Margaret Thatcher dies, She was 87

All politicians have their failings, but the world could use a solid dose of the Maggie Thatcher on display in the attached video.

She fillets an MP who say’s that because the gap between the top 10% in income and the bottom 10% in income has expanded, his constituents are “relatively poorer” than they were in 1979 (when Ms. Thatcher came to power.) What the MP fails to mention is that because of the liberalization of the British economy under Thatcher incomes for everyone were up.

Says Thatcher, “What the Honorable Gentleman is saying, is that he’d rather the poor be poorer provided the rich were less rich.”

Sounds familiar. Many today would rather the “rich” be cut down to size, than have a dynamic economy which provides opportunity for business and social mobility but does not guarantee equality of outcome. This, even though everyone will generally be better off with freer markets.

Saying this the co-opting of the modern welfare/warfare state by business and other special interests via crony capitalism makes things more difficult. Many of the supposed allies of free enterprise have drifted to the dark side, and as such the battlefield of economic ideas Ms. Thatcher strode is in many ways more complicated today.

RIP Margaret Thatcher.

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/