How Capitalism Will Save Us

by Steve Forbes

  1. Michael Novak, “Wealth and Virtue: The Moral Case for Capitalism,” National Review Online. Text of a speech delivered before the Mont Pelerin Society in Sri Lanka, January 11, 2004. http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak200402180913.asp.

  2. Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (New York: Harcourt, 1980). Free to Choose was also a PBS television series. See http://www.ideachannel.tv/;andhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_Choose.

  3. Novak, “Wealth and Virtue.”

  4. Walter E. Williams, “The Argument for Free Markets: Morality vs. Efficiency,” Cato Journal, vol. 15, nos. 2–3, fall/winter 1996. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n2-3-3.html.

  5. Charles H. Green, “Charles H. Green’s Trust Matters” blog, October 31, 2007. http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters/255/Weve-Got-the-Hamburgers-a-Customer-Service-Classic.

  6. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Does the Free Market Corrode Moral Character? Not at All.” Essay written for the John Templeton Foundation, October 1, 2008. http://www.aei.org/article/28734 or http://www.templeton.org/market/.

  7. Ibid.

  8. EBay’s seller ratings are critical to maintaining trust in this system. When problems surfaced with the reliability of a small percentage of sellers, eBay responded immediately with a more detailed seller-rating system in order to protect its brand. Its efforts have helped to maintain users’ faith in eBay and keep the company in business.

  9. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind-VT), “No on Nussle,” Huffington Post, September 3, 2007. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/no-on-nussle_b_62902.html.

  10. Doug Bandow, “Demonizing Drugmakers: The Political Assault on the Pharmaceutical Industry,” Cato Policy Analysis No. 475, May 8, 2003.

  11. Kerry Capell, “Europe Pays a High Price for Cheap Drugs,” BusinessWeek, February 17, 2003. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_07/b3820139_mz034.htm.

  12. Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr., “Subprime Monetary Policy.” Originally appeared in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, November 2007. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8849.

  13. Stephen Koepp, “Having It All, Then Throwing It All Away,” Time, June 24, 2001. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,146704,00.html.

  14. Ibid.

  15. David Adams, “Cuba’s Economy Rife with Corruption,” St. Petersburg Times, January 15, 2007. http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/15/Worldandnation/

  Cuba_s_economy_rife_w.shtml.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Paul Rosenzweig, “The Over-Criminalization of Social and Economic Conduct,” Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum and Executive Summary, April 17, 2003.

  18. 2009 Index of Economic Freedom from the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal. http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/Russia. Russia’s economic freedom score is 50.8, making its economy the 146th freest in the 2009 Index. Its score is one point higher than last year, reflecting improved scores in four of the ten economic freedoms, especially trade freedom. Russia is ranked forty-first out of forty-three countries in the Europe region, and its overall score is below the world average. Russia scored lowest on Property Rights (25 compared with a global average of 44.0) and Freedom from Corruption (23 compared with a 40.3 global average).

  19. “Interview with Grigory Yavlinsky,” Moskovsky Komsomolets, September 2, 2003. Yavlinsky was chairman of the YABLOKO party from 1993 to 2008. http://eng.yabloko.ru/Publ/2003/PAPERS/9/030902_mosk_koms.html

  20. Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal, 2009 Index of Economic Freedom. http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/Russia.

  21. Arch Puddington, “Freedom in the World 2009: Setbacks and Resilience,” Freedom House. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=130&year=2009.

  22. Daniel Griswold, “Trade, Democracy, and Peace: The Virtuous Cycle,” speech to the Peace Through Trade Conference, World Trade Centers Association, Oslo, Norway, April 20, 2007. http://www.freetrade.org/node/681.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Howard W. French, “In Chinese Boomtown, Middle Class Pushes Back,” New York Times, December 18, 2006. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E3DA1331 F93BA25751C1A9609C8B63.

  26. Andrew Jacobs, “In China, Child’s Day Without the Children,” New York Times, Sunday, June 1, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/world/asia/01iht-quake.4.13375989.html.

  27. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  28. Jerry Kirkpatrick, In Defense of Advertising: Arguments from Reason, Ethical Egoism, and Laissez-Faire Capitalism (Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1994), p. 21. PDF ebook available at http://www.tljbooks.com/ebook.html.

