Help the poor 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Entitlements are not sufficient to raise the living standard of the poor. It happens in a context, in a favorable environment where "more things are more affordable to more people." And who makes that happen? Business and science innovators. As explained by Thomas Sowell:

"That’s what a man named Sam Walton did when he created Wal-Mart, a boon to people with modest incomes . . . In the process, Sam Walton became rich. Was that the “greed” that you have heard your college classmates and professors denounce so smugly? If so, it has been such “greed” that has repeatedly brought prices down and thereby brought the American standard of living up.

"It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club . . . It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader.

"Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing 'compassion' for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about."

from Carpe Diem