. Socialism and government intervention tend to erode personal freedoms and produce only temporary prosperity, addressing specific issues for certain groups while impoverishing others and overlooking the underlying causes of problems.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan was a good example of how ineffective socialism is at solving economic problems. By sending a $1,500 check to every poor person, he claimed, incorrectly, to have done more to reduce poverty than any other president.
Firstly, the American Rescue Plan drove up the US debt and pushed inflation to levels not seen in decades. Additionally, the $1,500 did not reduce poverty. The poverty threshold for a family of 3 is $25,820 per year. So, unless these families fell short by exactly $1,500, he did not bring them above the threshold that year. And unless he planned to send checks to all 37.9 million Americans living below the poverty line every year, forever, he has not eliminated poverty.
The only way for these people to rise out of poverty is to get a better job with a higher salary. So, the solution is free markets, not socialism.
The US ranks among the most capitalist countries in the world. In a capitalist society, the means of production are controlled by private businesses and private citizens, not the government. The economy runs according to the market, not central planning. Prices, wages, quantities, and types of production are determined by the market, with information transmitted from buyers to sellers millions of times per day.
In a capitalist society, a fast-food restaurant has the right to make a fish and peanut butter milkshake, but by refusing to buy that product, citizens signal that they do not want it, and the producer will either stop selling it or go out of business.
On average, the more government intervention there is in the economy, the lower the standard of living will be. As a hypothetical example, if the peanut butter and fish milkshake company had a government subsidy, it could remain in business, even though no one wants that product. The money the government spends supporting the unwanted fish and peanut butter milkshake company could have been spent on border security, which is one of the only purviews of government in capitalism.
In a true capitalist society, the government only has three responsibilities: maintaining courts and public security for protecting personal property rights, building infrastructure, and protecting the border. The further the government deviates from these limited mandates, the more money is wasted.
This report will compare four countries: the US, which has an economic freedom score calculated by Freedom House of 8.22, and the more socialist countries, Germany with an economic freedom score of 7.85, China with a score of 6.2, and Venezuela with a score of 3.34.
Standard of living can be quantified in the Quality of Life Index, which ranks countries based on the level of wealth, comfort, necessities, and material goods available to citizens. It also examines physical and mental health and wellness. Germany, with a score of 91.26, ranks slightly higher than the US at 89.11, but this is probably because of obesity and obesity-related illnesses, which decrease the health indicator in the US. But on some level, obesity is a positive sign of wealth. China, at 82.80, and Venezuela, at 71.66, rank worse off, with a lower standard of living.
While socialist countries offer free or heavily subsidized higher education, the United States boasts a diverse array of prestigious universities and colleges, many of which are privately funded. This competitive landscape fosters innovation and excellence in education, attracting students from around the world. The US has 3,100 universities, with 53 ranked in the top 100 globally. China has 2,495 universities, with 6 ranked in the top 100; Germany has 461 universities, with only 1 ranked in the top 100; and Venezuela has 73 universities, with 0 ranked in the top 100.
In terms of the average number of years of education citizens have, in Germany and the US, most adults have had 14 years of education, while in China, the average is 8 years, and in Venezuela, it’s 6.6 years.
For infrastructure, China is always touted as the leader in transportation because they have high-speed rail. However, the US has a much broader transportation infrastructure than any country in the world. The US has 148,553 kilometers of railroad, China has 10,767 kilometers (with a population four times the size of the US), Germany has 33,401 kilometers, and Venezuela has 682 kilometers.
Socialist countries usually have a government-owned national flagship airline, such as Air China or Conviasa in Venezuela. In the US, the airlines are private, and the US has more flights, with more Americans flying each year than citizens in any other country. Furthermore, Americans can afford to buy cars. Cars per capita in the US are 860 out of 1000, in Germany it’s 627 out of 1000, in China it’s 223 out of 1000, and in Venezuela it’s 149 out of 1000.
The US does not have a government sovereign wealth fund. Our outbound investment is private, and yet, the US is the largest source of outbound investment on the planet.
