Wealth creation, as discussed on The Bob Zadek Show, is the production of new goods and value through decentralized economic activity, as distinguished from the redistribution of wealth already in existence. The topic is treated in two 2021 episodes: a conversation with Jeff Deist, President of the Mises Institute, on Austrian economics, and a conversation with Carol Roth on the war on small business.
Wealth creation versus redistribution
In the Austrian economics episode, Bob Zadek framed the distinction himself, describing most economic policy on the left as an approach to redistribute wealth, to take it from A and give it to B, without discussing the creation of the wealth. In his framing, such policy starts from the assumption that unlimited wealth is already here and that the task of those in power is to figure out who gets the goodies, not who creates them. He said there is almost no discussion of wealth creation when progressives discuss economic policy, only of distribution of wealth assumed to have been created as if by magic. He applied this to the COVID-era CARES Act and the stimulus package, saying they move existing wealth around rather than creating wealth Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021).
Zadek asked Deist to expand on what creating wealth means, offering his own gloss: not just making people richer, but creating new drugs, new devices, air conditioning, iPhones and electric-powered cars — items of value that make everybody better off — as opposed to the narrower definition of larger 401(k)s, even though that is a byproduct. Deist agreed, calling the idea that the wealthy sit on piles of money and hoard it in unproductive ways simply factually false. He argued that the material world — buildings, hot and cold running water, food, air conditioning, heat, vehicles, roads and infrastructure — does not materialize by itself but takes the spontaneous effort of a lot of people acting cooperatively to produce, and that it could go away. He pointed to places in the world where dynamic or innovative capitalism is absent and poverty is all around, which he called the original and default state of mankind. Deist argued that material wealth arises through capital accumulation and saving and investment, and that the egalitarian left, focused endlessly on inequality and redistribution, misses the point: what matters is making as wealthy a society as possible so that even the poorest 10% are far better off Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021).
Small business as the engine
In the episode with Carol Roth, Zadek described small business as the engines of wealth creation, noting that small business accounts for approximately half of the business activity in the country and 99.9% of the number of businesses. He asked why small business, with so many people and so much economic power, was totally ignored during the pandemic, contrasting it with lobbies such as the South Florida sugar lobby — one family in one area of one state — which he said in effect dictates world sugar prices and has profound political clout Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021).
Roth offered two theses for how small business was treated: either they were too small to matter or they were too hard to control. She contrasted this with the banks during the Great Recession, which were told they were too big to fail, while small businesses in 2020 were shut down through no fault of their own, through government mandate. She framed the issue as decentralization versus central power: about half the economy before COVID was in the hands of about 30.2 million small businesses, which she said represents the free market and freedom, choice and transparency, while the other half was in the hands of about 10 to 15,000 big businesses. With so few entities holding so much power, she said, it is frankly easier for politicians to deal with them. She declined to assign intention, laying out what she called a choose-your-own-adventure of possible motives, but said the outcome is the same: as we move towards central planning, you get more of an unholy triumvirate between big government, big business and big special interest, at a very big expense to economic freedom and to the wealth creation opportunities for the country Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021).
Capitalism, central planning and the guardrail of property rights
Roth described the choice of how to organize an economy as a spectrum. On one side is capitalism or free markets, which she defined as freedom, choice and transparency with the guardrails of property rights — not even a system, she said, but an un-system, because nobody is organizing it. On the other side is central planning, whether called socialism or communism; what matters is that a handful of people make decisions on behalf of the masses using force, control and coercion, usually opaquely. She argued that the shift toward central planning has gone on for decades but accelerated in the last 20 years, and that the last 17 months had been insane, citing government spending, the effective nationalization of parts of the economy such as the student lending business, the number of laws, and the purview of government decision-making. She pointed to the $3.5 trillion budget framework then being proposed as taking the country further in that direction, and said the stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment benefits, proposals for pre-K and free community college tuition, and proposals to lower the Medicare age and expand benefits were walking people toward universal basic income and Medicare for All. In her account, these measures limit wealth creation opportunities: it is harder to succeed in a business, harder to succeed in the stock market without taking on more risk, and harder to be a retiree or a saver without government help, while the Fed is destroying the dollar. She added that government does nothing productive, so the money is either taxpayers’ or printed, decreasing the value of the dollar or taking on debt to be paid back later Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021).
The eviction moratorium and consolidation
Zadek raised the CDC eviction moratorium as an example of the war on small business, describing it as an economic measure imposed by a group of doctors and recounting, as hypothetical storytelling, how the agency dusted off an old statute empowering the CDC to take all steps necessary to prevent the spread across state lines of a communicable disease, and reasoned that all steps is unlimited. He said landlords are not all large real estate families but also small business — lots of it — and that they are, borrowing Frederic Bastiat’s phrase, the unseen, damaged by losing rental income and unable to pay their mortgages. He called them the cannon fodder and roadkill of the government’s war on small business, and said that in his opinion President Biden committed what arguably is an impeachable offense by proceeding despite knowing the measure was probably unconstitutional Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021).
Roth said this violates the oath of office to uphold the Constitution, and that the Supreme Court said after July 31st the moratorium could not continue because it is basically unconstitutional, declining to strike it down only because it was about to expire. She described the decimation of individual rights including property rights alongside an increasingly powerful government, and argued that as small landlords give up or cannot pay, big companies flush with cash from the Fed — BlackRock, private equity firms, even pension funds — step in to buy the properties, competing with small landlords for rental buildings and with individuals for properties. She tied this back to roadblocks to wealth creation opportunities, saying they do not want you to be financially successful but want you on the government dole while those in the club consolidate wealth and power, and that wealth creation opportunities, economic freedom and overall freedom hang in the balance Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021).
Across episodes
Both episodes treat wealth creation as the alternative to redistribution, but they approach it from different directions: the March 2021 episode with Jeff Deist supplies the theoretical account, grounding wealth creation in capital accumulation and the spontaneous cooperation that produces material abundance, while the August 2021 episode with Carol Roth supplies the institutional account, locating wealth creation in the 30.2 million small businesses and tracing its erosion to central planning, the eviction moratorium and consolidation by large firms. The excerpts show no development of the concept between the two treatments so much as a division of labor between theory and application.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not define wealth creation in a formal or quantitative way, nor do they offer measures of wealth created or destroyed. They do not state the outcome of litigation over the eviction moratorium beyond the Supreme Court’s refusal to strike it down before it expired, and they do not identify the statute the CDC relied on by name. The excerpts also break off mid-sentence at several points, including Deist’s opening remarks and Zadek’s closing questions, so the full arguments of those passages are not available.