79-07-A4

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Whistle Blowers; Poverty's Causes

Transcript The Chicago TRIBUNE recently reported that an aide hired by Chicago's new mayor, Jane Byrne, was once fired by the WALL STREET JOURNEL, for whom he had worked as a copy editor. It seems that he had, as a copy editor, passed along a top secret WALL STREET JOURNAL memo to someone who was a target of that newspaper's investigative reporters. The JOURNAL immediately asked for his resignation. Funny, but why is that when someone in government leaks secret material to a newspaper he is called "a whistle blower" and is treated like a hero? Fire a "whistle blower" who may have leaked sensitive material, and you are criticized by the media. But leak a memo from a newspaper to a politician and you are fired immediately ... or, as they say, "asked to resign". Why are leaks from newspapers to the outside world so wrong and leaks to a newspaper so right? After all, the public's right to know includes the right to know what's going on inside those giant corporations who allegedly guard the public's right to know. Speaking of what the public knows and does not know, let's turn to the subject of poverty. After years of wars on poverty, of professional poverty barons who live off government grants and entire libraries of books on the subject, we haven't yet answered the basic question: What causes poverty? Why are some nations rich and some poor? When I say we haven't answered that question, perhaps I should qualify that statement. I should say that certain economists and other deep thinkers haven't yet applied common sense to the questions. John Kenneth Galbraith has written a book about the subject of mass poverty. According to P.T. Bauer, who reviewed Galbraith's book for -- once again -- the WALL STREET JOURNAL, Galbraith is entertaining, interesting -- and, wrong in his ideas about how poverty hits some nations and not others. Galbraith says that poor nations need more education. But Bauer points out that there was no compulsory education in England before 1870, the high-water mark of English economic supremacy. No, says Bauer, the fact is that it is "very largely" ... personal, social and political factors" that determine a nation's income and productivity. In short, if people are willing to work to better themselves, if they live in a social system in which work is rewarded and if they have a political system that allows freedom to risk and thereby possibly gain, income and productivity will rise. That's common sense. But it is also the most sound and firmly based economic theory. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 79-07-A4 Production Date 05/08/1979 Book/Page N/A Audio Youtube? No
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