In socialist countries, citizens depend on the government to create jobs. The US, with a relatively free market for jobs, has a low unemployment rate of 3.6%, while in socialist China it is 5.1%, and in Venezuela, it is 7.5%. However, in China, youth unemployment had reached 21.3% last year before Beijing stopped reporting and then changed the definition of youth unemployment to make the number smaller. This is another example of the benefits of a free-market society. We have private institutions, NGOs, and associations that collect and publish data, so there is greater transparency.
The salaries between the US and socialist countries are vastly different. The average American earns about $75,269 per year, while the average German only earns $48,845. In China, it’s $12,598, and in Venezuela, it’s $3,910.
And the final kicker in a socialist country is income tax. In both China and Germany, the top income tax rate is 45%. In the US, it is 37%, and in Venezuela, it is 34%. So, Americans earn dramatically more than people in socialist countries and get to keep a larger percentage of their salary compared to most socialist countries.
Apart from failing to deliver in terms of economic well-being, socialism also falls short of its claim to offer greater freedom. Economic freedom, as already discussed, is higher in the U.S. In general, personal freedoms are also higher. According to the Human Freedom Index, which evaluates countries across the following criteria: Rule of law, Security and safety, Movement, Religion, Association, assembly, and civil society, Expression and information, public health, and a number of other factors, Germany ranked higher than the US at 18th. But this was largely because of the lack of social welfare in the US and because of the higher crime rate. The US ranked as the 23rd most free country in the world, China 152, and Venezuela 163.
As a result of capitalism, Americans earn more, keep more of their salary, and have greater freedom than in socialist countries. Let’s vote to keep it that way.
The post Capitalism, Not Socialism, Makes Us Richer and Freer appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Charles “Chuck” Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., look on as Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on the American Rescue Plan Friday, March 12, 2021, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
“Fat is fine” is the new mantra of those who want fat people to be accepted in spite of how they look and despite health problems associated with obesity. “Body positivity” is defined as “a movement where people whose bodies may not be seen as acceptable by society feel good about themselves and their looks.” The body positive movement, along with a related “anti-diet” movement and “health at every size,” are normalizing fat, which is discouraging people from losing weight or getting fit. The New York Times decried social media, such as Instagram, where influencers are pushing the notion that boys should be muscular or girls should be slim.
Obesity in the US has reached epidemic proportions, affecting 34% of adults and 15-20% of children, according to data from the National Institute of Health (NIH). Additionally, 17% of children and 68% of adults qualify as overweight, marking the first step toward obesity.
America leads the world not only in terms of obesity rates but also in athletic people, fat foods, and diet foods. So, food manufacturers, weight loss companies, and fitness equipment manufacturers can make money whether people lose weight or not. The food companies can even make people fat and then sell them the cure.
WebMD said, “People who are overweight can be considered healthy if their waist size is less than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men, and if they do not have two or more of the following conditions: High blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol.” It goes on to recommend that overweight people not gain additional weight and that they should “lose a few pounds.” However, a 40-inch waist for a man would suggest that he needs to lose a lot more than a few pounds.
Even the standards of research are being changed. WebMD stated, “Obesity and its related diseases claim many lives each year. The annual figure was initially estimated at 400,000, but was recently revised to 112,000, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.” It seems a bit odd that established research needed such a broad adjustment. Additionally, if roughly 51% of the population is obese, then there are over 173 million obese people in America. If only 112,000 of them die of obesity, it doesn’t seem like as much of a threat. And this is consistent with findings of a study cited by WebMD: “One thing that came as a huge surprise was that the study found no increased risk of death for overweight people.”
At the same time that articles are telling people that they can be fat and healthy, and WebMD claims that fat people do not run a higher risk of death, the University of Chicago Medicine reports that “Thirteen types of cancer and 200 other health conditions are related to obesity.”
It seems counterintuitive that being fat is healthy, and it is a bit suspicious that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States NIH both declared obesity an epidemic, but WebMD and other sources are claiming that there is little or no connection between fat and poor health. The recent rise of “wokeism” has also infiltrated the obesity issue, using the term “fat shaming.” According to The Washington Post, doctors can be guilty of fat shaming, and “fatphobia persists in medicine.”
