How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy

365 Pages·2009·1.76 MB·English

by  Steve Forbes

HOW CAPITALISM
SAVE US
WILL
Why Free People and Free Markets
Are the Best Answer
is Today's Economy
S T E VE FORBES
and E L I Z A B E TH A M ES
HOW CAPITALISM WILL SAVE US
HOW CAPITALISM
WILL SAVE US
W hy Free People and Free Markets Are
the Best A n s w er in Today's Economy
Steve Forbes
AND E L I Z A B E TH A M ES
CROWN
BUSINESS
ALSO BY STEVE FORBES
Power Ambition Glory
(coauthored with John Prevas)
Flat Tax Revolution
A New Birth of Freedom
To the millions of individuals whose energy, innovation,
and resilience built the Real World economy.
Their enterprise, when unleashed, is always the answer.
Copyright © 2009 by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Business,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and CROWN and the
Rising Sun colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Forbes, Steve, 1947-
How capitalism will save us / Steve Forbes and Elizabeth
Ames.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Capitalism—United States. 2. United States—Economic
policy. 3. United States—Economic conditions. I. Ames,
Elizabeth. II. Title.
HB501.F646 2009
330.12'20973—dc22 2009032751
ISBN 978-0-307-46309-8
Printed in the United States of America
DESIGN BY BARBARA STURMAN
1O 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
First Edition
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Why Capitalism Is the Answer:
The iPod Economy • i
CHAPTER ONE
"Is Capitalism Moral?" • 29
CHAPTER TWO
"Isn't Capitalism Brutal?" • 66
CHAPTER THREE
"Aren't the Rich Getting Richer at
Other People's Expense?" • 108
CHAPTER FOUR
"Aren't Higher Taxes the Price We Pay
for a Humane Society?" • 142
CHAPTER FIVE
Don't Regulations Safeguard the Public Good?" •
+ 174
CHAPTER SIX
"Aren't Free Trade and 'Globalization'
Destroying American Jobs and the Economies
of Other Nations?" • 2 07
Contents
viii
C H A P T ER S E V EN
"Is Affordable Health Care Possible
in a Free Market?" • 2 40
C H A P T ER E I G HT
"Isn't Government Needed to
Direct the Economy?" • 277
E P I L O G UE
What Now? • 317
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS • 327
NOTES • 329
INDEX • 347
H OW C A P I T A L I SM W I LL SAVE US
INTRODUCTION
Why Capitalism Is the Answer:
The iPod Economy
"Laissez-faire capitalism should be as dead as Soviet
communism."
—Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post in December 2008
"Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that
always knows best is finished."
—French president Nicolas Sarkozy
"The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is
claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism."
—Washington Post
H
as capitalism failed? The events of the last few years have left Nicolas
Sarkozy, Arianna Huffington, the Washington Post, and countless
others ready—some might say eager—to write the obituary of our free-
enterprise system. Even to those who aren't declaring its demise, capital
ism has seemed on the verge of cardiac arrest. The economy has been roiled
by one catastrophe after the next: the failure of financial institutions,
the housing-market meltdown, a roller-coaster stock market, decimated
401 (k)s, high unemployment, obscene CEO pay, and massive corruption.
As the crisis deepened in late 2008 and early 2009, Wall Street "greed"
was blamed daily for the near implosion of the world financial system. Busi
ness executives were interrogated like criminals at congressional hearings.
For a time, grim economic forecasts and job losses seemed endless. To
many people, such events provided proof that "unfettered" markets produce
just instability and devastation.