Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/128

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from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest. We cannot claim that the "career is open to talent," or that there is anything like a fair chance for all in the race for the good things of life; this is an ideal for which we have to work by improving and cheapening education. Talent backed by individual enterprise in any case seems likely to have a better chance under Capitalism than under bureaucratic red-tape or Guild monopoly; and any one with exceptional ability and exceptional luck, or both, can already make his way through from the bottom to the top early enough in life to give him many years of enjoyment of his success.

Our output of goods is still not nearly great enough, being estimated before the war at about £42 per head of the population. Even if it were equally distributed, £42 worth of goods and services would not, even at pre-war prices, ensure a really high standard of comfort for the population as a whole. This need for an improvement in output we saw at the outset to be essential in order to secure that world in which it will be really pleasant to live. But because Capitalism has not yet produced as much as we want, is a bad reason for overturning it in favour of a system that might produce still