This bizarre movement of not being able to say things that are true but offensive is at such an extreme that a morbidly obese fashion model named Tess Holliday, who weighs 260 pounds and wears a size 22, told the media that she identifies as anorexic. The news story was edited on YouTube because the word “anorexic” cannot pass the censors. Now, we aren’t even allowed to say the names of health problems or identify them as health problems.
A quick Google search reveals any number of articles with titles like “There’s No Such Thing as ‘Junk Food‘” and “Why There’s No Such Thing as ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ Foods.” There have been allegations that fast food companies have been funding researchers and influencers to promote the anti-diet and body-positive image.
It is well-documented that fifty years ago, sugar companies paid researchers to promote the notion that dietary fat, not sugar, was the cause of obesity and ill health. More recently, The Washington Post reported that General Mills, the company which makes Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has been pushing the anti-diet movement. The company sponsored a campaign citing anti-diet research and condemning “food shaming.” They offered giveaways and sponsorship to registered dietitians who tagged their cereal endorsements with the hashtag #DerailTheShame. General Mills went so far as to pay lobbyists to influence federal policies to keep health information off food labels.
The profit incentive of fast-food companies, combined with the rejection of reality often associated with the “Woke” movement and the notion that no one should ever be held accountable for their actions, is contributing to the demise of an entire generation by encouraging them to be overweight.
Often, analogies are made between smoking and obesity. The cigarette companies tried to push scientific studies that claimed cigarettes did not cause cancer. Fortunately, the government was not convinced and launched anti-smoking campaigns, stressing the health threat of smoking, eventually leading to a reduction in the percentage of adults who smoked. In 1965, 42% of adults smoked. In 2021, it was only 11.5%.
By pushing a narrative that fat is healthy, the exact opposite is going to happen. The percentage of obese Americans will increase. Fortunately, the fast food companies can fund new research, adjusting the statistics to reduce the number of deaths.
The post Woke Body Positive and Anti-Diet Movements Normalizing Obesity appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Male abdominal obesity" by Lymantria, licensed under CC BY 3.0. Original image source: [Picasa Web Albums](https://picasaweb.google.com/105432035598159259077/SeychellesIslands2007#5308347760697849058), reviewed by Lymantria on 14 September 2011.
Colombian far-left President Gustavo Petro suffered a major defeat on Wednesday after the Colombian Congress voted to shelve his controversial leftist healthcare reform bill, with nine members of the corresponding Senate commission voting in favor and five against.
The post Colombia: Congress Shelves Petro’s Controversial Leftist Healthcare Reform appeared first on Breitbart.
A report in Colombian media accused Venezuela of using the brutal Tren de Aragua gang to persecute dissidents abroad.
The post Report: Venezuela Using Brutal Tren de Aragua Gang to Hunt Down Dissidents Abroad appeared first on Breitbart.
Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is disliked by liberal globalists due to the threat he poses to their global agenda, much like Trump.
While Trump vowed to “drain the swamp,” Javier Milei wielded a chainsaw during his campaign, symbolizing his commitment to drastically reducing the size of government.
Most mainstream media label Javier Milei as either a Libertarian or a far-right extremist, a term they now apply to anyone who is less than 100% on board with every single aspect of globalism. However, Milei is also an economics professor and a supporter of the Austrian School of Economics. The Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, serves as a hub for Austrian economics. Its name originates from the Austrian heritage of the school’s early pioneers, including Carl Menger, Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and Friedrich Hayek.
Austrian economics aligns closely with conservative values. It emphasizes personal property rights, limited government intervention, free markets, low taxes, inflation, and debt, and voluntary exchange. Milei’s policies prioritize reducing government involvement, debt, and the welfare rolls while fostering entrepreneurship and protecting property rights. He rightly suggests that by cutting 70,000 government jobs, not only can government size be reduced, but also the deficit and Argentina’s debt problem can be addressed.
Regarding globalism, Austrian economists typically support free trade and international cooperation through voluntary exchange and economic interactions among nations. However, they oppose involvement in supranational organizations that impose policies on sovereign nations, citing conflicts with principles of individual liberty, national sovereignty, and limited government.
