Do Occupiers make any kind of sense at all? Answer two simple questions and you'll see for yourself.

The two questions are pretty straightforward: Would you rather be the King of England in 1263 or who you are today?  And, the second one: What country would you otherwise choose to be born into as a poor person?  How you answer these two questions tells the tale of what you really think and believe about the OWS gang, whether you're at heart an "Occupier" or a free-market capitalist.

Foto courtesy of Salon.comMaybe it's just because I'm a biz school prof that I occasionally shake my head at how inept most people are when it comes to understanding and then articulating what's essential and true about their lives when it comes to economics and political philosophy.  Hence, my interest in sharing with you what I ran across recently that amounts to the ordinary-person's economic eye-opener:  a powerful explanation that you--everyone, really--should read if you harbor even the smallest doubt to think that the Occupiers have any kind of point--much less any points that make any sense.  

In the paragraphs below, I quote--verbatim and with full attribution--what is at the heart of a terrific post titled "Occupy Wall Street crowd blind to the benefits of capitalism," by Gary Wolfram, The William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College.  Whether you're an economics wizard or just wondering if you've overlooked something that's talked about a lot in the news--this is a "must-read" deal.  I'd be very surprised if you didn't find Dr. Wolfram's POV very insightful.  

...The Wall Street protesters, in their hatred of capitalism, overlook things including the fact that over the last 100 years capitalism has reduced poverty more and increased life expectancy more than in the 100,000 years prior. 

Every semester I ask my students: "What would you rather be? King of England in 1263 or you?" Turns out, students would rather be themselves. They enjoy using their iPhone, indoor plumbing, central heating, refrigerators and electric lighting. All of these things are available to the average person in America today and none of them were available to the aristocracy when the West operated under the feudal system.
 
How is it that for thousands of years mankind made very little progress in increasing the standard of living and yet today half of the goods and services you use in the next week did not exist when I was born? It wasn't that there was some change in the DNA such that we got smarter. The Greeks knew how to make a steam engine 3,000 years ago and never made one. The difference is in how we organize our economic system. The advent of market capitalism in the mid 18th century made all of the difference.

We need not just rely on historical data. Look at cross-section evidence. I try another experiment with my students. I tell them they are about to be born and they can choose whatever country in the world they would like to be born in. The only caveat is they will be the poorest person in that country. Every student picks a country that is primarily organized in a market capitalist system. No one picks a centrally planned state. No one says, "I want to be the poorest person in North Korea, Cuba, or Zimbabwe," countries which are at the bottom of the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom.
 
What does it mean to be poor in our capitalist society that the Occupy Wall Street crowd so hates? Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has several studies of those classified as poor by the U.S. Census Bureau. He found that 80 percent of poor persons in the United States in 2010 had air conditioning, nearly three quarters of them had a car or truck, nearly two-thirds had satellite or cable television, half had a personal computer and more than two-thirds had at least two rooms per person.
 
Contrast this with what it means to be poor in Mumbai, India, a country that is moving rapidly towards market capitalism but was burdened for decades with a socialist system. A recent story in The Economist described Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, where for many families half of the family members must sleep on their sides in order for the entire family to squeeze into its living space.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has shown a lack of understanding of how the market capitalist system works. They appear to think that the cell phones they use, food they eat, hotels they stay in, cars they drive, gasoline that powers the cars they drive and all the myriad goods and services they consume every day would be there under a different system, perhaps in more abundance.

But there is no evidence this could be or ever has been the case. The reason is that only market capitalism solves the two major problems that face any economy-how to provide an incentive to innovate and how to solve the problem of decentralized information. The reason there is so much innovation in a market system compared to socialism or other forms of central planning is that profit provides the incentive for innovators to take the risk needed to come up with new products.
 
My mother never once complained that we did not have access to the latest Soviet washing machine. We never desired a new Soviet car. The socialist system relies on what Adam Smith referred to as the benevolent butcher and while there will undoubtedly be benevolent butchers out there, clearly a system that provides monetary rewards for innovators is much more dynamic and successful. The profit that the Occupy Wall Street protesters decry is the reason the world has access to clean water and anti-viral drugs.

There's even more good stuff to read if you go directly to Wolfram's post [the URL is shown above] and read it in its entirety  But the part I shared here makes the point most people I know sort of "get" but can't usually articulate very well.  But, be assured that if you've read this far--you no longer fall into that category any more!  And good for you!

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