How many times have you had a republican tell you that the “free market” can do things better, faster and cheaper than government?
This will anger capitalists but history and facts show that many of the things they claim are false and it is the government who has improved the markets. Just look at the two biggest sectors (minus military industrial complex) the last several year and both are possible and expanding because of government help.
I’ll agree America is in the middle of an oil and natural gas explosion, not because republicans cut regulation and but because of hydrofracking which allows oil and gas companies to drill places they never could before. Fracking is not new, it was first tried in the 1940’s and improved by the Department of Energy in the 1970’s — that’s right fracking was created by the United States Government. Now while the government created the process of fracking it was still to expensive for use by the private sector until George Mitchell came up with a cheap mixture of liquids to replace the expensive foam in the original process. So why the private sector did find a cheaper way to do fracking it was the government who got them on their way. In fact I would say the only thing the private free market did was created the most polluted mixture they could find and poisoned the environment. Lets not forget that Oil and Gas companies get 3x in government assistance than America spend on education.
One of the biggest growths in America has been through the internet with companies like Google, Amazon etc. being some of the biggest companies in the world. The internet has made more millionaires than any other business in the world and it would not be possible without the government and yes Al Gore played a role in that. Yes it is the department of defense who all but created the internet but it was Al Gore who fought for funding to take the internet public and create an information superhighway. Without the government help we may still be years behind on the internet and where would many of those internet millionaires be today.
Those are the obvious examples but there are smaller ones all over the country of government turning over things to the free market only to see them fail and be less successful and more expensive than when the government was in control. New Jersey privatized their state lottery and ended up losing over 130,000,000.00 in revenue.
Ignore the fact when you point out a true free market capitalism economy would lead to the deaths of millions of people and just look at the things government has and continues to do better, faster, cheaper than for profit companies. America is the only civilized world with a “free market” healthcare and we spend almost twice as much with worse results than single payer countries.
Next time you hear someone cry “government needs to stop picking winners and losers” point out they have always done that. If not for government innovation and corporate welfare there would be no oil and gas exploration in America, it’s now only that they have competition from renewable energy that they no longer want the government involved. Right wing media and republicans attacked President Obama for his “you didn’t build that” comment (and took it out of context) but he was 100% right — show me someone who created a successful business and I’ll show you people who aided them along the way.
This free market mentality has for years saw republicans want a business man as president of the United States, to the point they elected one of the biggest business failures and welfare queens in history. We have our “CEO President” and hows that working out?