The mainstream media characterize Argentina’s Javier Mileii, America’s Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and Chile’s José Antonio Kast as the new hard right, sharing three commonalities: fierce opposition to abortion, and gay and women’s rights. However, mainstream media misrepresents their stance on gay and women’s rights. They are only against policies that grant specific groups privileges. Affirmative action, quotas, or preferences in hiring, promotion, or school acceptance based on race, gender, or orientation would be banned.
Indeed, they oppose abortion, but in Argentina, America, Brazil, El Salvador, and Chile, murder is already illegal. These men advocate for extending legal protection to unborn babies.
Interestingly, although most Austrian economists adhere to Christian or Jewish beliefs and operate within a framework of Judeo-Christian values, they oppose abortion for various reasons of economic philosophy. These reasons include principles of individual liberty and property rights, which encompass the rights of unborn individuals. The notion is that our life is your property, and no one has the right to steal it. Furthermore, Austrian economists assert that abortion disrupts incentives and undermines the essence of voluntary exchange and societal cooperation by tampering with the natural consequences of individual actions.
Given their emphasis on property rights and the consequences of individual actions, it’s not surprising that Austrian economists take a tough stance on crime. President Bukele waged war on El Salvador’s drug gangs and successfully brought down the crime rate by arresting 76,000 villains and locking them up in a specially designed prison, where the guards rule, not the cons.
While Austrians typically reject the industrial military complex as a means of expanding government size and fostering opportunities for patronage, they strongly advocate for the use of force to protect property rights. President Milei is contemplating deploying the armed forces to take on the gangs in his country. Additionally, he has relaxed regulations on the use of firearms by law enforcement officers.
Just like President Trump, who always speaks his mind, Milei recently stirred up an international controversy when he insulted Colombia and Mexico, both of which are effective narco-states. He even warned that Colombia was on the brink of becoming the next Venezuela or Cuba. He referred to Venezuela as a “prison island” full of carnage. Of course, he was correct on all counts, but in this era of enforced globalism, identifying a genuine problem and attempting to solve it is not typically encouraged.
Of course, the mainstream media are labeling Javier Milei as a threat to human rights and attempting to vilify him, just as they did with Bukele for substantially reducing crime, as they did with Trump, and with Bolsonaro, who is now facing potential arrest in Brazil over allegations of using a fake vaccine passport two years ago.
Personally, I find the Milei show nearly as entertaining as the Trump show, observing how the globalists lose their minds over anyone daring to reject their agenda. However, I genuinely fear that Milei may be assassinated.
The post Javier Milei Austrian Economist, Champion of Anti-Globalism appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Casa Rosada (Argentina Presidency of the Nation), CC BY 2.5 AR <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ar/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Venezuelans burned an effigy representing socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and other "opposition" collaborationist figures on Easter.
The post Venezuelans Burn ‘Judas’ Maduro Effigy in Easter Tradition appeared first on Breitbart.
Argentine President Javier Milei asserted in an interview on Sunday that he "would not have any problem" imposing diplomatic sanctions against Venezuela's socialist regime, suggesting he would be willing to convince other countries to support similar measures.
The post Argentina’s Milei Suggests Rallying Latin America to Sanction Venezuela After Biden Failure appeared first on Breitbart.
French President Emmanuel Macron spent much of the week touring the Amazon Rainforest alongside his Brazilian counterpart, radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The post ‘Bromance’: France’s Macron Tours Amazon Rainforest with Brazil’s Lula appeared first on Breitbart.
Colombian far-left President Gustavo Petro expelled Argentine diplomatic personnel from the country in response to statements by Argentine counterpart Javier Milei.
The post Colombia Expels Argentine Diplomats After Javier Milei Calls Socialist President a ‘Terrorist Murderer’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Colombia's President Gustavo Petro threatened to cut ties with Israel if it does not comply with a U.N. Security Council ceasefire demand.
The post Colombia’s Marxist President Threatens to Cut Ties with Israel if It Keeps Attacking Hamas appeared first on Breitbart.
