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Two months ago I was with the former President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, at his home outside of Medellin.<\/p>\nTwo months ago I was with the former President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, at his home outside of Medellin.<\/p>\n
He was telling me some hilarious stories about his interactions in the early 2000s with Hugo Chavez, who had recently seized power in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Chavez was a fanatic socialist. He believed so strongly in the idea of redistributing wealth from rich to poor.<\/p>\n
Yet even when it was clear his policies weren\u2019t working and Venezuela was rapidly sliding into economic chaos, Chavez\u2019s only solution was to double down and redistribute even MORE wealth.<\/p>\n
It was the classic definition of insanity.<\/p>\n
Chavez failed to understand what Uribe told me so succinctly: \u201cIf there\u2019s no wealth creation, there\u2019s nothing left to redistribute<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n We know how Venezuela turned out; its failed socialist experiment led to today\u2019s infamous shortages of food and toilet paper.<\/p>\n But here in Russia is perhaps the most famous example in our modern times.<\/p>\n Marxists came to power in a bloody 1917 revolution with the goal of eradicating poverty and redistributing wealth.<\/p>\n Yet like Venezuela, the only equality the Soviet Union managed to achieve was making everyone equally poor to the point that this vast wasteland of destitution finally collapsed in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n These economic disasters almost invariably start with a rising gap in wealth and income\u2013 a growing percentage of the population feeling left behind who rally behind someone promising to \u201cspread the wealth around.\u201d<\/p>\n As Historian Will Durant wrote in his incredible 1969 book Lessons from History:<\/p>\n The concentration [of wealth]<\/strong> may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich. . . which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth <\/strong>or by revolution distributing poverty<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is exactly what\u2019s happening in the West now.<\/p>\n The statistics are obvious: the wealth gap is bigger than it\u2019s been since the Great Depression.<\/p>\n Middle class wages, when adjusted for inflation, are stagnant.<\/p>\n 2015 was the first time in years that the average wage increase in the United States actually surpassed the rate of inflation.<\/p>\n But on a longer timeline, household incomes haven\u2019t kept pace with either productivity or the cost of living.<\/p>\n We can see the effects of this anecdotally.<\/p>\n Thomas Piketty\u2019s 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century<\/em>, which criticized such inequality and advocated a global wealth tax<\/strong>, was an explosive best-seller.<\/p>\n A 2011 Pew Research Center poll showed that 49% of US respondents had a favorable view of socialism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And of course, Bernie Sanders<\/strong> made wealth and income inequality major issues in his presidential campaign, resonating with tens of millions of people.<\/p>\n On the way over to Russia I was reading an article in Newsweek about Uber, the ride-sharing pioneer that is currently worth around $70 billion.<\/p>\n The author was upset because the company\u2019s stock isn\u2019t publicly traded like Apple or Facebook, meaning he\u2019s not able to own any Uber shares for himself.<\/p>\n He complains that the founders of these tech companies have been \u201cactively deciding to keep as much for [themselves] as possible and shut out the rest of the populace by avoiding public stock offerings.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the author, we\u2019re apparently all entitled to our \u201cfair share\u201d<\/strong> of other people\u2019s businesses and private property.<\/p>\n Unbelievable.<\/p>\n He\u2019s not alone\u2013 there\u2019s a growing chorus of politicians beating up on Uber, evidenced by Elizabeth Warren\u2019s statement in March 2016 that \u201call the benefits [of Uber and related \u201cshared-economy\u201d companies] are floating to the top 10%<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n What an ignorant comment to make.<\/p>\n Uber loses billions of dollars each year.<\/p>\n So if anything, investors\u2019 capital ends up in the pockets of the hundreds of thousands of drivers who use the app to generate extra income.<\/p>\n In reality Uber constitutes an enormous transfer of wealth from investors to workers and consumers. So her comment was totally wrong.<\/p>\n But what was more amazing was that she was complaining about how it benefits the top TEN percent.<\/p>\n Usually these people whine about the top 0.1%, then the top 1%. Now it\u2019s the top 10%.<\/p>\n When will they start complaining about the top 20%?<\/strong> Or those evil people in the top 55%, i.e. the percentage of households that actually pay US federal income tax.<\/p>\n Wealth and income inequality is real, and the gap is growing. So is the consequent rise of socialism.<\/p>\n People know they\u2019re getting screwed.<\/strong> And they are. They just don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n They have no idea how central bankers who conjure money out of thin air have rigged the entire economy against them.<\/p>\n So instead they blame \u201ccapitalism\u201d<\/strong> and naturally embrace its opposite.<\/p>\n Seven centuries ago when Europe was just a plague-infested backwater, glimmerings of economic freedom began to appear on the continent.<\/p>\n The West adopted core values, like the sacrosanct protection of private property<\/strong>; the ability for an individual to work hard and build wealth<\/strong>; and spirited intellectual debate.<\/p>\n This is how western civilization became the most prosperous that history has ever known<\/strong>.<\/p>\n But this is all changing.<\/p>\n Being wealthy used to be a virtue<\/strong> worthy of widespread aspiration.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s met with skepticism and derision<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Similarly, intellectual dissent used to be embraced.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s increasingly considered \u201chate speech<\/strong>\u201d that must be banished from university campuses and their infantile \u2018safe spaces<\/strong>\u2019.<\/p>\n And the entire west, it seems, is moving towards an ever-expanding, fiscally unsustainable welfare state<\/strong> that creates swelling masses of dependents.<\/p>\n This is a complete breakdown of western values, and that has serious consequences.<\/p>\n It\u2019s incredible how rapidly this trend has unfolded\u2013 it\u2019s a very steep line from the economic chaos of the 2008 financial crisis to where we are today.<\/p>\n And given the speed of this pro-socialist trend, just think about where it\u2019s going to be in a few more years.<\/p>\n More than likely, it will progress straight into your wallet.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2017, Simon Black, Sovereign Man<\/a><\/span>-All rights reserved.<\/p>\n Two months ago I was with the former President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, at his home outside of Medellin. He was telling me some hilarious stories about his interactions in the early 2000s with Hugo Chavez, who had recently seized power in Venezuela. Chavez was a fanatic socialist. He believed so strongly in the idea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":18406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"wp-image-borders","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/RS4525_600x313_RS4526_Protest_crowdYUOPKULIO.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bgnN-4MQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18407,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404\/revisions\/18407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image_pdf\"](\"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/pdf.png\" "\\"View")
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