The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Capitalism

The liberal media and propagandists masquerading as educators have filled the world – and deformed public policy — with politically correct errors about capitalism and economics in general. And the new Democratic Congress will soon be pushing new socialist initiatives, under the guise of their being “good for the children.” But in “The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Capitalism,” myth-busting professor Robert P. Murphy, a columnist and adjunct scholar and frequent speaker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, cuts through all their nonsense, shattering liberal myths and fashionable socialist clich?s to set the record straight.

Murphy starts at the beginning with a basic explanation of what capitalism really is – then dives fearlessly into hot topics like outsourcing (why it’s good for Americans) … zoning restrictions (why they’re not) … what the difference is between laissez-faire and regulation (and why laissez-faire is better) … why central planning never has worked and never will work … how prices operate in a free market (and why socialist schemes like rent control always backfire) … how labor unions actually hurt working people more than they help them … why increasing the minimum wage is always a bad idea … and much more.

Breezy and witty but always clear, precise, and elegantly reasoned, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism is a solid and entertaining guide to why conservatives should resist the new attempts to socialize America further, and fight spiritedly for the free market.

Liberal myths about the economy, shattered:

• Why the common objection to capitalism — that it exploits the poor to serve the interests of the rich — is precisely backward
• Why even bad CEOs deserve the big bucks
• Child labor laws: why they’re unnecessary
• How minimum wage lead inevitably to increased unemployment
• Why the free market is the best guard against societal racism
• Why there’s nothing “affirmative” about affirmative action
• Slavery: Immoral, yes, but also inefficient! How it was propped up by government intervention – and why a free market would have eliminated slavery
• The male/female “wage gap”: largely a myth
• The many government regulations that actually make things tougher for women and minorities
• How the FDA has taken away the option of experimental drugs and techniques for dying Americans
• How most modern critics of capitalism fear freedom – they fear the results of allowing people to decide their own economic affairs and letting the unregulated market run its course
• How capitalism will save the environment
• Why Communist countries were and are the most polluted on earth
• Good intentions but deadly consequences: The case of airbags
• Why, when government regulates prices, it creates shortages
• How a growing number of economists are recognizing the flaws in government antitrust enforcement, and many even recommend scrapping the operation altogether
• Deficits: why they don’t cause inflation
• Gasoline price controls: how they might save you some money at the pump, but will cost you time and money in the form of shortages, long lines, and perhaps even rationing
• Why traffic jams would disappear if government control of roads were ended
• How hatred for capitalism unites feminists, environmentalists, social scientists, consumer advocacy groups, and others
• Raising taxes: why it is never “responsible”
• Why no genuine advocate for the downtrodden could endorse the dehumanizing Welfare State
• How market forces protect both workers and consumers
• How, by shielding banks from their contractual obligations, government policies encourage recklessness
• The American Medical Association: a cartel that actually raises medical costs
• Zoning regulations: how they raise crime rates in big cities
• Proof: No economic system has ever been more successful at continuously raising standards of living than capitalism
• How printing more money makes prices rise
• The basic contradiction in which leftist intellectuals entangle themselves when they oppose both foreign imports and trade sanctions on rogue states like Cuba
• The single biggest myth underlying the public’s support for government regulation of business – and why it’s false
• The New Deal: it didn’t end the Depression
• Waste and poor service: why they’re the only predictable features of government ownership
• Why it’s no accident that the government-owned Post Office has lost millions of parcels and borrowed billions of dollars
• How government “deregulation” – like California’s electricity “deregulation” – is often phony
• Pro sports salaries: why they’re actually fair, as astronomical as they are
• How the conventional GDP stats downplay business and exaggerate the role of government
• The word “capitalism”: originally a Marxist smear
• Revealed: LBJ’s war on taxpayers – and how his War On Poverty has actually done nothing to reduce poverty
• Why free market banks are safer than government-regulated ones
• The 1980s: not a “decade of greed”
• Social Security: why it is neither social nor secure, and shouldn’t be sacrosanct
• The myth of the robber barons, and other ways that leftist historians try to give capitalists and capitalism a bad name
• How free market mergers promote efficiency – while government monopolies (the biggest source of monopolies) don’t
• Antitrust suits: usually filed by firms that lose in free competition
• Tariffs: why they amount to nothing more than taxes on Americans
• Why there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a trade “deficit”
• Cheap imports: no, they don’t destroy jobs
• How tariffs and other restrictions “protect” privileged workers but make other Americans poorer
• Outsourcing: how it makes America richer
• The IMF and World Bank: why they don’t help poor countries
• Middlemen, speculators, and corporate raiders: how they actually benefit society
• Call options and other derivative securities: how they make investing safer for average Americans
• Plus: Are you a capitalist pig? Take the quiz and find out!

Tags: Robert Murphy, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism