Make Money Or Create Wealth?

As a small business owner or entrepreneur is your objective to make money or to create wealth? There’s a difference.

Bernie Madoff made money. The investment bankers on Wall Street made money. A construction worker who built a road paid for with government stimulus money made money. The Federal Reserve printing 2 trillion dollars out of thin air literally made money. They didn’t create wealth.

Capitalism is starting to get a bad name. But, if you are a small business owner you are a capitalist. Whether it’s a bread slicer, an ebook or a wedding cake, you are creating a product. You are adding value.

Steve Forbes wrote a recent editorial called Capitalism: A True Love Story. He decries the theory that

capitalism is fundamentally based on greed and is immoral; that it enables the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor; that free markets are Darwinian places where the most ruthless operators unfairly crush smaller competitors and where the cost of vital products and services, such as health care and energy, are almost beyond the reach of those who need them; and that capitalism unchecked breeds corruption à la Bernie Madoff and Enron and encourages obscene bonuses, excessive pay packages and unwarranted golden parachutes. Capitalism is also being blamed with renewed vigor for a range of social ills, from air pollution to obesity.

He goes on to say that if it weren’t for capitalism there would be no personal computers, no cell phones, no Internet. People of all income levels have benefited from capitalism. Read more.
————————
HOSB RSS Feed