A Report from NTCAR’s Economic Forum
Michael Cox, director of the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at SMU’s Cox School of Business, lauded capitalism during a presentation at a recent forum hosted by the North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors.
By Hilary Lau
Is America headed toward economic freedom—or the road to serfdom? That was the provocative title of a presentation made by W. Michael Cox, Ph.D., director of the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at SMU’s Cox School of Business, at a forum hosted yesterday by the North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors.
Cox addressed a variety of topics regarding the future of the capitalist model in modern American economics, including big government vs. economic freedom, equality vs. opportunity, redistribution vs. production, dependence vs. responsibility, and poverty vs. wealth.
He began with a variety of statistics outlining Texas’s economic growth and standing relative to other states, and challenged national aggregated data that ranked Texas 30th in student testing scores by providing a breakdown of scores divided by students’ race and ethnicity. Those showed score rankings of first for white Texan students, sixth for Hispanic Texan students, seventh for black Texan students, third for Asian students, and second among all other states in data that ranks demographics separately rather than aggregating.
He then discussed motivators behind the economic philosophy behind both capitalism and socialism...