When Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, conducted a poll of high school graduates, it discovered that 61 percent do not believe in the profit system, 83 percent estimate profits to be 50 percent or more, and 95 percent believe that the government should own all banks, railroads, and steel companies.
When the Roper Public Opinion Research Center conducted a poll of college students, it discovered that 87 percent believe business is too concerned with profits and not enough with public responsibility, 62 percent believe that government should place stricter controls on business, 54 percent favor government breaking up the big corporations into smaller companies, and 56 percent believe that more government intervention is necessary to protect individuals from so-called “economic abuses” by business.
Students are not born with these ideas, and they have not learned them from practical experience. These fallacies are what they have been taught in the schools, deliberately, systematically, and pervasively.
If you want to have a first-hand look at how this is done, get a copy of the book called A WORKING ECONOMY FOR AMERICANS, sponsored by the National Education Association and a consortium of environmentalists and others who believe that the Federal Government can provide the solution to all economic problems.
In this book sponsored and promoted by the NEA, the profit motive is the boogeyman which has brought about “inequalities of wealth and income, inflation, urban blight, pollution, and other problems.”
And who is the all-wise, all-good force able to solve these problems? Big Brother in the Federal Government.
According to the NEA book, “private decision-making based on maximizing profits has created problems … the private enterprise system is in need of change … the government offers the only real potential route for controlling and guilding the corporate sector … so as to meet human needs….”
The NEA book urges the Federal Government to put everyone on the payroll who is out of a job: “… the private sector currently is incapable of providing jobs to all who want them. Thus, if people are to work, it is only the public sector which is capable of employing them.”
The NEA book adopts the discredited Keynesian dogma of government spending: “While spending increases the government’s debt for a short time, such investment in jobs and economic stimulation will mean more income (and less debt) for the government in the future.”
This is simply not true. Our government has been engaging in Keynesian-style spending since the 1930s, and the debt is still growing larger. When government puts more people on the payroll, the wages must come out of other taxpayers’ pockets.
The NEA book promotes having the Federal Government (instead of the states) charter corporations, requiring consumer advocates on corporation boards, and breaking up the oil companies and other large corporations. The NEA book urges bigger Federal spending, national health insurance, and an extension of Federal control over education.
All these grandiose plans would be financed by increasing the rates of Federal income taxes, especially on “the privileged few who … can afford private schools for their children and pay expensive country club dues to play golf.” (emphasis in the original book)
It is too bad our children are taught that Big Government has the solution to our economic problems, because it usually does a worse job at higher cost than private enterprise.
