{"id":41630,"date":"2020-03-18T01:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T05:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=41630"},"modified":"2020-03-17T10:23:57","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T14:23:57","slug":"qotd-the-magic-of-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/03\/18\/qotd-the-magic-of-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The &#8220;magic&#8221; of capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a> Warren Buffett has told us that there&#8217;s something magical about American capitalism. This isn&#8217;t quite true, because other countries have achieved much the same thing. What is true about it is that it is the system itself which has caused the incredible wealth we all enjoy in this modern world. <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/5087360\/warren-buffett-shares-the-secrets-to-wealth-in-america\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Buffett writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>In 1776, America set off to unleash human potential by combining market economics, the rule of law and equality of opportunity. This foundation was an act of genius that in only 241 years converted our original villages and prairies into $96 trillion of wealth.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Other places which did much the same thing \u2014 that mixture of capitalism, the rule of law and free markets \u2014 achieved much the same end. We generally refer to those places as the developed world, while those that didn&#8217;t are still the Third World. There is nowhere at all that has become rich, absent some vast natural resource, without adopting this system.<\/p>\n<p>We can show this, too, with the numbers from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ggdc.net\/maddison\/maddison-project\/home.htm\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Angus Madison<\/a>. The average GDP per capita over history, all countries, all empires, was some $600 a year or so \u2014 That&#8217;s in today&#8217;s dollars, meaning history was, by our standards, abject destitution for everyone. This is also why we use $1.90 a day (at modern American prices) as our measure of global absolute poverty. Because that&#8217;s just what the past was and we celebrate when people, a country, a nation, rise above that historical existence.<\/p>\n<p>Tim Worstall, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/appalachias-woes-show-the-success-of-american-capitalism\/article\/2645378\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Appalachia&#8217;s woes show the success of American capitalism&#8221;, <em>Washington Examiner<\/em><\/a>, 2018-01-09.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warren Buffett has told us that there&#8217;s something magical about American capitalism. This isn&#8217;t quite true, because other countries have achieved much the same thing. What is true about it is that it is the system itself which has caused the incredible wealth we all enjoy in this modern world. Buffett writes: In 1776, America [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,7,41,13],"tags":[91,1138,315],"class_list":["post-41630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-history","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-poverty","tag-thepastisaforeigncountry","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aPs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41630"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55702,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41630\/revisions\/55702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}