Video Book Report

The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future by Arthur C. Brooks

David L. Johnson, Ph.D.For more content, visit LessonsforUS.com

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About the Author

Arthur C. Brooks is the president of American Enterprise Institute (http://www.aei.org).

He was a professor of business and government policy at Syracuse University and has written eight books and many articles.

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Table of Contents

1. The 70-30 Nation 2. A Bill of Goods: The 30 Percent Coalition’s

Story of the Financial Crisis 3. Free Enterprise and the Pursuit of

Happiness 4. The Moral Case for Free Enterprise

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1. The 70-30 Nation

70% of Americans support the free enterprise system and are unsupportive of big government. Free enterprise

Respects private property, Encourages industry, Celebrates liberty, Limits government, and Creates individual opportunity.

20%-30% oppose free enterprise and prefer government solutions to our problems.

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1a. The 70% Support Free-Enterprise

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1b. The 70% Support Business

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1c. The 70% Support Job Growth not Redistribution

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1d. The 30% Support Socialism

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1e. The 30% is the Intellectual Upper Class Top 5% of the population in income Graduate degrees Work in intellectual industries:

Law, Education, Journalism, and Entertainment

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1f. The Top 30%

Source:http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal-2.html

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1g. What do the 70% Feel about Taxes?

56%

33%

Source: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr166.pdf

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1h. Who Pays the Taxes?

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2. A Bill of Goods: The 30 Percent Coalition’s Story of the Financial Crisis

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2a. The Housing Crisis

Source: http://spectator.org/archives/2009/02/06/the-true-origins-of-this-finan

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2b. The Stimulus

What Stimulus Actually Achieved 640,329 jobs created or saved by the last quarter of 2009. $275 billion spent to create those jobs $429,000 cost per new job ($275,000,000,000/ 640,329

= $429,467) What Stimulus Should Have Achieved

$50,000 median wage for full-time job ($37,115 per Census Bureau)

$275 billion spent to create jobs 5.5 million jobs should have been created

($275,000,000,000/$50,000 = 5,500,000)

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2c. What Works; What Doesn’t Spending versus tax reductions

Tax reductions work; spending doesn’t Spending (pork barrel or social engineering)

$400 million to global warming research $1.5 billion to carbon capture demonstration

projects. $50 million to National Endowment for the Arts $25 million to Smithsonian Institute $886,000 for an environmentally and financially

sustainable frisbee golf course in Austin, Texas.

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3. Free Enterprise and the Pursuit of Happiness

M

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3a. Earned Success

“The big problem is not that unhappy people have less money than others. It is that they have less earned success.”-Joseph Shumpeter

Earned success: Ability to create value in our lives or in the lives of

others. What parents feel when their children do wonderful

things What social innovators feel when they change lives What artists feel when they create something of beauty

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3b. Money Does Not Buy Happiness.

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3c. Earned Success Buys Happiness Optimism

Poor conservatives are more optimistic than wealthyliberals

Meaning US, with free markets,

feels work is moremeaningful

Control over lives Business owners most

satisfied; union membersleast satisfied

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4. The Moral Case for Free EnterpriseHere are five principles which are at the very center of

free enterprise.

a) The purpose of free enterprise is human flourishing, not materialism.

b) We stand for equality of opportunity, not equality of income.

c) We seek to stimulate true prosperity, and not treat poverty.

d) America can and should be a gift to the world.

e) What truly matters is principle, not political power.

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4a. We stand for equality of opportunity, not equality of income.

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4b. Stimulate Prosperity, Don’t Treat Poverty.

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4c. America can and should be a gift to the world.

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4d. What truly matters is principle, not political power.

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