The important choice we’ll make in the 2020 election is not the people we choose. It’s the form of government we will be choosing: capitalism or socialism. All of the candidates are aligned with only one of these because their political parties are so aligned. All the candidates must adhere to their party’s direction because they can not be elected without their party’s support. This is the first time in our lives that the two major parties and the public have been so oppositely aligned and at war.
This unanimous attitude of conflict with the other political party makes it probable that one party will win all three government branches. When one party controls the presidency, House, and Senate, it has the power, within four years, to establish an irreversible capitalist or socialist direction. The one winning political party will make the laws—as many as they want, to promote solid and permanent control.
The vast majority of American voters lack the understanding necessary to make this most vital choice of their lives. That’s why the most worthy task of our time is to promote the understanding of what capitalism is and what socialism is.
Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
The stock market is the basic engine of fairness in a capitalist system. Anyone is allowed to buy shares in any stock and participate in the corporation’s profits. Since the creation of broad-based index funds in 1976, any minimum wage worker who invests 10 percent of their earnings and just doesn’t sell insures a very wealthy future with zero long-term risk. Broad-based index investors always own the best stocks in proportion to their success. Over time, stocks dwarf all other forms of investment.
Socialism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by the state, rather than by private owners for profit. The basic engine of fairness is the state. Fair is whatever the state says it is at the time. Major socialist states today are Russia, China, Venezuela, and Cuba. The many claims of the American Left that the prosperous Nordic states Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland are socialist states are false in every case. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are each constitutional monarchies; Finland and Iceland are both republics.
So our choice is simply this: Would we like to live more like the citizens of Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, or America?