  29. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York: Mariner Books, 1998; 40thanniversary edition), p. 223.

  30. Radley Balko, “Don’t Blame SpongeBob for Child Obesity,” FOXNews.com, February 21, 2005. Radley Balko was a policy analyst for the Cato Institute specializing in vice and civil liberties issues. He is a columnist for FOXNews.com. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3696.

  31. Kirkpatrick, In Defense of Advertising, p. 17.

  32. Ibid, p. 31.

  33. Jane Gross, “Millionaire’s Mega-Mansion Shocks Even the Hamptons,” New York Times, Sunday, August 23, 1998. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/23/nyregion/

  millionaire-s-mega-mansion-shocks-even-the-hamptons.html.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Rita Healy and P. G. Sittenfeld, “Making McMansion Owners Pay,” Time, July 12, 2007. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1643151,00.html.

  36. Dinesh D’Souza, The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Technoaffluence (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 73.

  37. Ibid, p. 74.

  38. “And Luxury for All,” Wired, January 2005.

  39. Randy Cohen, “When Layoffs Are Immoral,” New York Times Magazine, May 26, 2009. http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/when-layoffs-are-immoral/.

  40. Ibid.

  41. “Layoffs and CEO Compensation,” University of Arkansas press release, October 3, 2006. http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/9365.htm.

  42. Pietro Garibaldi and Paolo Mauro, “Job Creation: Why Some Countries Do Better,” working paper, International Monetary Fund (2000). http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/issues/issues20/index.htm

  43. Cohen, “When Layoffs Are Immoral.”

  44. Bob Sutton, “When Layoffs Are Immoral: Randy Cohen in the New York Times,” posted on his blog, “Work Matters.” http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/05/

  when-layoffs-are-immoral-randy-cohen-in-the-new-york-times.html.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Mark Thornton, “Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, no. 157, July 17, 1991. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1017.

  Chapter Two: “Isn’t Capitalism Brutal?”

  1. W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, “The Great Job Machine,” New York Times, November 7, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/07/opinion/the-great-job-machine.html.

  2. Daniel Gross, “What Makes a Nation More Productive? It’s Not Just Technology,” New York Times, December 25, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25view.html?pagewanted=print.

  3. Jeff Jacoby, “Frank’s Fingerprints Are All Over the Financial Fiasco,” Boston Globe, September 28, 2008. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/

  oped/articles/2008/09/28/franks_fingerprints_are

  allover_the_financial_fiasco/.

  4. Barney Frank, Committee on Financial Services Letter Addressing Predatory Lending, March 29, 2007. http://www.americansecuritization.com/story.aspx?id=1589.

  5. Rick Klein, “McCain Blames Greed for Wall St. Mess; Obama Blames GOP,” ABC News, September 16, 2008. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/5050/story?id=5812268&page=1.

  6. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Situation,” July 2, 2009. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.htm

  7. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Business Employment Dynamics Summary,”
May 19, 2009. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewbd.nr0.htm.

  8. Clair Brown, John C. Haltiwanger, and Julia I. Lane, Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America? (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

  9. Cox and Alm, “The Great Job Machine.”

  10. Ibid.

  11. Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business Press, 1997). Introduction, pp. x–xvii.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Clayton Christensen, Thomas Craig, and Stuart Hart, “The Great Disruption,” Foreign Affairs, p. 84. http://www.self.org/news/Great_Disruption.pdf.

  16. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., “Yes, Detroit Can Be Fixed: A CAFE Tweak Can Bust the UAW Labor Monopoly,” Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2008, p. A2. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584326266699163.html.

  17. Jerry Flint, “They Can Build Them; Why Can’t We?” Forbes.com, May 28, 2009. http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/27/auto-manufacturing-detroit-business-unions.html.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Justin Hyde, “If They Build It Green, Will People Buy It?” Detroit Free Press, January 15, 2008. http://www.allbusiness.com/automotive/motor-vehicle-models-new-car/12082120-1.html.

  20. Barack Obama, “Remarks in Detroit, Michigan,” September 28, 2008. http://www.barackobama.com/2008/09/28/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_123.php.

