El Presidente Donald Trump acaba de concluir una gira de diez días por el Asia y los principales medios de comunicación y comentaristas silencian los logros alcanzados en beneficio de la consolidación de los Estados Unidos como primera potencia mundial del mundo libre.
Dialogó y persuadió a los líderes de China, Japón, Sud Corea e inclusive Rusia para que se presione aún más al dictador de Corea del Norte a que renuncie a su demencial programa nuclear y convino con todas las partes en renegociar las relaciones comerciales para eliminar el deficit contrario a los Estados Unidos.
Pero la batalla contra Trump por parte de demócratas y progresistas, que incluye a los republicanos del establishment, es implacable y persistente y no ceja pese a que ello perjudica a los intereses nacionales. Al silencio sobre la gira por Asia, se suma hoy el torpedeo al proyecto de reformar la ley tributaria, para simplificarla y reducir los gravámenes.
El corte de impuestos, dicen, aumentará la deuda pública. Nada dijeron en ocho años de gobierno de Obama, lapso en el cual se duplicó a 20 trillones de dólares dicha deuda. Rehuyen la discusión cuando se les explica que la baja de impuestos impulsará la producción y la riqueza, que es el método más eficaz para amortizar la deuda pública heredada.
A los demócratas progresistas en realidad no les interesa discutir, sino bloquear. Su mira, como lo han confesado, es modificar el capitalismo tal como está entendido e interpretado en la Constitución de la República, en reflejo de los postulados de la Declaración de la Independencia de los Estados Unidos de 1776.
Esos documentos, vienen de decir desde hace varias décadas, han perdido actualidad. Hay que modernizarlos y adaptarlos, afirman, a los postulados de “justicia social”, “igualación de resultados” y similares que, claro está, solo pueden míticamente alcanzarse, sin jamás conseguirse, mediante la supresión de las libertades.
El Diario The Wall Street Journal publica hoy un artículo de Andy Hessler, a quien no identifica, en el cual analiza en qué consiste el capitalismo y por qué es absurdo tratar de modificarlo, enmendarlo o disfrazarlo. Capitalismo es consustancial a la naturaleza humana, al mercado y a la libertad. Toda interferencia no justificada degenera el sistema.
Eso se observa aquí, en Europa, en el orbe entero y es causa del mayor o menor desarrollo de los pueblos. Obama y el progresismo comenzaron a inundar con trabas al sistema y frenaron el crecimiento de la economía al 2% en ocho años. Trump ha comenzado a eliminar dichas trabas y la economía crece ya a más del 3%. Más lo hará al aprobarse la reforma tributaria.
Del artículo de Hessler se destacan los párrafos finales que se reproducen seguidamente, con una versión al español. La nota íntegra está al final. Luego se transcribe el artículo de Anastasia O´Grady sobre la Venezuela a que alude Hessler, país donde el capitalismo no solo está en proceso de modificarse como quieren los demoprogresistas, sino de mutarse a un capitalismo dictatorial de Estado, como el modelo cubano.
He aquí los párrafos de Hessler:
My advice? Drop the modifiers. There is only one type of capitalism that works, and it goes like this: Someone postpones consumption, invests his savings to produce a good or service, delights customers, generates profits, and then consumes and invests what’s left in further production. These profits are pure, generated from price signals between buyers and sellers, without favoritism from experts or elites. It isn’t hard to grasp.
Profit is the ultimate measure of value to consumers—and therefore to society. Consumers benefit from buying stuff, or else they would make it all themselves, and producers benefit from selling, or else business wouldn’t be worth the effort. Of similar value, profits go both ways. “Experts” who poke their noses in only mess with this fine balance. And who needs central planning when there’s the stock market, where theories melt and reality bites? Stock exchanges are the true consiglieres of capitalism, providing capital to ideas deemed worthy of it and starving the rest.
Most of this was once self-evident, but in 2017 capitalism is losing the mind-share game. Where does all this end up? For something scary, skip the next Stephen King clown movie. Instead read up on postcapitalism and progressive mutualism. It sounds like Venezuela.
(¿Mi consejo? Olvídense de los reformistas. Sólo hay un tipo de capitalismo que funciona y así es como opera: alguien posterga el consumo, invierte sus ahorros para producir un bien o un servicio, complace a sus clientes, genera utilidades y así consume e invierte lo que sobra en aumentar la producción. Estas utilidades son puras, generadas por las señales dadas por los precios entre compradores y vendedores, sin el favoritismo de los expertos o las elites. No es difícil de entender.
