THE CITY
from 80% in 2002 to a mere 59%, a percentage which placed support for the free market in America lower than it is in China. This is a sad circumstance, particularly considering how many moral arguments can be marshaled in favor of free enterprise and democratic capitalism. For a generation wrestling with economic questions, conservatives need to provide a more thoughtful consid‐ eration and response to what worries people about capitalism. Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Peter Wehner and American Enter‐ prise Institute President Arthur Brooks provide a helpful example of how this is done in their new book in the AEI Values and Capitalism series, Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism.
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ehner and Brooks begin by arguing that democratic capi‐ talism is the political‐economic system that best corre‐ sponds to a human nature that is neither hopelessly flawed nor infinitely perfectible, but rather is a mix of beast and an‐ gel. The system allows citizens to pursue their self‐interest, rightly understood, in a way that need not be either selfish or selfless, but still contributes to the common good. It also avoids the coercion and corruption present in the more totalitarian alternative regime struc‐ tures while more satisfactorily helping the poor: “Markets, precisely because they are wealth‐generating, also end up being wealth‐ distributing.” They go on to recount the economic achievements of capitalism, which are, quite simply, staggering. Regardless of how you measure standards of living—infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy, hun‐ ger, disease, violence—the spread of capitalism has benefited every‐ one, they argue, and particularly the poor. As they note: “If you were born in London before the dawn of modern capitalism, the norm was destitution and grinding poverty, widespread illiteracy, illness and disease, and early death. And, even worse, your children could ex‐ pect a similar fate. The possibility for progress was almost nonexist‐ ent for your progeny.” But with the rise of capitalism, all of this changed. Though they are careful to note the downsides of the Indus‐ trial Revolution, they argue that it needs to be measured against life prior to it, which was “bleak, cruel, and short.” The attempts to fix the problems of industrialization proved to hurt the poor, not help them. Wehner and Brooks document the failures in worldviews that sought “a world with the benefits of capitalism, but 74