capitalism Archives - The Ohio Star

Majority of Americans Want the Government to Fight Income Inequality, Poll Finds

June 26, 2021June 25, 2021 Ohio Star Staff

Group of people gathered, talking next to an office desk

A majority of respondents believe that the federal government should push policies that reduce income inequality in the United States, according to a poll released Friday by Axios.

The Axios poll shows 66% of respondents say the government should work to lower the level of income distributed unevenly, up 4% compared to 2019.

Republicans surveyed who agreed the government should tackle income inequality increased by 5%, and Independents who responded similarly increased by 2%, according to the poll. Democrats saw an increase of 7% in favor of such policies compared to 2019.

Commentary: Dismantling America Without a Replacement

July 9, 2020July 8, 2020 Ohio Star Staff

Calls to dismantle this group or that institution have become the topic du jour in American politics. It started with police departments and the criminal justice system, then it spread to museums, and now one Democratic congresswoman is raising the bar on a logarithmic scale.

In a Tuesday press conference devoted to discussing America’s alleged systemic racism, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, D-MN, called for dismantling “the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

Commentary: Education Entrepreneurs Are the Only Ones Who Can Disrupt the Status Quo

April 5, 2020April 4, 2020 Ohio Star Staff

Transforming entrenched systems and industries comes through disruptive innovation and entrepreneurship. Coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, disruptive innovation is the process by which new ideas and inventions create value and ultimately topple existing competitors. A visionary individual or group spots opportunity and develops new solutions that meet consumer demand faster, better, and more cheaply. This innovation improves our lives through efficiency and cost-effectiveness, allowing us to keep more of our hard-earned money with better service and satisfaction.

Commentary: An Unexpected Climate Hero is Equity Markets

December 1, 2019November 30, 2019 Ohio Star Staff

Joesph Stalin allegedly said that the “death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic.” Fitting neatly with his horrendous ideology, our brains are simply not equipped to understand suffering of astonishing proportions – for a single person suffering we feel empathy; with millions we blink cluelessly before looking away, dumbfounded.

Commentary: Black Friday Is Capitalism at Its Most Beautiful

November 29, 2019November 28, 2019 Ohio Star Staff

I went to a Daily Mass on Black Friday last year. The priest didn’t waste too much time with the homily, but he made a few comments about Thanksgiving and a statement about Black Friday which I found hopefully refreshing. He said, “This is a day for the poor.” Of course, he’s right, but how often do we think of Black Friday in those terms? As Thanksgiving and Black Friday approach once again, let us reflect on this concise but incredibly profound statement.

Commentary: Why the Pilgrims Abandoned Common Ownership for Private Property

November 28, 2019November 27, 2019 Ohio Star Staff

Next year at this time, Americans will mark the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower in 1620 and the subsequent founding of the Plymouth colony by English Separatists we know as the Pilgrims. They, of course, became the mothers and fathers of the first Thanksgiving.

Commentary: Slavery Did Not Make America Richer

August 24, 2019August 23, 2019 Ohio Star Staff

In the past few decades, a new subfield of history has emerged: the history of capitalism. The subfield is widely popular in the media as a result of hugely influential books such as those of Sven Beckert and Edward Baptist. These two particular authors tie the “peculiar institution” of slavery in American history to capitalism. Many media pundits, as witnessed by recent articles in the New York Times and Vox, jumped on the works of these authors to claim that slavery was “the building block of the American economy” and it made America richer.

‘Free Market Warrior’ Spivak Warns Westerville Tea Party: We Are Losing Free Speech and More

July 11, 2019July 11, 2019 Beth Lear

WESTERVILLE, Ohio — “Free Market Warrior” Loren Spivak visited Westerville on Tuesday at the invitation of the Westerville Tea Party. Activists in the room settled in to hear Spivak’s talk about “What is ‘The Left,’ and What are They About, Really?” Spivak began by asking the audience, “What are the…

Ohio’s Tim Ryan Says He’s ‘Concerned’ With Rise of Socialism in His Party, But Calls Health Care a ‘Human Right’

April 19, 2019April 18, 2019 Anthony Gockowski

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH-13), a 2020 presidential hopeful, said on CNN Wednesday that he’s “concerned” about the rise of socialism within the Democratic Party. “I’m concerned about it because if we are going to de-carbonize the American economy it’s not going to be some centralized bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. that’s…

Commentary: Game of Thrones Might Be the Greatest Advertisement for Capitalism Ever Written

April 14, 2019April 14, 2019 Ohio Star Staff

by Barry Brownstein Consider these numbers. The final season of Game of Thrones cost about $100 million to film. In 1300, the entire medieval English real GDP was only 40 million English pounds. Game of Thrones doesn’t hide the desperate poverty of common people living in a fantasy version…

Commentary: Capitalism Saved Sweden

March 24, 2019March 24, 2019 Ohio Star Staff

by Michael Munger Josh Billings famously diagnosed a problem with beliefs: “I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.” I am astonished at how many students, and for that matter adults, in the U.S. honestly believe that the U.S. should model itself…

Commentary: The Myth of Millennial Socialism

February 24, 2019February 24, 2019 Ohio Star Staff

by Christopher Gage My old man tells me he left college in the 1970s and walked into a job for life. He tells me his first home cost twice the average salary. Then he tells me, without a soupçon of jest, “things were still pretty tough back then.” His…

Commentary: Right-Wing Intellectuals Hate Trump for Smashing Their Pretensions

December 27, 2018December 26, 2018 Ohio Star Staff

by Deion Kathawa More than two years into President Trump’s historic presidency, it behooves us to think more deeply about a persistent sticking point in the political life of the nation: Why do (most) right-wing intellectuals loathe him? This kind of nearly unified opposition cries out for explanation. After…

Commentary: Empathy is at the Core of Capitalism

December 10, 2018December 10, 2018 Admin

by Barry Brownstein You don’t have to search far to read claims that capitalism is centered on greed and selfishness. For some, the assertion seems self-evident as they read, for example, stories of pharmaceutical companies dramatically increasing the price of important drugs. Those who hold a “capitalists are greedy” belief fail to…

Commentary: Our Ignorance Of Socialism is Dangerous

December 9, 2018December 9, 2018 Admin

by Walter E. Williams A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter. Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was…

How the Myth of the ‘Robber Barons’ Began – and Why It Persists

October 13, 2018October 13, 2018 Ohio Star Staff

by Burton Folsom We study history to learn from it. If we can discover what worked and what didn’t work, we can use this knowledge wisely to create a better future. Studying the triumph of American industry, for example, is important because it is the story of how the…

Amazon: The World’s Most Dangerous Crony Capitalist

September 12, 2018September 11, 2018 Admin

by Rick Manning The bedrock of American commerce – and of the broader capitalist experiment – has always been competition. If you can build a better mousetrap, invent a longer-lasting light bulb or more efficiently churn out widgets (or in this case, clichés), odds are your endeavor will encounter success. It doesn’t…

Three Ways Milton Friedman Improved the Field of Economics

July 15, 2018July 18, 2018 Admin

by Luis Pablo De La Horra Milton Friedman is probably the most important free-market thinker of the twentieth century. His ideas in defense of capitalism and economic freedom had an enormous influence on the shift towards free-market policies that took place from the 1970s onwards. Countries like the UK, China,…