  21. Henry Hazlitt, “Economics in One Lesson.” http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid.

  24. John Stossel, “Real Jobs Create Wealth,” RealClearpolitics.com, February 19, 2009. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/real_jobs_create_wealth.html.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Amity Shlaes, “The New Deal Jobs Myth,” American Enterprise Institute, January 2008. http://www.aei.org/docLib/20080116_0722579OTIShlaes_g.pdf.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Stossel, “Real Jobs Create Wealth.”

  30. Jim Angle, “House GOP Wants Stimulus Input Following Critical Report,” FOXNews.com, January 21, 2009. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/01/21/house-gop-wants-stimulus-input-following-critical-report/.

  31. Robert Reich, “Don’t Blame WalMart,” New York Times, Febuary 28, 2005. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E2DA153DF93BA15751C0A9639C8B63.

  32. “Overall, Has WalMart Been Good or Bad for the American Economy?” Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2007. http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=858.

  33. Al Norman, “WalMart Cancels 45 Superstore Projects,” Huffington Post, March 30, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/walmart-cancels-45-super_b_94112.html.

  34. Andrea M. Dean and Russell Sobel, “Has WalMart Buried Mom and Pop?” Spring 2008, Cato Institute. http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv31n1/v31n1-1.pdf.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Robert McNatt, “Who Says WalMart Is Bad for Cities?,” BusinessWeek.com, May 10, 2004. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_19/b3882083_mz017.htm.

  37. Gwendolyn Bounds, “The Long Road to WalMart Shelves,” The Wall Street Journal Online, September 20, 2005.

  38. Byron York, “The WalMart Movie: Buyer Beware,” Huffington Post, November 21, 2005. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/byron-york/the-walmart-movie-viewer-_b_11025.html.

  39. John C. Bogle, “Strengthening Worker Retirement Security,” Statement before the Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., February 24, 2009. http://www.nextstepdc.com/assets/pdf/20090224JohnBogleTestimony.pdf.

  40. David John and Robert Moffit, “Medicare and Social Security: The Challenge of Giant Entitlement Costs,” Heritage Foundation, March 25, 2008. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/upload/wm_1867.pdf.

  41. Michael Tanner, “A Real Lockbox for Social Security,” Cato.org, July 1, 2005. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3970.

  42. David C. John, “2009 Social Security Trustees Report Continues to Show the Urgency of Reform,” Heritage Foundation, May 13, 2009. http://www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/upload/wm_2439.pdf.

  43. Jeremy Siegel, “Stock Market,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/StockMarket.html.

  44. Ray Holbrook and Alcestis Oberg, “A Model for Social Security Reform,” USA Today, March 15, 2005. http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2005-03-15-benefits-reform-galveston_x.htm.

  45. Jeffrey Sachs, “The Social Welfare State, Beyond Ideology,” Scientific American, November, 2006. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-social-welfare-state.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Daniel Mitchell, “What Can the United States Learn from the Nordic Model?” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, November 5, 2007. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-603.pdf.

  48. Bruce Bawer, “We’re Rich, You’re Not. End of Story,” New York Times, April 17, 2005. http://www.brucebawer.com/rich.htm.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Daniel Mitchell, “Hoping to Restore Growth, Voters Rebel Against Sweden’s High-Tax Welfare State,” Heritage Foundation, September 24, 2006. http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/wm1219.cfm.

  51. Martin De Vlieghere, “The Myth of the Scandinavian Model,” Brussels Journal, November 25, 2005. http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/510/print.

  52. Mitchell, “What Can the United States Learn from the Nordic Model?”

  53. Per Bylund, “How the Welfare State Corrupted Sweden,” Mises Daily, May 31, 2006. http://mises.org/story/2190.

  54. Mitchell, “Hoping to Restore Growth.”

  55. Mitchell, “What Can the United States Learn from the Nordic Model?”

  56. Daniel Mitchell, “Sweden Repeals Wealth Tax,” Cato@Liberty.org, March 31, 2007. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/03/31/sweden-repeals-wealth-tax/.

  Chapter Three: “Aren’t the Rich Getting Richer at Other People’s Expense?”