A country’s slide into socialism/communism begins with socialist policies. And every one of these has been proposed in the United States: like an exorbitant minimum wage which is exorbitant and not tied to performance or return on labor, a universal basic income, charging for electricity usage based on income rather than quantity of electricity used, issuing carbon usage credits, allowing the state, not the consumer, to decide how much is enough, imposing a billionaire tax, taxing wealth transfers and inheritance to prevent parents from helping their children, and taxing unrealized capital gains to discourage saving and investing.
Beyond the purely economic, policies that mandate demographic quotas for promotions, hiring, firing, or school acceptance are examples of social engineering that removes the “profit motive,” the reward for hard work, disincentivizing hard work, and resulting in the promotion of those who cannot meet the quality standards.
Washington State has proposed eliminating the bar exam in order to increase diversity among lawyers. Oregon high school students will no longer need to be able to read, write, or do math in order to graduate, for the same reason.
United Airlines announced that it would prioritize diversity in its selection of trainee pilots. And in order to ensure that the younger generation understands only the state agenda, homeschooling will be banned.
Socialism/Communism has never worked, but somehow, people keep voting for it and believing that this time will be different. The truth is that it has caused tens of millions to starve to death while robbing hundreds of millions of their innovation, creativity, and motivation.
The entire society, working different jobs from research scientist to ticket puncher, for an equal number of turnip coupons, is so unnatural that it can only exist in a totalitarian system where people have no choice.
No capitalist nation ever forced people to earn a profit, but communist countries had to use their secret police and state surveillance to force people not to.
No one was ever shot trying to break into East Germany or swimming to Cuba.
Socialism cannot bring prosperity because it destroys the market functions of private property and eliminates the incentives for more productive people to work harder or more inventive people to innovate. Socialists are always worried about wealth inequality, and their solution always involves taking money from the harder-working, more efficient people and giving it to the less productive.
Socialists believe that if they were to forcibly redistribute the wealth, everyone would be better off. The first problem with this logic is that the people who have wealth now would be worse off if someone stole it.
The United States has the highest GDP per capita in the entire American continent, from Canada to Argentina, including the Caribbean. The US average income is about $76,000 per year.
In Haiti, it is $1,748. If the socialists had their way and redistributed the wealth evenly across the roughly 1 billion people in the Americas, the average would be $35,000 per year. So, US citizens would be giving up more than half their income but would still be working the same jobs, for the same number of hours.
If you received the same wage, no matter what, you would stop doing overtime, stop coming up with new ideas, and pretty much stop working at all. In the Soviet Union, there was a joke: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
Almost every communist country began by abolishing money and nationalizing production of everything, including food. Within a very short time, these countries faced famines.
With no profit incentive, there was no motivation for farmers to grow food. Additionally, with no money prices, there was no rational way to calculate the cost of planting versus the money earned from selling the produce or to calculate how many resources should be allocated to producing food versus producing some other product.
Nearly six million people in the USSR starved to death in the Soviet Famine (1931-1934). Roughly half of these were Ukrainians, living in the “breadbasket of Europe.”
During the Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979) in Cambodia, between one half and a third of the population died of starvation and overwork, although nearly 100% of the population was sent out to the fields to farm. Venezuelans are facing hunger, while Cubans are facing shortages of everything.
The winner of the socialist starvation death toll competition is Mao Zedong, whose Great Famine (1958-1962) killed 30 million Chinese.
India was resource-rich and had the largest workforce, but socialist policies led to India becoming synonymous with extreme poverty. The USSR was the most resource-rich country on the planet and had one of the largest workforces, but had an economy about 5% the size of the U.S. China similarly had a huge workforce, and it was not until 2007 that the average Chinese citizen was earning more than the average American was earning in the year 1900.
Vietnam also experienced a mini-famine caused by communism, but they quickly realized that by privatizing farming, they were able to increase rice production.
It was privatization that also ended the Chinese famine, and Deng Xiaoping allowing private sector entrepreneurs to earn profits that lifted 800 million Chinese out of poverty.
No former communist country has ever reverted to communism. And China and Vietnam, the world’s largest remaining communist countries, dramatically increased the welfare of their people by allowing market economics, profit, and private ownership.
