Capitalists are idea creators, not job creators.

Every business, from the mundane ("How do you make the chip taste more like BBQ?") to the arcane ("How do we turn photons into electrons?"), is based on an idea about how to solve a problem. The process of converting great ideas into products that effectively solve fast-changing human needs is what creates a business. The essence of every business is both an idea for a product that meets an important human need and the ability to make that product efficiently in order to create profit.

The unmatched benefit of capitalism is the way it creates an almost unlimited number of ways for individuals to hatch ideas and then propagate those ideas in the form of businesses. I firmly believe that these businesses can collectively solve human problems faster than any other type of economic organization.

Capitalism, when properly constructed, is the best way ever invented for humans to adapt to changing challenges and conditions. Crucially, it's not just the fact that capitalists create ideas, but also the rate at which those ideas are created to meet the blindingly fast changes in human need that makes such a critical difference and produces so much value.

This is why capitalist countries are rich and communist countries are poor.

No state-run enterprise can ever compete to solve the abundance of fast-evolving human problems as well or as fast as millions of individuals trying to solve these problems in competition and in real time. The key here is the diversity of approaches taken. Ten people trying to solve a particular problem in ten entirely different ways will always solve it faster and better than ten people trying to solve it in one way, and the modern study of complex systems proves this.

The crony capitalism that we have allowed to infect the U.S. economic system shares weaknesses with communism. A tax system that amplifies compounding advantages for business-people and corporations the higher up the food chain they go and compounds disadvantages for people at the bottom is bad for business. It slows the rate at which ideas are generated and problems are solved. The healthiest ecosystem or economy is one with the most diverse, able competitors, not one overrun with one or two dominant species.

If capitalists create ideas that produce social and economic value, then it is obvious why it makes so little sense to pour more money into the already wealthy and successful. Even the best of us have only a few ideas. Steve Jobs, arguably the greatest entrepreneur of our generation, had only a handful of truly brilliant ideas. Most billionaires, it could be argued, have only one. It would be far better for our country to enable every citizen to participate in our capitalist economy by ensuring that they have the requisite education and access to capital and training to convert those ideas into products that solve the world's problems.