Lifting the Poor Out of Poverty

Surveys have revealed that among younger voters capitalism is losing favor and socialism is gaining it. Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, is a hero, unlikely as that seems, among millenials.

Why is this happening? Objectively, there seems to be little basis for it. Socialist countries like Venezuela and many African countries are economically moribund or worse. Yet, despite the negative effects of socialism in many of the places it's been tried, the blight of poverty is shrinking on a global scale. This improvement in the lives of so many is due not to socialist policies but to free enterprise capitalism.

In his book Suicide of the West Jonah Goldberg offers us some facts about global poverty:

• "Around the world the number of people considered poor has decreased both relatively and absolutely - an incredible feat, given massive increases in population."
• "In 1820, 94.4% of the world's population lived on the equivalent of less than $2 a day, and 83.9% lived on less than $1 a day....As of 2015 only 9.6% of the world's population lived on less than $1.50 a day."
• As recently as 1970, almost 27% of people world-wide lived in abject poverty (less than one 1987 dollar a day). A little more than 5% did as of 2006."
• Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of the population in developing countries living in poverty fell from 43 to 21 percent, a reduction of almost one billion people.
• In 2015, for the first time in human history, less than 10% of the world's population was considered extremely poor.

What's responsible for this fantastic improvement in the quality of life of so many people? Goldberg makes the case that the answer is economic growth and technological innovation, both of which are much more likely to occur under free-market capitalism than under government controlled economies.

It's hard to understand how anyone who claims to care about poor people could endorse socialist nostrums which inevitably entail bigger, more bloated government and stifling economic regulations, but, in a triumph of feeling over fact, they often do.

This short video, for example, addresses and debunks five myths people believe about free enterprise that cause them to turn to socialism:

The lesson is, if you care about the poor, don't vote for people who, in the name of fairness and equality, would place unreasonable and unneccessary restrictions on free markets and the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate.