Remembering 9/11

It’s now been 25 years since the most devastating attack in American history.

But most of us remember it like it was yesterday.

You can probably recall exactly where you were when you first heard the news. I know I can.

And now that we can look back with a quarter-century of hindsight, it’s a good time to reflect on what America has made of itself in the intervening years — and whether we’ve truly honored the sacrifice of those who gave all on 9/11.

Click the video below to get started:

Video Transcript:

This is Moneyball Economics. I’m Andrew Zatlin.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

25 years ago, on September 11th, nearly 3000 people were murdered by Islamic terrorists. I remember exactly, exactly to this day where I was. I was in bed, my girlfriend came in and told me I needed to come and look at the TV. What I saw on TV, it’s still with me. It was horrible. And I wasn’t even there. I was watching it remotely on the TV. I tried to go to work, I did, and came home. I was numb and I was like the rest of the nation in mourning.

Maybe you remember that day. Maybe you were also like me seeing it on TV and just not knowing what it meant. Well, here we are 25 years later. What did 911 mean? A lot of people died. And the question I have is what did they die for?

And the answer is the American dream. The American dream was attacked that day. The American dream, the bedrock for why this country has been such a light unto the nations, for why this country has moved from strength to strength and prospered. It comes down to individualism and a respect for the ability to dream, to create opportunities.

Even before the constitution was written, people came to this country dreaming, hoping for an opportunity. The constitution was written to give people rights, freedoms, power. It was not written to assign power to the government. Limited government and maximum individualism has been the cornerstone behind the American experiment.

And time and time again, whatever the hit, whether it’s 911 or any other impact, the US has continued to move forward and prosper. It’s not just individual capabilities. Entrepreneurship is at the heart of this country, but we enable it, we promote it, we support it.

Turn of the century, there were the books, the Horatio Alger books, Sink or Swim, because the premise was you could come here and benefit from hard work and ingenuity. And out of that came things like Hollywood, rockets, computers, you name it, electric cars. So much has happened here. Cures for common diseases. So much has been driven out of this culture and society that has benefited us and the entire world. We’re winning. This is the way to be in the world if you want to prosper.

And it’s not one-sided. It’s not like Smaug, the dragon [from The Lord of the Rings], hiding in a cave and holding onto gold. We have a similarly strong tradition of charity, of philanthropy, and it goes back and it never had to be codified. It was part of society and it continues to this day. You have rich people going out in the world trying to help poor countries get water, trying to cure malaria, giving back to the world and society at large.

We have a harmony here and it has been working. And I hope after 25 years that the other side, which has been more associated with destruction than creation, I hope that they finally wake up to the possibilities because they have the resources.

In fact, there are lots of countries around the world that have resources but remain poor because the lesson of the American dream, and it is shared by many countries out there, it is not about the resources. It is not about what you have. It is about what you do with it because resources are actually fairly common. It’s the ability to be entrepreneurial, to dream and to act on those dreams that has to come together.

There’s a reason why countries like Singapore do well without any resources whatsoever because they have tapped into the mind and that requires freedom of thought and action.

And that is the American success story and the rest of the world remains split. Some countries and cultures are able to move forward and embrace that path to prosperity and others refuse because allowing individual rights and freedoms is anathema to them.

And so today, 25 years on, I want to take a moment and I want to, well, not from a patriotic standpoint, but maybe from an economist standpoint, I want to acknowledge that the American way of life is the best example going forward for the rest of the world on how you can get prosperous. We have conquered the need to pay for medicine, housing, food, education.

All of these things are made available in our society because while we have prospered, we recognize that there is available some resources that we can give back to the community and we are a philanthropic and charitable society and we have earmarked trillions of dollars in welfare benefits.

Nearly 60 cents of every tax dollar that is raised by the government goes back in the form of welfare benefits. So when I hear some people saying that we’re not doing enough, I want to take a step back. As an economist, I recognize that there’s so much money coming in and that means in taxes there’s only so much money that can be doled out and we want to be intentional on what we’re spending on.

And I believe that we have discovered when the government is in charge of collecting and distributing money, it never works for the government. Trust us. There’s not just corruption, there’s the inability to protect society’s participants. That’s why billions of dollars are siphoned off in Minneapolis. That’s why three quarters of a billion was recently discovered, siphoned off by some folks in Pakistan who hacked this system.

I believe that we should give back to our society and I believe that we do, but I also believe that there’s a point in time when you don’t continue, when you are giving enough and when you have created circumstances for people to move forward.

If anything, we want to reward ingenuity. We want to reward the individualism that we have so strongly supported because it’s demonstrated that it doesn’t just benefit that individual. It’s not Smaug in the cave with the money. Everybody is benefiting. When Elon Musk creates a company, he’s employing tens of thousands of people, he’s creating opportunities out there that spill over into the broader economy. Everybody wins when we support the people who drive us forward, the dreamers, the big thinkers.

At the same time, we have some people who think maybe we can give more or actually they’re thinking the government needs to take a stronger role. The government doesn’t need to take a stronger role. We should incent people to continue to try to give back to society and we do. I believe that a lot of people out there who are saying we should redistribute the wealth, it’s not about giving.

As I’ve mentioned, we give a lot. We give an awful lot. We give more than any other country on the face of the earth combined. This isn’t about giving, it’s about taking. It’s about resentment. It’s about someone else doing well and you not, and you wanting what they have. That is not the American way of life. And if we go down that path where we stop rewarding people for working hard and being dreamers, then you are chipping away at the bedrock of the American dream, at what has been the most successful long-term experiment in terms of what an economy and society should be like.

I am bullish about the US stock market, big picture. Short term, there’s always going to be gyrations up and down. One of the key reasons why I am so bullish is because I am bullish on our economy because I see that everyone comes here to bring their ideas to life and those ideas help propel the United States economy forward.

And in return, we have other countries that come along for the ride and prosper as well and give back to us.

This is a wonderful country. This is a wonderful system and we should be very leery about anyone who comes in and says it is wrong, it is flawed, it is broken and they can fix it. It is not wrong or flawed. It is a wonderful system. Fine-tuning is always okay, but tearing down the idea that our government should support and encourage individualism, no, no, I’m sorry. That is a formula for failure. That is a recipe for future distress.

So on today, 9/11, I want to think about the damage that was done to our country and how we healed and moved forward because it is a very positive story. The rest of the world acknowledges the strengths that we have and that we share.

We’re in it to win it. Zatlin out.