Pelosi Says Capitalism Has Not Helped US Economy, Argues ‘We Have To Correct That’

This is a communist coup on America.

As Ayn Rand on Capitalism, “Capitalism did not create poverty — it inherited it.” For much of human history, the vast majority of the population was mired in poverty. All too often, the average individual lived in unimaginably wretched conditions. It was only in the nineteenth century, and then only in the West, that the masses started to enjoy prosperity because of capitalism.

“The nineteenth century was the ultimate product and expression of the intellectual trend of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, which means: of a predominantly Aristotelian philosophy. And, for the first time in history, it created a new economic system, the necessary corollary of political freedom, a system of free trade on a free market: capitalism.”

“No, it was not a full, perfect, unregulated, totally laissez-faire capitalism—as it should have been. Various degrees of government interference and control still remained, even in America—and this is what led to the eventual destruction of capitalism. But the extent to which certain countries were free was the exact extent of their economic progress. America, the freest, achieved the most.”

“Never mind the low wages and the harsh living conditions of the early years of capitalism. They were all that the national economies of the time could afford. Capitalism did not create poverty—it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As proof—the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a growth of over 300 per cent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 per cent per century.”

“The flood of misinformation, misrepresentation, distortion, and outright falsehood about capitalism is such that the young people of today have no idea (and virtually no way of discovering any idea) of its actual nature. While archeologists are rummaging through the ruins of millennia for scraps of pottery and bits of bones, from which to reconstruct some information about prehistorical existence—the events of less than a century ago are hidden under a mound more impenetrable than the geological debris of winds, floods, and earthquakes: a mound of silence.”

“Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.”

“The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.”

“The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.”

“In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion, and contractual agreement, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree—and thus keeps the road open to man’s most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.”

“Capitalism demands the best of every man—his rationality—and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. His success depends on the objective value of his work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win in every field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living—and of thought—ever higher for all those who take part in mankind’s productive activity.”

Ayn Rand on Capitalism

Pelosi Says Capitalism Has Not Helped US Economy ‘As Well As It Should,’ Argues ‘We Have To Correct That’

By Brianna Lyman, Daily Caller, September 17, 2021:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Friday capitalism “has not served our economy as well as it should” but insisted it is a system to improve rather than abandon.

“In America, capitalism is our system, it is our economic system, but it has not served our economy as well as it should,” Pelosi said at a Chatham House event in the United Kingdom, according to Reuters. “So what we want to do is not depart from that, but to improve it.”

Pelosi said “stakeholder capitalism” has historically been beneficial to the states as it has allowed both workers’ wages and management’s to rise as productivity increases, according to The Washington Post. Pelosi, however, criticized “shareholder capitalism” which she says causes employees’ salaries to remain the same despite a growth in productivity.

“You cannot have a system where the success of some springs from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the environment and the rest, and we have to correct that.”

Join @RobinNiblett and me at @ChathamHouse in London for a moderated conversation. https://t.co/r7uBXuZvP2

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) September 17, 2021

Pelosi has remained steadfast in her commitment to capitalism, albeit with some adjustments to the system. (RELATED: Top Senate Republican Grills Biden EPA Nominee Over ‘Resist Capitalism’ Tweet)

When asked by a left-leaning student in 2017 whether Democrats should move farther left with “a more stark contrast to right-wing economics,” Pelosi immediately clarified Democrats are capitalists.

“I have to say, we’re capitalists, that’s just the way it is,” she responded, according to NYU Local. “However, we do think that capitalism is not necessarily meeting the needs with the income inequality that we have in our country.”

“We’re a capitalist system. The free market is – is a place that can do good things.”