But both China and Vietnam remain dramatically poorer than the US because of their refusal to completely let go of communism/socialism.
Given all the evidence against it, how can American socialists believe that this time will be different?
The post Socialist Policies: Steps Toward a System That Has Always Failed appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Red_Guards_Austin
Red Guards Cell, Austin, Texas. By Reddebrek, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104103414
Via InstaPundit, I learn that Karl Marx died on this day in 1883. I concur with Glenn Reynolds’ suggestion that March 14 should therefore be a holiday:
Marx performed the difficult feat of being wrong about everything. Most people are right about some things and wrong about others; the law of averages sets in. But if you are an ideologue, like Marx, and if your ideology is stupid, you can be wrong across the board. Marx’s historical analyses were either recycled conventional wisdom or wildly off the mark. He knew nothing about economics, which is why his labor theory of value–the lynchpin of his entire philosophy–is absurd. (Even Marx recognized that; he never finished the key section of Capital, leaving that inglorious task to Engels.) And he pontificated endlessly about workers and the means of production, without even once, as far as is known, setting foot in a factory.
Marx survives in historical memory for two reasons. First, hardly anyone has actually read Capital or his lesser works. Even a person of moderate intelligence could hardly do so without recognizing their foolishness. Second, Marx’s philosophy has served as a pretext for sadists to seize control of governments around the globe. Which is exactly what Marx intended.
Marx was a bad man, equally so in his private and public lives. He should be remembered only as an exemplar of how much damage a single-minded and hate-filled man can do.
We haven’t checked in on Venezuela for a while. Formerly one of the world’s richest countries, Venezuela has become destitute since it was taken over by socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The country has gone downhill in an ever-worsening spiral of poverty and dysfunction. Things have gotten so bad that American liberals no longer hold up Venezuela as an example of “real socialism.”
The London Times reports:
[T]his is a country still suffering the trauma of the most spectacular currency collapse of our times. The Venezuelan bolivar, which in the 1960s was considered as solid a store of value as the Swiss franc, is now worth less than the paper it is printed on. If you converted a million dollars into bolivars in 2013 — when Nicolás Maduro first came to power — and left it in an interest-accruing Venezuelan bank for the past decade, your current balance would be about 3 cents.
Let’s hear it for socialism! And also for money-printing. Venezuela kept printing currency until it could no longer afford the paper and ink, but how different is that from the path our own government is currently on?
All this became glaringly apparent during an especially precipitous period of the downward spiral, during 2018 and 2019. With annual inflation touching two million per cent, a brick of notes was needed to buy a sandwich. The government ran out of the ink and paper physically needed to print more money.
Debit cards, along with bartering, became essential; with everyone from coconut sellers in the Caribbean to barbers in Caracas using cheap card readers to make transactions. But banks were slow to keep up with the devaluation, failing to raise their limits per transaction. Buying just a few items in a supermarket could therefore require three or four bank cards.
Life under socialism isn’t just poor and violent, it is crazy, too.
In mid-2019, the Maduro government quietly threw in the towel and allowed people to officially use US dollars. It turned out to be a transformational moment, taming price rises and bringing in some stability.
At least 60 per cent of retail transactions in Venezuela are believed to be in dollars, either in cash or with cards.
So the viciously anti-American kleptocrats are rescued, sort of, by the American dollar. But the damage is done, as Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by 75%. The last word:
[One Venezuelan] lamented, “Nobody’s got any money. There’s nothing much left to steal.”
I suppose the kleptocrats long for the good old days, when there was still something in Venezuela worth stealing. Chavez’s daughter Maria Gabriela, a perfect exemplar of leftism who represented Venezuela in the United Nations, made off with a cool $4.2 billion. But she was a piker compared to her father’s Treasury Minister, Alejandro Andrade, who slipped away from Venezuela with $11.2 billion in Swiss banks. As I wrote back in 2015:
If you want a world in which a few obscenely rich jet-setters lord it over a sea of poor people, socialism is the ideology for you.
But even those halcyon days have come to an end, as “[t]here’s nothing much left to steal.” It is as Margaret Thatcher memorably said: the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.
Vaunce News 