75-02-B3
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Capitalism-Socialism
TranscriptCapitalism is not the most popular thing around these days. In many circles it's a downright nasty the word. It's also what this country's all about. I'll be right back. There's a worldwide struggle going on for the hearts and minds of mankind. For a time we call that the Cold War, now we talk of detente. Actually the struggle has been going on for a century or more. It's the contest between capitalism and socialism. Those who favor socialism have managed to create an unpleasant image which for too many people can be invoked by simply saying the word capitalism and capitalist, of course, is an outright epithet. Yet capitalism is what America's all about. Indeed you can't have freedom without capitalism, for capitalism simply means your right as an individual to own things, to do what you will with the money you earn, to buy a piece of land, build a home of your own. Today plagued by a high cost of living we hear more and more voices raised in criticism of our way of life. They talk of utopia where there would be no poverty no unemployment where on all wise government would make all the hard decisions for us and we'd have cradle to grave security. Now the word utopia is from the greek, and it means "nowhere." We should make the disciples of socialism talk about the somewhere's of socialism because there are some. Sweden, for example, where the income tax is 30% on incomes of only $6000, where workers resort to barter to keep from moving into an even higher tax bracket. In Red China it takes a year's income to buy a wristwatch. Even in those countries which have a mix, some free enterprise and some nationalization of business, the story is the same. In France the telephone system is run by the post office, just the other day France announced the price for putting in a phone was going up from $111 to $244, and even at that price, people have to wait as much as 3 years to get one. John Kenneth Galbraith, the celebrated economist, came to public notice many years ago with his book, The Affluent Society, which made the point that you and I were rolling in luxury while the so called public sector was starved for funds. His suggestion was that we are the people were foolishly buying all the wrong things and that government should take a greater share of our money from us in taxes, and government did, to buy for us the things we really need and we're too stupid to buy. He has written a new book this when he says private enterprises has failed and socialism is the only answer. Well now let's get down the cases let's take a good look at a huge nation that had fifty years to put into practice a completely socialist system. The Soviet Union is more territory than the United States, a larger population, two hundred and fifty million capable people, and a great many natural resources. Now you know we could match their socialist utopian; it would take a little doing. We'd have to cut our paychecks by 75 percent, move 60 million workers back to the farm, abandon 2/3 of our steel making capacity, destroy 40 million tv sets, tear up 14 out of every 15 miles of highway, junk 19 out of 20 autos, tear up 2/3 of our railroad track, knock down 70% of our houses and rip out 9/10 of our telephones, then all we'd have to do is find a capitalist country that would sell us wheat on credit to keep us from starving. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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