Patriot Update - A Free Press for the Conservative Revolution

“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” — Milton Friedman

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” — Winston Churchill

“They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the door of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy-coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people’s money. They are the lap dogs of the poly-sci class, returning to the vomit of collectivism.” — P.J. O’Rourke on leftist politicians—from both parties.

If the 10^th commandment were kept (against coveting), there would be no leftist politics at all! So naturally the Left don’t come out and admit that they are fostering covetousness. Instead, they disguise the truth by high-sounding concern about “the growing gap between the rich and the poor.” Regardless, this rhetoric hurts the poor, just like most leftist policies.

It should be obvious: consider what would happen if God were to miraculously increase everyone's total real wealth tenfold. Then the gap would also increase tenfold, and lefties would whine about the enormous disparity!

The greatest British Prime Minister of the last half century, Margaret Thatcher, in her very last speech as Prime Minister, took the chance to put some leftist envy-mongering politicians in their place: “they would rather have the poor poorer, provided the rich were less rich”. See her in action:

Capitalism has in fact done such a thing for the poor: instead of giving them a “fairer slice of the pie”, the pie itself has grown enormously bigger to the benefit of all (see also The Greed Myth). In fact, as the great Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman (1912–2006) pointed out in his classic book Free to Choose (1980), it’s the poor who have benefited far more:

"Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant little to the wealthy. The rich in ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing—running servants replaced running water. Television and radio—the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets—all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful."

Economist Dr Walter Williams points out some facts about America’s “poor”:

• Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.
• Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
• The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
• Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
• Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
• Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
• Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

To show further how the “poor” have been vastly better off under capitalism, we can just compare America to other countries.

Conservative Indian-born American author Dinesh D’Souza relates how another man from India told him that he really wanted to visit America—just to see the incredible sight of a poor person who was fat.

And a Soviet propaganda documentary was attempted to show the plight of the poor under evil capitalism. But it had to be abandoned, since our “poor” were far wealthier than the average Soviet citizen.

In conclusion, what we should care about is absolute poverty, which is a real tragedy; not relative poverty as the Left whine about—to the detriment of the very poor they claim to care about.

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