from the Wall Street Journal, Jamie Dimon’s Timely Warning:

Of course, there is a spectrum of socialism. The textbook definition is government ownership of the means of production, as in the communist-run Soviet Union or Cuba, or the state-owned factories of China today. But socialism can also mean “owning” an industry by burying it in regulation (see education, Medicare, the overregulated auto industries and so on).

to do that is to lower costs of goods and services so that profits and capital are freed up to be reinvested in future life-enhancing products. Those who succeed in improving our lives deservedly get rich, but then earn the socialist’s scorn that “every billionaire is a policy failure.” C’mon. Technology is our best cost-chopper, but those gung-ho for government gunk the gears of progress.

Productivity drives profits, which drive prosperity, even though to nuevo-millennial socialists “profit” is a bad word. Rising stock prices—the sum of expected future profits—enable companies like Apple to spend more than $10 billion a year on research and development. They enable GlaxoSmithKline and others to fund research on potential cancer vaccines. Sagging stocks resize companies.

Socialism is about maximizing power, not maximizing profits. Government doesn’t make profits, has no incentive to show profits, wouldn’t know a profit if it hit it in the head. Inside government there are no markets or price mechanisms to act as a divining rod finding hidden productivity. Socialism handcuffs Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

HKO

Advocates of single payer and free benefits prove to be ignorant of the price system, profit, productivity and how they function.  While they claim to allocate resources better than the ‘greed’ of the market (a claim easy to totally refute), they are clueless on how the wealth is generated in the first place.

They are economically clueless and even more clueless on the political nature of man.

print