The August 13 issue of National Review contains a stupendous article by George Gilder entitled Unleash the Mind. I don’t think it is available online yet, but I can’t resist copying one paragraph that is one of the best I have ever read:
“Even if it wished to, the government could not capture America’s wealth from its 1 percent of the 1 percent. As Marxist despots and tribal socialists from Cuba to Greece have discovered to the huge disappointment, governments can neither create wealth nor effectively redistribute it. They can only expropriate and watch it dissipate. If we continue to harass, overtax, and oppressively regulate entrepreneurs, our liberal politicians will be shocked and horrified to discover how swiftly the physical tokens of the means of production dissolve into so much corroded wire, abandoned batteries, scrap metal, and wasteland rot.”
The despots, of course, will continue to live well on the expropriated wealth — as Adam Smith wrote, there is much ruin in a nation — but the “little guy” they usually claim to care about suffers from the enervation of capitalism.
