Ron Paul: What America Has Today Is Not Free Market Capitalism (Video)

Capitalism appears to be falling out of favor. Socialism is in vogue. Or at least that’s the impression one gets when talking to millennials in America. A recent Harvard University poll shows that more than half of Americans in the 18-29 age bracket oppose capitalism.

Ron Paul appeared on RT America’s Boom or Bust show earlier this week to address this issue and pointed out the problem isn’t a failure of capitalism per se. The problem is that so few people actually understand what capitalism is. In fact, Paul argues that America’s economic system isn’t really free market capitalism:

I think the problem is all in semantics. When they say they oppose today’s capitalism – I oppose today’s so-called capitalism. I don’t even like the world capitalism, I like free markets. But if you say free markets and capitalism together, we don’t have that. We have interventionism. We have a planned economy. We have a welfare state. We have inflationism. We have central economic planning by a central bank. We have a belief in deficit financing. It is so far removed from free-market capitalism that it’s foolish for people to label it free market…”

Paul went on to say people are right to reject the system in America as it operates today because “it’s designed to fail,” but embracing socialism certainly isn’t the solution.

People should reject what we have, but they shouldn’t reject liberty and freedom and sound economic policies, because that is not the problem. The problem is we don’t have enough free markets.”

Highlights from the Interview

“That is a problem in definitions and understanding of what kind of policies we have. I am a champion of free markets, but not of the current system that we have today. I am highly critical of it, because it is designed to fail. It is designed to reward the rich; it is designed inevitably to destroy the middle class, and also to finance some of the worst things in government: all the deficits with the welfare state and for the warfare state. So yes, it’s failing.”

“The problem with Bernie and myself is that he sees it quite differently. He thinks that it’s too much freedom and too much capitalism. And I see it as too much government; it’s too much of interventionist planned economy, which leans itself to fascism. But the young people might not understand the economics and what free markets are really all about, and they don’t understand central banking. And Bernie doesn’t understand that we have to get rid of central planning – from the Central Bank – if we want to help these people.”

“The current economic system is designed to fail, but so was socialism. What we need to go toward is property ownership, voluntary contracts and individual liberty in getting rid of the central bank.”

“We’ve tested socialism. Socialism has been a complete failure. That is what the 20th century was all about, whether it was a fascist system in Germany, or the Soviet system of communism – this all has been a failure. So you don’t want to go toward socialism.”

“Young people might be sucked into believing that the government can give them a temporary benefit by raising a wage, but they just need a better understanding. But they are not for the big government when it comes to their personal liberties, their sexual habits, the civil liberties that they like. They like their privacy. So I don’t think they are looking for bigger government. The young people that I talked to – they are not looking for a bigger government and more militarism; they are not championing the person that wants to spend a lot more money on military and rebuild the military – that’s all big government.”

“This is a result of a hundred years of teaching our young people that government is necessary to redistribute wealth. And they do – they redistribute wealth –  the more they try, the more the wealthy get wealthier. It redistributes it upward, and it ruins the middle class. That is what they have to understand. But they’re onto something and they should be justified in looking at this. But, as a group of people, the millennials are not looking for more government. Only in that economic sphere are they tempted to look at this. There are many others who declare themselves libertarians. They want less government in their lives and they want more privacy and they want [fewer] wars.”

“[Trump] has a personality, he has a megaphone, and he is getting the attention, and you don’t have anybody in particular out there talking about the real economic issues. But he is regressive… he is falling backward. He is going to the dark ages of thinking that he can go into mercantilism, protect natural resources, put on tariffs, and just bash and blame everybody else: The Mexicans, the Chinese. That is going to be devastating to the economy – it has nothing to do with freedom. It has to do with the opposite – it is an exaggeration of economic planning that we already have. So he is going in the wrong direction, just as Bernie is, even if they are both tapping into the disenchantment that… a lot of people have with what is happening.”

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