With Ronald Reagan, most people either love him or hate him. I think that he did some things right and some things wrong. He was right to improve the conditions for business and to confront the Soviet Union. He was wrong to start giant deficits, have no
attention to the environment or gut the educational system.

When Clinton created AmeriCorps, there were conservative young men on college campuses demonstrating against it. They said that it was servitude. Those men are a bunch of spoiled brats. They had parents who took care of them. And they were denying the
opportunities that they had to people who were less advantaged than they were.

Probably the biggest criticism I’ve encountered of Ronald Reagan is that under him income disparity in America increased. Even so, even the poorer Americans are wealthier than the folks in India or Nigeria. I do not regard income disparity as such to
be a problem. It will always exist. Lack of compassion for people who have it worse than you do, however, very much is a problem. I have it better than most people, but I don’t look down on people who have it worse than myself, and I have maintained
mutually respectful relationships with many such people.

So we have Victor Hugo stating that the rich men’s paradise is built on the hell for the poor. Sometimes that is the case, and sometimes that is not the case. Chinese people benefited a lot from the economic growth in recent years. The Chinese have
always worked hard, but it is only recently that they have been correctly compensated for their efforts. The situation of even the poorer Chinese people has improved vastly in recent decades through the embrace of international capitalism. Here, there
was both paradise for the rich and improvement in the conditions for the poor.

I have an education in economics and I have read Ayn Rand, and my experience with many businessmen has been a good one. I am not against business. I am however against cruelty; and unfortunately we see that in many people who supported Ronald Reagan.

I once heard it said that it’s easier to teach Democrats economics than it is to teach Republicans compassion. Clinton was a Democrat who had learned economics, and Bush was a Republican who had learned – or at least thought he had learned -
compassion. Economic conditions under Clinton were a lot better than economic conditions under Bush. Under Clinton I was in the higher-income racket, and under Bush I had trouble finding employment. I know how good capitalism can be when it works; I also
know how bad things can be when it flounders.

Business, as such, is a valid endeavor. Cruelty and hypocrisy is not. When business treats people like dirt, it feeds ideologies such as Communism. Business today needs to have learned its lessons from history enough to know better.

I was never mistreated by my bosses; but any number of others have. And that is a foolish behavior. You do not get people’s loyalty for long by treating them like dirt. To avoid things such as Communism, business needs to know enough not to act that
way. Treat your workers the way you would yourself like to be treated, and see more workers support business and capitalism.

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