The Everyday Economist

John Stossel writes:

The economy is far too complex for any president — no matter how smart — to manage. How can politicians and bureaucrats possibly know what hundreds of millions of individuals know, want and aspire to? How can government employees fathom what trade-offs to make in a world of scarce resources?

They can’t. That’s why free people are more prosperous than unfree people.

Presidential candidates should promise to keep their hands off the economy.

Read the whole thing.

John Tamny considers Bill Gates’ notion of ‘kind’ capitalism to be a misnomer:

Instead, capitalism is better than kind for engendering a form of ruthless benevolence whereby capital is constantly being directed away from the businesses and entrepreneurs who fail to give people what they want, and redirected toward those who are. With profit paramount in capitalist systems, capital rarely lies dormant such that its overseers can use it in ways inimical to the interests of the rich and poor alike.

[...]

Furthermore, [Greg] Clark writes that when we look at how the rich live, “their current lifestyle predicts powerfully how we will all eventually live if economic growth continues.” Sure enough, this writer experienced the shock of seeing a wealthy Beverly Hills resident talking into a bulky hand-held cell phone in the mid-‘80s, but by the new millennium cell phones were ubiquitous; the only thing remarkable about them in recent years having to do with those not in possession of one.Some, including Gates, might point to the wealth gap wrought by capitalism as a problem in and of itself, but returning to the proliferation of cell phones, capitalism is an engine that rewards profits; the profits frequently resulting from mass production of goods marketable to a broad spectrum of economic classes.

Tamny sounds downright Shumpetarian

Phil Miller on the often unseen wonders of economic growth in our daily lives.

Our friend Bryan Caplan questions the Chinese growth story.