​This week’s episode dives into key election-related issues that could significantly impact Social Security and the broader economy. With projections indicating that the Social Security Trust Fund could be depleted in six years under another Trump presidency, while a Harris presidency may maintain the status quo, voters must consider the fiscal implications of their candidates' policies. Topics covered include the impact of tax exemptions, tariff policies, and entitlement expansion, all of which threaten the solvency of the nation’s mandatory programs. 

Watch the episode on YouTube below, listen to it on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and visit my website for more information.

​In this episode, we discuss:
1) The importance of economic freedom, how it is measured, the rule of law, and the importance of protecting private property;
2) Myths about which European countries are socialist and the history of different economic institutions in Poland, including his latest work “The Road to Socialism and Back: An Economic History of Poland, 1939–2019”; and
3) A history of socialism and communism, what Marx failed to see in countries with capitalism or socialism, and reasons to be optimistic about economic freedom and prosperity worldwide.

​Matt’s bio:

• Matthew D. Mitchell is a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Economic Freedom. Prior to joining the Fraser Institute, Mitchell was a long-serving senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he remains an affiliated senior scholar. He is also a senior research affiliate at the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at West Virginia University.
• Mitchell received his PhD and MA in economics from George Mason University and his BA in political science and BS in economics from Arizona State University. His writing and research focuses on economic freedom, public choice economics, and the economics of government favoritism.
• Mitchell has testified before the U.S. Congress and several state legislatures. He has advised federal, state, and local government policymakers in the United States on both fiscal and regulatory policy. His research has been featured in numerous national media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and C-SPAN.

You can watch this episode and others along with my Let People Prosper Show on YouTube or listen to it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, or Anchor. Please share, subscribe, like, and leave a 5-star rating!
​
For show notes, thoughtful insights, media interviews, speeches, blog posts, research, and more, check out my website (https://www.vanceginn.com/) and please subscribe to my newsletter (www.vanceginn.substack.com), share this post, and leave a comment.

​In this episode, I discuss the following with John Mozena:
​
1) How politicians, even on the right, incorporate components of "sidewalk socialism" and why this is a dangerous game;
2) How corporate welfare is disrupting the natural flow of spontaneous order in society, destroying states, and corrupting universities; and
3) Why decreased spending and regulations are the best paths forward to human flourishing and more.

​John’s bio:

• CEA President John C. Mozena has been on both sides of the economic development wars. A long-time marketing and communications professional and former journalist, he spent two decades in private-sector agency and corporate roles where his clients often included economic development entities and programs. As a public relations agency account lead, he worked with six downtown development authorities, a major regional tourism bureau and convention center, three national industry trade associations, multiple commercial real estate developers and a variety of other clients with interests in economic development policy. He was the author of innumerable press releases and talking points announcing stimulus funding, state tax credits, manufacturing plant openings, public-private partnerships and other deals and initiatives touting “job creation” and “economic impact.”
• After leaving the private sector, Mozena became the vice president for marketing and communications at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michigan’s free-market public policy think tank. At the Mackinac Center, he worked closely with the nationally-recognized research and policy team in its Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative to provide marketing and communications planning and support for their economic development policy work. He left the Mackinac Center in 2017 and served as a marketing and communications consultant for public policy organizations while working with the CEA’s co-founders to launch it at the end of 2018.
• In the 1990s, Mozena co-founded the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), a grassroots organization advocating for policy tools to fight the growing problem of junk “spam” email for consumers. As CAUCE’s primary media contact, he was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, NPR, PBS, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, CBS Radio, Fox News Channel, BBC and more than 100 other media outlets.
• He is a graduate of the Atlas Network Academy, including its Think Tank Leadership Training program; a member of the American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network; a Fellow at the Better Cities Project and holds an accreditation in public relations (APR) from the Public Relations Society of America.

You can watch this episode and others along with my Let People Prosper Show on YouTube or listen to it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, or Anchor. Please share, subscribe, like, and leave a 5-star rating!
​
For show notes, thoughtful insights, media interviews, speeches, blog posts, research, and more, check out my website (https://www.vanceginn.com/) and please subscribe to my newsletter (www.vanceginn.substack.com), share this post, and leave a comment.

​A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that an alarming number of people still believe that socialism “gives all people an equal opportunity to be successful,” with 52% agreeing this statement is at least somewhat true for socialism.

Fortunately, 64% agreed that statement is at least somewhat true for capitalism. 

Still, it is evident that most people who favor socialism don’t understand it or its negative consequences. Apologists for socialism need to understand what the late economist Friedrich Hayek said: “There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means, as de Tocqueville describes it, a new form of servitude.” 

Socialist economies surrender class distinction by giving up freedom to politicians in the marketplace, including work, education, healthcare, and more. This is the exact opposite of “free.” Nothing scarce is free because there are trade-offs that come with every decision. Nations with socialized labor, schooling, and medicine must fund them at the expense of taxpayers, from the lost productivity that results from less economic growth, and from the lost opportunities with each of those taken dollars. 

People in socialist economies work under a glass ceiling that they can never break. They surrender so much of their resources to the government that it contributes to a forced mediocrity. But in capitalist economies, the ceiling is much higher. People have more potential to prosper because the means of capital and labor are owned by them personally, not by politicians. 

​Greater economic freedom under capitalism tends to yield higher life expectancies, higher incomes, greater per capita GDP, and less poverty when considering countries or states .

But when the government is empowered instead of its citizens, people are left with few options for innovative solutions in the private sector. This destroys organic competition, where the best solution can be the most successful. This bears out the experience of socialist economies, that the government institutions dominating the provision of services typically have low quality at high cost. 

Some socialists claim that their preferred system of pooling resources for everyone is a superior way of helping people than philanthropy or the work of employers, churches, or charities. But this assumes that a one-size-fits-all approach will work for everyone. In reality, each person is different with unique needs, which is why making ways for entrepreneurs to create new solutions is critical. A system run by politicians can never fully satisfy the needs of its people. It makes winners of the politically connected and losers of everyone else. 

One reason that people, especially young adults, may find socialism appealing is because it appears compassionate on its surface. A paradise where everyone is clothed, fed, and happy sounds like something to desire. But that’s never the outcome when liberties are surrendered to leaders. 

​The lack of belief in free markets is really the lack of belief in free people. Too many on the Left and the Right fail to understand this fact with their big-government solutions. 

The world is witnessing this reality unfold in real time in the once-thriving nation of Cuba . Cubans embraced socialism 60 years ago with high hopes and are now impoverished and starving, waiting in line for hours with hopes of getting some bread , while politicians spend their money on sports teams and hotels to impress outsiders. By its nature, socialism disempowers people and forces them down the road to serfdom. 

Capitalism, with a free market economy of voluntary exchange and limited government, allows spontaneous order with a well-functioning price system to best allocate resources to those who value it most. This results in a compassionate system for people rather than for politicians.  

Socialism hasn’t worked, other than to impoverish many people across the globe. Stop its expansion and instead return to the antidote: free market capitalism. 

Originally published at Washington Examiner.