La utilidad es la medida definitiva de valor para los consumidores y por ende para la sociedad. Los consumidores se benefician con la compra de objetos pues de otro modo los harían ellos mismos y los productores se benefician con las ventas; o de otro modo los negocios no valdrían el esfuerzo. Con esa medida, las utilidades sirven en las dos vías. Los “expertos” que meten sus narices en este ciclo solo echan a perder este fino equilibrio. ¿Y quién necesita de planeación central cuando hay una bolsa de valores, donde las teorías se funden y muerde la realidad? Los intercambios de valores de la bolsa son los verdaderos consejeros del capitalismo, que proveen de capital a las ideas que realmente lo merecen y que dejan vacías al resto.
La mayoría de estos conceptos era otrora válida sin necesidad de demostración, pero en el 2017 el capitalismo está perdiendo el juego de las ideas. ¿A dónde irá a parar todo ésto? Para algo tenebroso evite ver la próxima película del payaso hecha por Stephen King. En lugar de ello lea sobre postcapitalismo y mutualismo progresistsa. Se parece mucho a como Venezuela.)
After the calamitous century between Russia’s October Revolution and Venezuela’s debt default last week, you might think socialism would be dead and buried. You’d be wrong: It’s capitalism that is back on the rack, being tortured and refitted according to the ideologies of its detractors. But be warned, when you modify the word “capitalism,” you are by definition misallocating capital. I call this fill-in-the-blank capitalism.
Bernie Sanders offers a fine place to start. “Do I consider myself,” he asked at an October 2015 rally, “part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so little?” (Emphasis mine.) Never mind that it was a progressive hero, Barney Frank, who said in 2003 that he wanted to “roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing”— which helped lead to the financial crisis. Now Mr. Sanders wants to load the dice: Free college for all. Free Medicare for all. Free rations for all?
Al Gore, an ostensible environmentalist who made millions dealing with oil-rich Qatar, is no stranger to ideological modifications. On these pages in 2011, Mr. Gore co-wrote “A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism,” which demanded that markets integrate “environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making process.” Yet messing with critical price signals through “ESG metrics” is exactly what would make capitalism unsustainable. See: Frank, Barney.
A 2014 Huffington Post headline declared “Let’s Make Capitalism a Dirty Word.” This was right around the time that “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the French economist Thomas Piketty’s now largely discredited book, was published in English. Mr. Piketty called for a tax on dynastic wealth because of “a strong comeback of private capital in the rich countries since 1970, or, to put it another way, the emergence of a new patrimonial capitalism.” Tell that to Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page, self-made billionaires who weren’t even alive in 1970.
Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz tried to one-up Mr. Piketty, complaining in a 2014 article for Harper’s magazine about “phony capitalism.” But he offered a remedy! “A well-designed tax system can do more than just raise money—it can be used to improve economic efficiency and reduce inequality.” Messrs. Stiglitz and Piketty and all the modern-day central planners will no doubt gladly make the economic decisions needed to right the ship after they have sunk it.
The conspiracy theorist and occasional filmmaker Oliver Stone was at the July 2016 Comic-Con to promote his film “ Edward Snowden. ” Speaking to the cosplay crowds, he got nervous about the augmented-reality game Pokémon Go. “It’s what some people call surveillance capitalism,” he warned. “You’ll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave.” He was borrowing the term from Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard Business School professor—another strike against getting an M.B.A.
Much of this technocratic tinkering started with the 20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes, who called for government intervention in the economy to end a depression caused by government. He envisioned economists in control, running the economy. In “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” (1936), his inner socialist comes out. “I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment.”
It never ends. In 2012, Britain’s then-Prime Minister David Cameron talked about “socially responsible and genuinely popular capitalism” and blamed Labour for “turbo capitalism.” Whole Foods CEO John Mackey touts “conscious capitalism.” Postdocs in Che T-shirts whine about late capitalism over $6 soy lattes. China practices state-directed capitalism. The jury is still out.
My advice? Drop the modifiers. There is only one type of capitalism that works, and it goes like this: Someone postpones consumption, invests his savings to produce a good or service, delights customers, generates profits, and then consumes and invests what’s left in further production. These profits are pure, generated from price signals between buyers and sellers, without favoritism from experts or elites. It isn’t hard to grasp.
Profit is the ultimate measure of value to consumers—and therefore to society. Consumers benefit from buying stuff, or else they would make it all themselves, and producers benefit from selling, or else business wouldn’t be worth the effort. Of similar value, profits go both ways. “Experts” who poke their noses in only mess with this fine balance. And who needs central planning when there’s the stock market, where theories melt and reality bites? Stock exchanges are the true consiglieres of capitalism, providing capital to ideas deemed worthy of it and starving the rest.
