Students are still assigned Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and told it is a documentary: men fell into vats in the Chicago meatpacking plants and were ground into the products on store shelves. Lawrence Reed, president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education, asks the question he asked when he first heard it. What happened to the men? Where are the monuments, the police records, the statues to the martyrs of the meat vats? There are none, he says, because it did not happen. The Jungle was a novel, written for a $500 payment from the Socialist Party of America by an author who spent almost no time in the plants, and Theodore Roosevelt, Reed notes, called Sinclair a notorious liar.
Two cousins of the myth follow. Does capitalism foster greed? Reed's answer is a definition problem. Wanting to be a millionaire by serving others through productive enterprise is fine; getting there through political favors is not. And blaming greed for a price spike is like blaming gravity for a sudden rash of plane crashes, since greed, like gravity, was always there. In a free economy, he says, even the greediest person can only satisfy that greed by producing for others.
Is profit inherently exploitative? Jenny Beth Martin raises Elon Musk and the left's insistence that his fortune is proof of harm. Who did he harm, Reed asks, when people bought his products voluntarily and he employs so many? He asks the same of Dolly Parton and her fortune. The people who vilify wealth creators, he says, are usually the ones who do not know how to create it.
Guest: Lawrence W. Reed, economist, president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education, and author of Born of Ideas and Was Jesus a Socialist?
In this segment:
• The Jungle: the men in the meat vats, and why there are no monuments to them
• A novel written for $500, by an author who barely visited the plants
• What is your definition of greed?
• Blaming greed for prices is blaming gravity for plane crashes
• Who did Elon Musk harm? Who did Dolly Parton harm?
• Why the greedy must produce for others in a free economy
Subscribe for daily analysis from Tea Party Patriots Action, and watch the full fourth lesson on The Jenny Beth Show channel. Catch up on lessons one through three of the economics series at jennybethshow.com.
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00:00 — Myth: evil capitalists tainted our meat, and The Jungle
00:21 — What happened to the men who fell in the vats?
00:58 — It didn't happen: The Jungle was fiction, written for $500
01:29 — What an invitation to a lawsuit
01:50 — Teddy Roosevelt: a notorious liar
02:15 — Myth: capitalism fosters greed
02:46 — Nothing wrong with wanting to be a millionaire the right way
03:12 — The airplane crashes and gravity
04:14 — If you worship wealth, I have a problem with that
04:35 — In a free economy the greedy must produce for others
05:06 — Myth: profit is inherently bad and exploitative
05:47 — Who did Elon Musk harm?
06:01 — Dolly Parton's fortune: who did she harm?
06:46 — The people who take their rage out on wealth creators
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