An Evening with Steve Forbes

Last Tuesday night three friends and I had the privilege of attending an event hosted by the Center of the American Experiment at Orchestra Hall. The guest speaker was Steve Forbes. After having our pictures taken,and a wonderful social hour, we settled in for an interesting evening. We were invited by my friend Devin Foley who is the president and CEO of Intellctual TakeOut, a website program who's purpose is to educate college students and others who want to know the opposing side to any issues, from environmentalism to economics.

Some of the interesting points made by Mr. Forbes include: Free Markets have a moral foundation and have a mutually beneficial exchange; commerce and philanthropy are the same side of a coin. Our free markets are based on personal liberty and that allows for human imagination and ingenuity. He made the point using "oil". It is, on it's own, just a sludge substance - you can't eat it, drink it, wear it, -it is essentially useless without man's imagination and innovation.

There will always be the "bad side"of capitalism, the Maydoff's, etc - but Capitalism is NOT bad. There are rules of the road - so to speak - but government does not tell us what we can and can't do. He gave the example of Steve Jobs and Itunes. People were illegally taking music, and Mr. Jobs came up with a solution.
He pointed out that the economic catastophe we are now experiencing was caused by government errors, such as monetary policy. He said printing money is essentially flooding the engine, and he said that politicians shouldn't change the value of what you earn. Then he spoke of the commodity bubble and the housing crisis, putting folks who can't afford houses into them, and this resulted in a situation where we now have mark to market. Again, all of these "bad" government decisions and policies have caused the crisis we are in today.

What is the solution according to Mr. Forbes. He said,
"This finger-pointing at capitalism is absolutely misplaced. Every economic disaster during the last 100 years has its origins in bad government economic policies, from the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which triggered the Great Depression, to the Federal Reserve's excessive printing of money, which brought us the Great Inflation of the 1970s and the recent housing bubble.

Despite many people's incomplete understanding of free markets (which is why I, along with coauthor Elizabeth Ames, wrote How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy), there's a general appreciation that they usually work better than government-dominated ones. Hence the growing political backlash against the Obama Administration's attempt to nationalize health care and extend Washington's tentacles deeper into more areas of our economic lives. This is also why the election results earlier this month were so important. More and more, Americans are disturbed and, indeed, angered by what they see unfolding in the way of binge spending, increased tax burdens and government power-grabbing. The idea that a bloated federal government having more sway over health care will render us better outcomes at less cost for patients with cancer, heart disease and other illnesses is headshakingly preposterous. If Washington doesn't change course--and the House vote for a monstrous health care bill demonstrates it won't--incumbents, who these days are mostly Democrats, will suffer severely next November. Incumbency is normally a huge advantage in an election, but it's become an albatross, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg can ruefully attest after nearly losing his reelection bid to an underfinanced and largely unknown opponent.

Fortunately for us the opposition to Obama's push for more government control has deep philosophical underpinnings and an impressive array of positive policy alternatives, such as a sound dollar, cuts in tax rates, spending restraints and a host of free-enterprise reforms for health care, including allowing people to shop around the country for health insurance instead of being confined to choices in their respective states."

As a candidate who believes in less government intrusion and free market capitalism, I was encouraged to hear this perspective.