Thomas Friedman Has Read a Children's Coloring Book Called "Capitalism"
Thomas Friedman is a true American success story: a man who without any writing talent or deep understanding of any issue, managed to marry an heiress and now lives in a huge mansion. It’s called “capitalism,” folks.
(I’m incredibly envious of him.)
Tom Friedman appears to have spent a few solid hours before deadline last night with his thinking cap upon his head and his nose buried deep in a kindergarten-level primer on “Capitalism.” From this analysis he has determined that what Hillary Clinton needs to do to win this thing is to embrace a little something that Thomas Friedman likes to call: “Capitalism.”
And that leads to my second reason for pushing Clinton to inject some capitalism into her economic plan: The coalition she could lead. If there is one thing that is not going to revive growth right now, it is an anti-trade, regulatory heavy, socialist-lite agenda the Democratic Party has drifted to under the sway of Bernie Sanders. Socialism is the greatest system ever invented for making people equally poor. Capitalism makes people unequally rich, but I would much rather grow our pie bigger and faster and better adjust the slices than redivide a shrinking one.
Yes, who has ever heard of a prosperous social democracy? Absurd.
Tom Friedman, in fact, explicitly advocates in his column that Hillary Clinton embrace an agenda of “deregulation,” a concept with a sterling modern track record. To top it off, he reveals the secret “pivot” that Hillary must now undertake:
I get that she had to lean toward Sanders and his voters to win the nomination; their concerns with fairness and inequality are honorable. But those concerns can be addressed only with economic growth; the rising anti-immigration sentiments in the country can be defused only with economic growth; the general anxiety feeding Trumpism can be eased only with economic growth.
Wow... economic growth. None of the world’s great economists have any proven ideas about how to overcome our period of ongoing secular stagnation, but—thankfully—Thomas Friedman does. (By saying you are for “growth.”)