Most of this was once self-evident, but in 2017 capitalism is losing the mind-share game. Where does all this end up? For something scary, skip the next Stephen King clown movie. Instead read up on postcapitalism and progressive mutualism. It sounds like Venezuela.
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El artículo de O'Grady:
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El artículo de O'Grady:
There’s something vaguely uplifting about the house arrest of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe last week. But it’s depressing to think that he hung onto power for 37 years, despite hyperinflation and famine in an African nation that was once a major food producer for the continent.
Ronald Reagan believed that “what is right will always eventually triumph,” but Zimbabwe is proof that it can take a long time. So too is Venezuela, which is experiencing its own Zimbabwean meltdown with no electoral way out.
Venezuelan shortages of everything are widely acknowledged. But there is less recognition that strongman Nicolás Maduro is using control of food to stamp out opposition. Hyperinflation has shriveled household budgets and the government has taken over food production and distribution. Most damning is evidence that access to government rations has become conditional on Maduro’s good favor.
The hardship is killing and deforming children. But Cuba, which runs the Maduro intelligence apparatus, also endorses it. Holding power trumps all.
Maduro took the helm in Venezuela after the March 2013 death of Hugo Chávez. Over 14 years Chávez had destroyed property rights and civil liberties and greased the monetary printing press. But $100 per barrel oil covered his multitude of sins.
Now the global crude price has been cut in half and the Chávez mess is exposed. The central bank’s net hard-currency reserves have fallen below $1 billion. Last week Miraflores Palace missed deadlines for interest payments on two sovereign debt issues and one bond issued by the national oil company PdVSA. Triple-digit inflation is spiraling.
Outside the country many are asking why the popular rebellion, which was significant in July, has gone quiet. The answer may be in the government’s skillful use of hunger as much as imprisonment to quash dissent.
Last week the newspaper El Nacional reported on a “food emergency forum” held by Amnesty International in Caracas. One participant was Maritza Landaeta, coordinator of the Caracas-based nonprofit Bengoa, which has worked to aid Venezuelans in food and nutritional needs since 2000. In describing the crisis, Ms. Landaeta shared the grim reality facing many mothers: “They say their children cry all day and they can only give them water. They are dying.”
Ms. Landaeta said some communities are experiencing undeniable “famine” and that in some parts of the country 50% of the children have left school because of hunger. According to the website El Estímulo Ms. Landaeta also reported that household surveys in the Baruta neighborhood of Caracas found that since the beginning of 2016 residents have lost, on average, more than 30 pounds. In September El Nacional reported that a study in 32 parishes in the states of Vargas, Miranda and Zulia by the Catholic aid organization Caritas Venezuela found that 14.5% of children under five are suffering either from moderate or severe malnutrition. This is no accident.
Inflation has stripped Venezuelans of purchasing power. The minimum monthly salary is now 456,507 bolivars, which on Nov. 15 was equal to about $8. A year ago the monthly minimum was 90,812 bolivars or about $21. Obviously imported food is unaffordable for most Venezuelan families.
The breakdown of domestic production is not new. But it has worsened in the past two years. Without hard currency, farm equipment cannot be serviced and seeds cannot be imported. Price controls make it hard for local producers to earn a profit.
The dictatorship increasingly controls what food there is. Dollars from oil exports go only to the state, which uses them to import. It also confiscates, at will, farm production and the output of agricultural processors. It plans to use the capital freed up by a restructuring of $3 billion in debt held by Moscow to buy Russian wheat. The government is forcing the use of debit and credit cards by withholding cash. This allows it to monitor all commerce and it saves on the costly importation of plane loads of new bills.
Venezuelans face risks if they complain. Last week the government announced that anyone who “incites hatred, discrimination or violence” against another, for their politics, faces 10-20 years in jail. The threat of jail, or worse, has already caused a retreat from the streets. This new law, which includes social media, will further chill speech.
Hunger has much the same effect because government rations are crucial for survival. Food supplied by the military-run Local Committee for Supply and Production—known by its Spanish initials CLAP—is not enough to live on. But it’s a subsidy that makes a big difference to families.
To receive the rations, Venezuelans must carry the Carnet de la Patria, a government-issued license only available to those approved by the regime. As Ms. Landaeta bravely explained, “Food is controlled and votes are bought, food is used as a political weapon and is at the center of the hurricane.”
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