The presidential races are getting down to the wire, and candidates in both parties are sharpening both their attacks and their positions. What we’d like to hear more of now, particularly, is a clear link between opportunity and outcomes.

While Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders talk about free college, higher minimum wages and (in Sanders’ case, at least) about a guaranteed basic income, the Republicans are talking about security far more than economic opportunity.

Both parties could do with a dose of history on the issue of moving people out of poverty and into happier, more productive lives.

As Pew Research pointed out earlier this year, “The first decade of this century witnessed an historic reduction in global poverty and a near doubling of the number of people who could be considered middle income.”

The boom in the middle class is directly attributable to one thing – capitalism, and the economic opportunity it offers.

You wouldn’t know that to listen to the Democratic candidates, who repeat the themes of Occupy Wall Street. But Occupy had it wrong.

“Occupy Wall Street did have a point when it took to criticizing the crony capitalism that helped precipitate the economic crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed,” wrote Michael Tanner for National Review. “But that unholy alliance of Big Business and Big Government, a dog’s breakfast of regulation, guarantees, and bailouts, has nothing in common with free markets and entrepreneurial capitalism.”

Capitalism is about opportunity for all, free of government regulations and central control. And it works.

“Throughout most of human history, nearly everyone was poor,” he explained. “Even our wealthiest ancestors enjoyed lower standards of living than ordinary people in America today. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that the masses started to enjoy real and growing prosperity. What was the difference? Capitalism and its offspring, the Industrial Revolution. As Charles Murray explains, ‘everywhere that capitalism subsequently took hold, national wealth began to increase and poverty began to fall. Everywhere that capitalism didn’t take hold, people remained impoverished. Everywhere that capitalism has been rejected since then, poverty has increased.'”

Capitalism isn’t just about making millionaires.

“Capitalism doesn’t just produce wealth, it creates opportunity,” Tanner pointed out. “In a capitalist system, an individual’s future is not fixed by caste or hereditary social status … Race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation are irrelevant, enabling individuals to rise above social attitudes and historical discrimination.”

And critics of capitalism always fall back on its supposed injustice and coercion. That’s wrong, too.

“Capitalism is based on voluntary interaction and exchange,” Tanner wrote. “It is the antithesis of force and violence. Systems based on ‘spreading the wealth around’ inevitably must impose themselves on at least some people.”

So let’s hear a little less about freebies, and more about opportunity. Let’s hear less about free college tuition, and more about how we can clear the way for young college graduates to open and operate their own businesses.

GOP candidates should share their ideas, too. We need more opportunity and capitalism, not more free stuff.