The Michael Berry Show with the presidential debate this week. We thought we'd stick with that debate theme

I was a high school debater. I love debating. I love the idea

I love the performance of it I love the strategy of it love the

entertainment of it the Lincoln Douglas debate probably the most famous debate in American political history, and to think, Lincoln

loses that Senate seat to Stephen Douglas in 1858, runs for president two years later and wins. Who could have guessed? They took the traveling

show on the road. They took these debates to the masses. Probably the most famous American presidential debate, of course, would be Richard

Nixon versus John F. Kennedy, and it is famously said that if you listen to the radio you felt Nixon won and if you watch the

television you felt Kennedy won because Kennedy had more flare he was better

looking Nixon had a upturned nose and he was clearly sweating. He had big jowls like a hound dog. But people

look at such things. But I want to focus on the merits of arguments because ideas

should matter. This was a Soho forum debate from 2019 capitalism versus socialism. And I suspect you would say I believe in

capitalism and socialism is bad. I think you'll actually learn something though here because people email me all the time

they know in their gut what is right and what is wrong but they really want to be able to

create destruction. But they really want to be able to create, to structure arguments, to have some facts, to really understand why they feel the way they feel, and to be able to explain that.

And so that's what I hope this does. On behalf of

socialism is Richard D. Wolf, an economist from the University of Massachusetts and

the author most recently of Understanding Marxism.

Taking the side of goodness is former Barron's economics editor Jean Epstein, who is also the Soho Forum's co-founder and director.

It's an Oxford style debate in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and at the end. The side that gains the most ground is victorious. It was a packed house, about

450 people in attendance. The pre-debate vote found that 25% of the audience agreed that

socialism was preferable to capitalism and 49.5% picked capitalism as a better system and 25.5% were undecided.

There was a technical problem at the event itself, but the Soho Forum, despite that, was able to recover the final vote totals, which saw support for socialism dropped by half a percentage point and support for

...