But the Marxist has no idea how to remove poverty.

The cure for poverty is wealth (makes sense). And see, the way to wealth is freedom.

Freer economies have higher GDPs, happier people, and better access to food.

“Marxist” are meanwhile busy biting the hand that feeds and allows them to exist.

I think there are only three types of people cheering for economic moves towards communism: Political opportunists, useful idiots, and the trust-fund crowd.

The political opportunists want more power. The useful idiots are too dense to face the empiricism staring back at them. And the emotional trust-fund crowd is trying to rebel against their parents (protesting in their Prada boots, taking videos on their iPhones, and going to Ivy League schools) as they denounce they very institutions that make their lives possible.

The average North Korean, Cuban, and Venezuelan does not buy into such dead-end ideas. For they are living these ideas out daily.

They simply want to be free. Everyone does.

It is no wonder that real economists do not take Marxism seriously.

The Marxist thus finds himself in real agreement with the Christian in those two beliefs which Christianity paradoxically demands—that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed.

-C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain (Amazon)

I have honestly never understood contempt for the rich.

Of course, there is “rich” – and then there is rich.

Saying you are in the top 1% of wealth globally (~$32,400 annual) is very different than saying you are in the top 1% in America (~$488,000 annual).

But many have a misguided line of reasoning that equates one’s level of wealth with their level of greed. And all this is somehow wrapped up and blamed on capitalism. What nonsense.

There is no nation or political philosophy that is exempt from “greed” as an institution.

Capitalism is in fact the only way in which people are made wealthy by serving the needs of others (harnessing greed, to good ends).

When wealth is gained by other means, it is nothing but theft and should be called for what it is, evil.

For-goodness-sake, don’t discount the aspirational component of it all either. Everyone I know aspires to a better life, which money is a part of.

Understand: Wealth is, after all, the cure for poverty.

If the world is indeed a ‘vale of soul making’ it seems on the whole to be doing its work. Of poverty—the affliction which actually or potentially includes all other afflictions—I would not dare to speak as from myself; and those who reject Christianity will not be moved by Christ’s statement that poverty is blessed. But here a rather remarkable fact comes to my aid. Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere ‘opiate of the people’ have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.

-C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain (Amazon)