​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!
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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. 

America is in the midst of an identity crisis, and it’s probably not the kind you’d think. Our nation is wrecked by an abysmal economy and unhappy people losing confidence in their country. In such unhappiness, people on both sides of the political aisle too often propose “solutions” that grant the government more control of our lives, even though that control is usually the source of the problem.

The American experiment has paved the way for millions to escape poverty and build a better life via a free-market system with a constitutional republic that encourages innovation and results in more human flourishing than ever before. We need to get back to those roots.

I had the opportunity to discuss this phenomenon with Dr. Samuel Gregg, author of the book The Next American Economy and distinguished fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, who said this country’s founding values are based on “liberty and personal responsibility.” 

What set America apart was a vision for commoners to determine their own future, and we continue to rank as the most entrepreneurial country in the world. American’s earliest ideals demanded liberty and responsibility, rejecting directives from a distant King. As a result, the roles of the federal and state governments were carefully managed by a system of federalism, with checks and balances to restrain overreach and protect liberty. According to Gregg, this ongoing experiment is why immigrants are continually inspired to leave their homes and venture to the United States. 

These core tenets of America have become less defined over the past century. America has increasingly chosen big government over individual liberties, thereby reducing the benefits of free-market capitalism.

The major expansions of government started in the progressive era, with Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover. Those historic expansions were put on steroids by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which prolonged and deepened the Great Depression. Likewise, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” program ballooned government through the creation Medicare and Medicaid, among others. The results have been massive government spending with increased dependency on government programs. 

President George W. Bush’s expansion of Medicare with Part D provided some prescription drug coverage for seniors, with questionable results, at a massive cost. President Barack Obama’s Obamacare expanded government control, contributing to the high cost and declining quality of US healthcare. President Trump’s attempt to punish China with tariffs actually punished low-income Americans most. Most recently, President Biden’s 2022 “Inflation Reduction Act” further grows government, without reducing inflation and at a huge cost to taxpayers. 

Inflating the role of government in an attempt to solve underlying issues created by big government created a vicious cycle that continues today. Government meddling distorts the economy by blocking and confusing free people’s choices. This results from a cultural shift, where Americans increasingly seem to believe government can solve problems better than markets or individuals.

This belief is contradicted by the evidence. The lack of belief in free markets is really the lack of believe in free people, as the market is nothing but people. Big government is usually the cause of economic and social problems, so trying to solve them with more government just exacerbates the issues. A severe deficit in the knowledge of history, both of culture and economics, helps explain why post-modern socialist solutions increasingly entrance younger generations. 

Unlike older countries, America’s identity comes from the “texts, documents, and debates” that created our founding, says Gregg. Surveys show that only 1 in 3 Americans can pass a citizenship test, because most of them aren’t familiar with the foundational ideas outlined in our texts and documents. A national identity crisis is near-inevitable, when we forget our core values of liberty and personal responsibility

The further we stray from the principles that made our nation great (including free-market capitalism, a constitutional republic, and personal responsibility) the more swiftly we head down what economist Friedrich Hayek called “the road to serfdom.” 

Only by learning our unique history, and grasping the principles of free-market economics free from burdensome interference, can Americans embark on the next American economy.

Originally published at AIER. 

​Many Americans have historically associated “socialism” with things like the Red Scare, Nazism, the Cold War, and McCarthyism. Today, that fear has largely faded—particularly among young people—and has instead become a love affair.

A recent Axios/Movement poll found that 51% of 18 to 34 year-olds view socialism positively, though the share is only 41% for all Americans. That poll also found that 49% of young adults viewed capitalism favorably—a decrease from 58% in 2019. However, across all Americans there is 57% support for capitalism with just 36% having a negative view of it, which is a slight decrease from the 61% to 36% split in 2019.

Many reasons explain these trends, but the fact that capitalism has lifted more than one billion people worldwide out of poverty is irrefutable.

Despite this reality, the alarming rise in support for socialism, particularly among young adults, begs the question: Do proponents of “socialism” really understand it, and will it ever invade America?

In short, institutions matter and we should understand them, because when we do, we have a better appreciation for capitalism and will reject socialism, even as socialism metastasizes throughout many sectors of our economy.

Socialism is an economic system in which government owns the means of production. Socialism is an extractive economic institution with redistribution of resources—not with market prices but rather by elite politicians who supposedly understand the collective desires of society.

Capitalism, on the other hand, derives its success from an inclusive economic institution with private ownership of the means of production in a free enterprise system. This institutional framework has strong private property rights allowing for a well-functioning price system in markets that allow efficient allocation of resources to those who desire things most with a profit-loss calculation to increase prosperity.

Many supporters of socialism believe society would be best served by a big government that oversees things like health care, food, employment, and transportation, with college and housing at no charge. Socialism’s enthusiasts also claim government-run societies would decrease income inequality and give workers a greater voice.

However, socialists fail to recognize the truth that nothing is free.

More precisely, scarcity means there are always costs, whether realized or unrealized. Free college and universal health care could be fantastic services if they were truly free, but the government doesn’t have its own money—it must extract resources from Peter to give to Paul, and “free” provisions like these have poor outcomes.

Moreover, the ideas of “tax the rich” and “give to the poor” are fallacies that don’t support lower poverty or less income inequality, as they reduce opportunities for success in the productive private sector while contributing to greater dependency on costly government redistribution. This intervention stifles consumer power, eliminates competition, and oftentimes contributes to greater poverty and income inequality.

History shows us that socialism has never worked and will never work well.

Cuba—a socialist country located only 90 miles south of Florida—first embraced socialism over 60 years ago under Fidel Castro. Cubans yielded enormous liberties to Castro’s government in exchange for promises of a better life. As Cuba now grapples with shortages of COVID-19 vaccinations, food, and other critical supplies, even President Biden recently denounced Cuba and its economic system as a failure.

Despite the growing disdain for capitalism in the United States, data from the Economic Freedom of the World report confirms that capitalist, free-market policies lead to the greatest prosperity.

Greater economic freedom under capitalism provides for a more robust economy and a well-functioning price system that yields higher life expectancies, higher incomes, greater per-capita GDP, and less poverty. And capitalism is also morally superior to socialism as it empowers people to make decisions that meet their needs rather than being told what to do through subjective determinations from elite politicians. Furthermore, socialism requires the immoral violation of personal property rights and individual freedoms.

Government is not intended to dictate the lives of each individual, nor it is it supposed to control a society’s factors of production.

As former President Trump said, “America will never be a socialist county.” Socialism did not make America great, nor will it provide for a more perfect union. While we’ve moved further toward socialism in many sectors of our economy, which explains their poor outcomes, Americans should appreciate the many benefits of capitalism so that we can right the course toward more human flourishing.

​Commentary