From: CKHartman at aol.com <CKHartman at aol.com>
>It was the same with Imelda Marcos and the British royal >family. They
got the
>money they have by
>using the power of government to compel people to give it to >them. The
>capitalist can't do that.
This is of course a good place to start in going after Stossel's limited view. Bill Gates needed the government every bit as much as Marcos and the British royal family. Intellectual property rights are government-granted monopolies- in fact, they are the direct descendent of a much broader subset of royal monopolies on industry (patents once referred to the right to operate in any industry as granted by the king).
Patents and copyrights are the most obvious example of such government-based transfers of wealth, which effects everything from computers to health care.
Less obviously, the government transfers wealth to business in more indirect ways - society pays to educate and train business's workforces, takes care of their workers when they are sick in many cases, pay for transit system maintenance and provide a whole range of public goods extracted through the public purse. This is a transfer of wealth that is not purely zero-sum, but raises the whole question of whether average folks are getting their fair share of this deal.
--Nathan Newman