An extremely insightful opinion article by Mr. Phil Graham (former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and visiting scholar at American Enterprise Institute) and Mr. Solon (a partner of US Policy Metrics) is in “The Wall Street Journal” (dated March 2, 2022).
The article is entitled: “Peace Through Strength Requires Economic Freedom.”
It asserts, and I fully agree, that “Government didn’t build America.”
In China the likes of Jack Ma, a “genius,” who founded the “Amazon of China”, and others like him were heroes of growth. How? The economic liberator, Deng Xiaoping, starting in 1978, lowered the Communist Chinese Party restraints.
Xi has been emphasizing State Owned Enterprises-SOEs since he became dictator in 1978, grossly over-borrowing, decreasing economic freedoms as well as many other freedoms of the Chinese people. And China is NOW in economic trouble because of him!
In America, we’ve had “Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and millions of investors and small-business people you’ve never heard of.”
In the State of the Union Address, I was ashamed at the CEO of Intel standing up for China Joe’s “serving up” of billions of corporate welfare for Intel, like Xi and his inefficient, unprofitable, State Owned Entities.
I was a senior auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency for about 15 years with work on large, medium, and even unformed corporations. (I also had 5 years at the US Customs Service and about 10 years in public and private accounting, a former CPA).
My bottom line – Government money just isn’t nearly as effective as individuals with economic freedom to CREATE, INVENT, COMPETE, and, yes, strive for ethical, honest, legal PROFITS!
