A Thursday Reminder of Something You Probably Already Know

Question:

When the marxists succeed in remaking the USA as a eurosocialist state, and we are no longer creating the wealth nescessary to aid foreign lands in times of need, where will that aid come from?

The entire left operates from the disasterously wrong notion that wealth creation is a zero sum game. The belief that if an American bocomes wealthy, he had to take those resources from somewhere. The economic reality of course is a different matter entirely. Our national wealth was created. We took our resources, or purchased resources for abroad, and created wealth with those resources. Those nations which have embraced our system have flourished, while those nations who have chosen not to, have floundered. Haiti was a prime example of a socialist oppressed state, with a squandered economic opportunity. They were devastated by this terrible disaster, but they would have been less so, had they allowed a free market system build stronger infrastructure. I feel bad for the poor folks of Haiti. I also feel bad for the poor victims of future disasters, who may not have a wealthy USA to help save them, feed them, rebuild them.

From the wayback machine, Hail to a hidden America by Michael Prouse in the London Times, Dec. 1996:

From the beginning, the American story has
been one of dazzling success. The
Declaration of Independence ­
philosophically inspired by John Locke, the
great English libertarian philosopher ­ was
a milestone in human progress. Little more
than a century after its founding, America
had overtaken the rest of the world
economically. More important, it had
guaranteed for its people freedoms undreamt
of elsewhere. It had also virtually
eliminated the horrible class and status
distinctions which still disfigure European
and Asian society.

Now consider what America has done for the
rest of the world this century. It defeated
Nazi Germany (Britain would never have
survived without American support) and
crushed militarism in Japan. It contained
communism in the former Soviet Union and
eastern Europe for half a century ­ long
enough for these cruel and inefficient
regimes to collapse of their own accord. It
donated huge sums of aid to western Europe
and developing countries, and helped these
regions develop economically by giving them
trade concessions. It is doubtful whether
any other nation wielding the power America
had in 1945 would have been half so
generous.

Through its commitment to capitalism,
America ensured the survival of a broadly
free-market global system during the
decades when nearly all of Europe’s
intellectuals were bitterly opposed to the
very concept of laissez faire. Today even
such bastions of regulation as Germany and
Sweden are cautiously implementing their
own Reaganite reforms.

You would think these immense gifts would
have sparked a sense of gratitude ­ even
reverence ­ in other nations. But no; most
of the time there is nothing but snide
criticism. When the great European nations
showed themselves utterly incapable of
ending the war in Bosnia, America stepped
in and brokered a peace. It was entirely
typical that America, out of moral outrage
at the carnage, should assume a
responsibility that ought to have rested
firmly on European shoulders. But were
Europeans properly grateful? Of course not.

We live in the Age of Envy.