Yes. The health of an economy is, in fact, based on what its producers are doing. If you want to call that "business," fine. But it includes everyone who is producing instead of simply living off other producers. The latter category includes much of government and its redistribution programs.

Capitalism is not primarily about rewarding merit, smarts, skill, or even effort. Wealth can be accumulated honestly with or without any of these things, although your chances go up with these virtues.

Capitalism is about the economic interaction between people. In capitalism, the interactions are voluntary. In collectivism/socialism, the interactions are by means of force. In the United States, we have a portion of each of these.

It's all very simple. Economists hate simple. It makes them look like they're not worth their salaries. Wealth is created by human action. If you were the only human on a desert island, you would be the person consuming what you produced. A one-unit economy. Anyone who has done this knows it's no picnic. Ask Robinson Crusoe. It also requires you know a damn lot about almost everything.

Now, if you get several people, they can trade what they produce, and specialization becomes possible. Here is where progress begins, and productivity increases. When the trade is voluntary, you have a free market. When the wealth is tranferred involuntarily, you have robbery and looting. The history of civilization is jam packed with both, but mostly the latter. The great achievement of America and the West was creating a system that was not primarily based on looting.

BTW, nothing in a free market prevents you from donating what you produce while receiving nothing in return, as long as it is done freely.

Now, in a modern civilization, it gets a lot more complex than than a few people trading, but the basics are the same. Governments are supposed to come into it when an organized system, limited by objective laws, is required to protect people from force and fraud.

You cannot "distribute" wealth, fairly or unfairly, unless the "distributor" controls or owns the wealth. Robert's desire to "flatten" the wealth curve implies such centralized control, and one or more persons empowered to decide (on what basis?) when someone has "too much" or "too little." You can't make an economy "fair," by your definition, without enslaving somebody.

I'm not an idiot. I know you can't suddenly drop freedom on a mixed economy without wrecking it. But we need to start moving on a libertarian vector, instead of the other way.

BTW, what are you guys going to do when the employment numbers start going up again? The temp rolls are already ramping up, and I know from experience that this is the first sign in a rising economy.