"If the government took over the Sahara Desert, there would be a shortage of sand."
What changed? Markets.
Look at any society that achieved economic growth — no one ever credits any specific leader. It's often markets (Except Lee Kuan Yew, who enabled markets)
Study what happens when the gov't does something compared to what happens when they do nothing?
For first 150 years of this country, gov't did nothing when there was a downturn.
in 1921, unemployment rate was 12%. Harding did nothing, it went back to 3%.
And what they don't understand is, there was only 25% unemployment after the government intervened.
56% of U.S. households will be in the top 10% at some point in their lives
Of all the ppl in the top 1%, only 13% are in the top 1% for 2 yrs
And so you're comparing what happens to these abstract categories rather than what's happening to actual flesh and blood people?
When people say “the incomes of most American households have remained stubbornly flat over the past three decades” they are painting a strawman.
e.g. there are 39M ppl in the bottom 20% of households, and 64M in the top 20%. So you're saying yes, 24 million additional people do tend to have more money.
Ppl's outcomes are often constrained by reality
Unconstrained vision=Human nature is malleable
The unconstrained vision looks at pain & says we must remove the pain
The Q is, who shall have the authority to change that law & with what constraints on that person so that that person is not just giving event to their own feelings or imaginings or theories?
And so there’s no talk about resilience or self-reliance.
You have to tell them their problems were caused by somebody else, otherwise why do they need you?
B/c you attack the people who are creating the most wealth, not only for themselves, but society.
Ppl don't get wealth exploiting. They get wealth b/c others pay them b/c they are getting value in return.
But if you compare the data there are more billionaires in the U.S. than in Africa & the Middle East put together & yet the standard of living for the poor in the U.S. is higher than that of ppl in Africa + ME
Russia had all the natural resources you could imagine
It was the only industrial nation which has so much petroleum that they export oil
And the irony is one of the world's great famines occurred in the USSR. How come? mismanagement by the gov't
People get upset at billionaires for paying less in taxes as a % than their secretaries, but...fake news.
First of all, the vast majority of taxes are paid by people in the upper 10% of the country
It may well be that if someone has capital gains, they'll pay lower rate
The rich not only paid more taxes after the tax cuts for the rich, as they call it, they paid a higher percentage of all taxes.
By the end of the decade, the tax rate on the top had been cut to 24% so ppl making over 100,000 now paid 65% of all taxes & the reason is quite simple:
So it's the choice between a symbolic high tax rate on wealthy ppl to win votes—Which the rich themselves are not gonna pay—Or actual more tax revenue coming in to the gov't.
Ppl think if you cut tax rates on the rich, then there'll be less taxes for the government, or you'll have to raise the taxes on other people to make up the difference or cut programs and so forth. The above disproves that.
Ppl are born poor. The Q is less why are ppl poor and more why are some ppl rich
Asking this gives us an appreciation for what got us rich, (markets), and how we can get more ppl rich, rather than implying that the rich have gotten rich at expense of the poor.
Why has cost been rising?
Gov't. If tuition is over a certain amount, you get more gov't funding. Thus it incentivizes unis to charge more
One reason professors cost more is that their opportunity cost is higher bc they could get paid more to go into other industries
The above tweets are just a tiny fraction of his ideas written over 30 books...