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People are turning to socialism. Two-thirds of Americans ages 18-29 hold a “favorable view” of it.
New York just elected a “proud socialist” mayor. My video explains why his ideas would make things worse.
Of course they would! Socialism has never worked. Anywhere!
Yet Seattle, too, just elected a socialist mayor.
“Let’s give socialism a chance,” said a student writing in The Student Life, a college newspaper.
Americans should know we already gave socialism a chance. The only reason we get to celebrate Thanksgiving with lots of food is because the Pilgrims learned (the hard way) that socialism doesn’t work.
When they came to America, they first tried sharing land. Gov. William Bradford decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much they worked.
The results were disastrous.
Few Pilgrims worked hard, claiming “weakness and inability,” wrote Bradford. “Much was stolen.”
The same plan in Jamestown led to starvation, the death of half the population, even cannibalism.
Learning from their mistakes, the Pilgrims tried a different approach: “Every family was assigned a parcel of land,” wrote Bradford. Then, he noted, Pilgrims “went willingly into the field.”
That’s capitalism.
Soon, there was an abundance of food. So much that the Pilgrims and Natives could celebrate Thanksgiving together.
This abundance has only grown.
We’ll feast on vast amounts of food this Thanksgiving that, despite media clickbait, is much more affordable than it used to be. Today, Americans spend only 10% of our disposable income on food. When I started working, it was twice that.
This abundance didn’t come with people in government manipulating supply chains, or comrades dictating prices and quality.
It comes from millions of people practicing capitalism, making billions of voluntary exchanges.
It comes from free people willing to innovate and take risks, in an attempt to make more money by serving customers better than the next guy.
This process almost always works better than government central planning.
Without central direction, farmers, truckers and grocers move food across the country with remarkable coordination and efficiency.
Stores compete so fiercely that they sell turkeys at a loss, just to get you through their doors.
Global competition drives airlines to lower their fares so it’s cheaper for you to fly home for Thanksgiving.
And despite the media’s alarms about climate change creating food shortages, global agricultural output sets record highs year after year.
Government didn’t orchestrate any of that. Government can barely manage a DMV line.
Markets create abundance because they quickly reward people who figure out how to make things cheaper, faster and better.
That’s what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving.
The alternative looks a lot like Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea …
While we enjoy the gifts that free enterprise brings, AP reports that in Venezuela, “every meal is a struggle.”
NBC, before going on to write silly stories that practically promote socialism, admits that in Cuba, residents face “daily blackouts lasting up to 20 hours, mounting piles of uncollected garbage, and severe shortages of food and basic goods.”
When politicians try to control the economy, the abundance you get … is scarcity.
We live in a country where choices overwhelm us, and shortages are something we read about in the news.
It should make us grateful. Not just for the food, but for the free enterprise system that creates it.
This Thanksgiving, as you go around the table to say what you’re thankful for, take a moment to thank the farmers, truckers, pilots, grocery workers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and, most importantly, the economic freedom that makes it all possible.
Let’s not let socialist idiots kill it!
Abundance doesn’t happen by accident. It won’t continue if we forget where it came from.
The invisible hand of free will. Communism is slavery and shared misery. The opposition is banished, jailed or killed. Same old song and dance different fiddlers. After the coverup of failures in New York and Seattle ends , the education of the obtuse begins. I’m Thankful this Thanksgiving, among many things, that I don’t live in those cities.
I sent this essay to my students. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed pointing out that the people on rafts were always coming from Cuba to Florida. Those shot trying to go over the Berlin Wall were always trying to escape from Communist East Germany to West Germany. Millions are have escaped from Venezuela.
Trigger warning for those allergic to logic and evidence: You probably don’t want to watch Stossel’s excellent videos on tariffs. I’m still waiting for someone to explain how foreigners can get the U.S. dollars they need to invest in the U.S.–something President Trump wants–if they do not run a trade surplus, i.e. have a capital account deficit, with the U.S.
A) Before you make any snide cracks about the DMV, would you like me to tell you what people wjo work there have to put up with?
B) Your comments on how socialism failed in the Plymouth Colomy reminded me of Louisa May Alcott. In her books, in Little Men, Jo’s Boys and A Garland for Girls, there are characters that are very proud of being descended from the Pilgrims. But Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father, couldn’t have known much about the Plymouth Colony when he set up Fruitlands with Charles Lane
I havem”t the spa e here to tell you how that turmed out but it involved communally farmed land-and it was a disaster
Leftists never admit to the failures of Marxist/socialist economies. But they can give as excuses only two: “They didn’t do it right” and “The wrong people were in charge.”
There used to be something called ‘the American way’ that uniquely prioritized and celebrated the individual American, who, rather than be separated from, was spiritually and morally integral to, family, community, country and God.
GO AWAY MUM-DUMMY GO AWAY SKREET SKREET SKREEEE
Its a wonder that they still allowed for the Macys Parade to take place and Tom Turkey has nothing to worry about because a Jackass(Mum-Dummy)couldn’t compete with Smart Turkey
When you meet a socialist, thank a teacher