101 for capitalists in training

The price of freedom, brought to you by Carlos Alberto Montaner.

Read it in Spanish here.

I --by no means an specialist in economic issues, lesser in capitalist's economic models-- have seriously asked myself and others if that pork-laden bailout plan was the only viable solution to the actual financial turmoil.

But the bailout has come to represent only the tip of what is to come to this country if the Redistributionist In Chief seize the White House.

When I first read about his tax's increase plan, I stated to myself and my inner circle: the minute that I fall into that bracket, I will resign my job and will become a stay-at-home living on welfare.

I didn't leave my homeland and my entire life behind, looking for freedom --of all sorts, including economic-- to end up working para el inglés here too.

It was my simple logic telling me that when you crush entrepreneurship and small business with higher taxes, you are cooking up your own recipe for disaster. Everything can only go bad from there: no incentive, no jobs, less revenue thus less taxes paid, you name it.

That was long before CAM wrote this column, where he clearly explains that "The true engine of the market economy is not its financial system but the amazing creativity of its entrepreneurs and innovators. The financial system enables all transactions with flexibility, the way blood flows through the body, but the central force is in the brains of the most creative citizens, in the institutional design and in the civic virtues of the population. It is true that, every so often, when we err because we made wrong decisions, an upheaval occurs, but those counter marches are proof that we are free."

What happened in Cuba in the sixties when all small business were nationalized, second in line after all big private companies?

Would you dare to compare the available assets to be redistributed back then with the ones that are being "spreaded" to all Cubans fifty years later? Would you dare to look deeper to see in which pocket the Cuban wealth ended up being redistributed?

--It's OK.
Didn't thought no one would.