  1. Barbara Ehrenreich, “The Trouble with the SuperRich,” The Nation, June 12, 2007. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070625/ehrenreich2.

  2. Daniel Gross, “Don’t Hate Them Because They’re Rich,” New York Magazine, April 11, 2005. http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/11721/.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Daniel Henninger, “The Obama Rosetta Stone” (Wonder Land column), Wall Street Journal, Opinion, March 12, 2009, p. A13. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123681860305802821.html.

  5. Nancy Pelosi, House Floor Speech in support of Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, House of Representatives, September 30, 2008. http://speaker.house.gov/newsroom/speeches?id=0149.

  6. Alan Reynolds, “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Should Be Cut Down and Cut Loose,” U.S. News and World Report, July 21, 2008. http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/07/21/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-should-be-cut-down-and-cut-loose.html.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Terry Jones, “How a Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable,” Investor’s Business Daily, September 24, 2008. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=307149667289804.

  9. Ronald Utt, “Time to Reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Heritage Foundation, June 20, 2005. http://www.heritage.org/research/governmentreform/upload/79741_1.pdf.

  10. Brink Lindsey, “How Real Is Real Income?” “Age of Abundance” blog, May 30, 2007. http://www.brinklindsey.com/?p=77.

  11. Diana Furchgott-Roth, “Richer Than You Think,” Hudson Institute, December 11, 2006. http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=4355.

  12. Robert Frank, “The Mobile Rich,” The Wealth Report, Wall Street Journal.com (blog), November 14, 2007. http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/11/14/the-mobile-rich/.

  13. Hedrick Smith, “The Russians: Intro,” HedrickSmith.com. http://www.hedricksmith.com/books/bookTheRussianIntro.shtml.

  14. Douglas J. Besharov, “Measuring Poverty in America.” Testimony Before the Committee on Ways and Means in the U.S. House of Representat
ives, August 1, 2007. http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/poverty/Pov_Meas_House_testimony_07_0801.pdf.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Nicholas Eberstadt, “The Poverty Rate,” AEI Online, March 1, 2002. http://www.aei.org/issue/13711.

  17. Robert Rector, “The Myth of Widespread American Poverty,” Heritage Foundation, September 18, 1998. http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/bg1221es.cfm.

  18. Robert Rector, “Understanding Poverty and Economic Inequality in the United States,” Heritage Foundation, September 15, 2004. http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/poverty.htm.

  19. Eberstadt, “The Poverty Rate.”

  20. Brian Wesbury, “Rising Wage Gap, But No Squeeze,” RealClearPolitics.com, February 5, 2007. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/02/rising_wage_gap_but_no_squeeze.html.

  21. Marc Hodak, “CEOs Aren’t Overpaid,” Forbes.com, May 8, 2008. http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/08/ceos-not-overpaid-ent-competition08-cx-mh_0508hodak.html.

  22. Gary Weiss, “The Man Who Made Too Much,” Portfolio, February 2009. http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2009/01/07/John-Paulson-Profits-in-Downturn.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Hunter Lewis, Are the Rich Necessary? (Mount Jackson, Va.: Axios Press, 2007), pp. 19–20.

  27. Hunter Lewis, “Are the Rich Necessary? Great Economic Arguments and How They Reflect Our Personal Values,” The Mises Review, fall 2007. http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=316.

  28. Barbara Ehrenreich, “The Rich Are Making the Poor Poorer,” The Nation, June 13, 2007. http://www.alternet.org/workplace/53962/.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Una Galani, “Uganda: Return of the Exiles,” The Independent, August 26, 2005. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/uganda-return-of-the-exiles-504325.html.

  32. Thomas Sowell, “Is Anti-Semitism Generic?” Hoover Digest, 2005. http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/2931421.html.

  33. David Fintz Altabe, “The Significance of 1492 to the Jews and Muslims of Spain,” Hispania, September 1992. http://www.millersville.edu/columbus/data/his/ALTABE01.HIS.

  34. “Spain Honoring Jews 500 Years After Expulsion,” New York Times, June 3, 1990. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/03/world/spain-honoring-jews-500-years-after-expulsion.html.