Maybe you have seen some of the many reports indicating that a lot of our college students love socialism. They love even Marxism, the seedbed for socialism. Many hate filthy capitalism. This is understandable. Many university profs love the two. They preach-teach accordingly. Carnegie Mellon Institute is openly celebrating Karl Marx’s 200th birthday. Various profs […]
Get Instant Access to This Article
Become a Central New York Business Journal subscriber and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Central New York business news and analysis updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Get a year's worth of the Print Edition of The Central New York Business Journal.
- Special Feature Publications such as the Book of Lists and Revitalize Greater Binghamton, Mohawk Valley, and Syracuse Magazines
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
Maybe you have seen some of the many reports indicating that a lot of our college students love socialism. They love even Marxism, the seedbed for socialism. Many hate filthy capitalism.
This is understandable. Many university profs love the two. They preach-teach accordingly.
Carnegie Mellon Institute is openly celebrating Karl Marx’s 200th birthday. Various profs have sung his praises in publicized lectures.
A few matters come to mind. One is that the lecturers sang no dirges for the 100 million Marxian corpses. That is how many folks perished under the savagery of Marxian-Communist dictators. Too small a number to deal with, I guess.
Nor did they note the many experiments with socialism that have crashed miserably. Venezuela is the latest failed experiment.
Another matter is that we are hard-pressed to find universities celebrating capitalism. Instead, they hiss and boo it. Capitalism is an enormous target on campuses and among the academic elite.
This leads to a reminder — universities are giants of capitalism. When they raise their flutes of bubbly to Marxism, they are downing the swill of capitalism.
Carnegie Mellon has more than $2 billion invested in stocks and bonds and income-producing real estate. The institute could not operate without the income from these investments. What filthy capitalists!
Like all schools, they beg for donations to add to their endowment fund. Many of the donations come from filthy capitalists. They donate filthy shares of stock to the school.
The school owes its birth to Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon. Carnegie was one of the wealthiest men of all time. He made his money in that filthy steel industry. Mellon made his in banking and other businesses. Then he turned politician. As Secretary of the Treasury, he famously slashed tax rates for companies and individuals.
When various pollsters ask students to define capitalism, few can do so. They typically jabber about consumerism or big companies that screw the workers. I’m sure they don’t realize how much their schools rely on capitalism.
In all of this, nobody celebrates the capitalism of the entrepreneurs. Our economy would be nothing without them.
Take the example of Roberto deciding to open a Mexican restaurant. He saves money — capital — to fund it. He also borrows money — capital — from his uncle. From profits, he saves more capital to expand.
Roberto borrows capital again to open a second restaurant. And a third.
He creates shares in the growing business. And sells them to raise more capital to expand. When he hits 100 stores, Roberto sells shares to the public — for a few hundred million in capital. We can all buy the shares on the NASDAQ.
He is a capitalist at every stage of the growth of his business. The woman who borrows money from her mom to start a hair salon is a capitalist. She uses capital as Carnegie did. She invests it in hopes of a return.
Her mom and Roberto’s uncle are participants in capitalism. They invest their capital hoping for returns. They don’t raise their hand at the sound of that word. But they are capitalists.
Roberto sends his daughter to Carnegie Mellon. The school hits him up for big donations for its endowment. He donates millions in valuable stock of his publicly traded company.
The school dumps the stock into its endowment fund. The school draws money from the fund every year. It spends some on the salaries of its professors — those same professors who praise Marxism and condemn capitalism.
The university also gives money from its investments to students — in the form of scholarships. Many of these students fall in love with socialism. They demonstrate against capitalism — on the quads that capitalism built.
Do you ever wonder what Marx would make of all this? He scoffed that, “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” I can’t find any quotes of his about bubbly.
From Tom…as in Morgan.