380. Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Mark Levin
Author: Robert A. Lawson, Benjamin Powell
Genre: Nonfiction, Economics, History, Politics
224 pages, published July 30, 2019
Reading Format: Book
Summary
In Socialism Sucks, economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell travel to many of the world’s Socialist countries (think Venezula, Cuba and North Korea rather than Sweden and Denmark which are capitalist countries with generous welfare states) to report on the impact of Socialist policies. The results aren’t pretty. Lawson and Powell give first hand, colorful reports on how Socialism has impoverished millions of people and decimated once vibrant economies.
Quotes
“Groucho’s definition of politics is Marxism in a nutshell: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”
“It wasn’t until the so-called “Marginal Revolution” in the 1880s when three economists, working independently, all concluded that the value of a good is based on what people subjectively think a particular (or “marginal”) unit of that good is worth, which is exactly right. The amount of time or energy it takes to make something doesn’t really matter when it comes to determining its worth. This is tough to grasp, especially for the individuals or company that produced the good and want to sell it for a price that they think is “fair” compensation for their time and labor.”
“The low rate of infant mortality is a product of data manipulation. At seventy-two abortions per one hundred births, Cuba has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and Cuban doctors routinely force women to abort high-risk pregnancies so that Cuba’s bureaucrats can brag about their health statistics. If you correct the data to account for these factors, Cuba’s health statistics look a lot less impressive.”
“As economists, we believe that the American government’s half-century-long embargo on Cuba is bad policy, and that without it, we could bring the Cubans more freedom. The embargo has done nothing to undermine Cuba’s abusive Communist regime. Indeed, the Castros have used the embargo—they call it a “blockade”—to blame the United States for Cuba’s poverty rather than admit that socialism doesn’t work. Trade not only promotes economic development, it can open a society to other ideas—in this case, capitalist ones.”
“In 1988, the Chinese constitution was amended to officially recognize private property and private business. Before then, the Communist state had been China’s only official employer, with small exceptions. By 1998, the state employed about 60 percent of the working population, and in 2010 it employed only about 19 percent. China had transitioned from socialism to a form of crony capitalism.”
“All told, in less than thirty years, through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and other atrocities, Mao’s Communist government killed more of its own people than any other government in history—possibly as many as eighty million. The peasants who escaped death found themselves poorer than their ancestors. In 1978, two-thirds of Chinese peasants had incomes lower than they had in the 1950s, one-third had incomes lower than in the 1930s, and the average Chinese person was only consuming two-thirds as many calories as the average person in a developed country.”
My Take
As an avowed free marketeer, I read Socialism Sucks as a member of the choir. I already knew about the failure that is socialism and how its implementation is always at the point of a gun. This book, however, put some meat on the bones of my ideological beliefs. This book demonstrates with statistics and examples the true destructive power of socialism. American socialists (I’m looking at you, Bernie Sanders) have no idea what socialism really is. This is a book they should read.
