by Dan Mitchell | Feb 6, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say that their goal of “democratic socialism” is very different from the socialism of Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela, as well as the socialism of the former Soviet Union. And they doubtlessly would get...
by Dan Mitchell | May 3, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Socialism
In a column for the New York Times, Jochen Bittner writes about how a rising star of Germany’s Social Democrat Party wants the type of socialism that made the former East Germany an economic failure. Socialism, the idea that workers’ needs are best met by the...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 17, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Every Thanksgiving, I share the story of how the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because of their experiment with collectivized agriculture. Once the settlers shifted to a system based on private ownership, however, their problems disappeared. The obvious moral of...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 26, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs
I’ve written about how totalitarian ideologies such as communism and Nazism have a lot in common. Both subordinate the individual to the state and both give the state power over the economy. And both slaughter millions of people. My buddy from grad school, Matt Kibbe,...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 8, 2019 | Blogs, Society
When talking with people who dislike free enterprise, it’s quite common that they will admit (at least once I share some of the evidence) that markets produce more prosperity than statism. But that generally doesn’t convince them. In part, this is because they believe...