Saturday, July 28, 2012

Is Charles Murray trying to prove his ignorance?

Charles Murray: Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem - WSJ.com

Not only does this column not reflect well on the WSJ op-ed pages, which of course bothers them not in the least, but it should make one wonder if Murray is in some kind of contest to show how little he understands of modern America and what its people think. First, he constantly refers to capitalism as some kind of monolithic system, which it is not, and praises it as an unmixed blessing. Wherever people critique it, it's because they don't understand it. No mention of shadow economies of unregulated derivative systems that dwarf many country's budgets. The crash caused by many bad practices in the financial sector apparently doesn't exist in his mind. There is not one mention of the corruption represented by Enron, Dennis Kozlowski, Bernie Ebbers or Bernie Madoff, among others. What blame he does recognize as "legitimate" lies with the government. Oh, and of course he never mentions the fact that modern businesses work as hard as they can to eliminate every job possible. There is no such thing as offshoring jobs to cheap labor markets. And no, I freely admit that I don't buy into the arguments that offshoring is another unmixed blessing of capitalism, which is not uncommon among economists, especially those of the right wing.

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