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I think we are in a rare point in time, when we are going to start transitioning away from capitalism to .... whatever comes next.
Jobs are disappearing and being replaced by robots and computers faster than new jobs can be created. This is a trend that will only accelerate. At some point, the amount of jobs left will not be able to keep capitalism going, and we will have to figure out whats next. Hopefully its a smooth transition.
And to those that read these arguments, and wonder why you can never convince the other people of your argument, here is a good link on why.
One only has to look at comparative models like South to north Korea. Then look at china not that long ago and now that they adopted the capitalist market system. Then look at US situation of those dependent on government dependence. You can't get more from encouraging people to produce less and that is what socialism does in the end. Capitalism only gives people the opportunity to make more. No system guarantees more and some assure your at bottom unless at upper political levels.
I personally have a hard time with the idea of capitalism working out for most Americans in the long run. I see it as a failed concept for a whole society.
I think the government gets looked at as an evil entity when it's influenced by the top of the pile, and our key players like the president and cabinet rely on the top earners money to run and win an election. They are suppose to be the voice of the people, not only the wealthiest people. Most of us don't share the same interest as the wealthy, we can't.
How can the wealthy speak for the majority of Americans when we have no financial influence over them? Borrowing money means paying it back and that's usually with favors that favor the wealthiest of our nation. I don't see capitalism as a building block to a healthy society. I think it's just built on money and propaganda. Those are my thoughts, what do you think?
I believe capitalism is a system and as in any other systems it has its flaws. From the historical standpoints capitalism has bettered the standard of living for many countries as I see it.
To me part of the problems is that Americans got used to the good life and anytime something is not working right for whatever reason it is the fault of the government, the system, economics, except the fault of the people.
When I do volunteer work in the communities where people at the lowest economic level live, I see social problems that people do not talk about from the right angle. They just blame capitalism and the government.
Why is it that families on food stamps can afford to have the latest electronic gadget? I go to their homes where UNEMPLOYED people live and yet they do not cook anymore. They have houses full of pizza cartons, and other fast food bags. It is cheaper to cook at home!
I can afford to eat out very often and yet my wife and I cook at home. Eating out is not the norm. When I go to the dollar movies where a movie has been out for a couple of months I do not them full as in the other theaters. The other theaters are full of poor people that should wait for the movie to be shown at the dollar theaters to save money, right?
Why is it that when Hurricane Katrina evacuatees arrived in my hometown and were given money for medicine they instead used it to buy the latest team outfits and shoes that cost at the $100s level?
We as a society have lost much of that hard work spirit where if you did not have something, you worked for it! Not charge it on the card. The mentality has changed where you charge it and see how you pay it later and if you can't you excuse yourselves of your obligation by saying your are poor and those business leaches don't need to get their money back.
As some of you posted, this country is still the land of opportunity where people with nothing can make it. The lost secret is this, it take hard work and long hours!
I admire the WW2 generation also called the Greatest Generation. When I talk to the few that are left they are very dumbfounded to see how the generations after them expect so much without working hard. They want it now, not later.
My dad came to this country from Mexico and later brought my mom when they got married. They never demanded anything from the government, just looked for the opportunity to work. My dad with first grade education from Mexico went to the books and thought himself to correctly read and write and became a newspaper reporter. My mom never stopped working.
The only time she requested help from social programs was when her hernia was so bad and could not leave the house because she had a little grocery store. She asked the social services if they could send a nurse just to check on her status. The response? She did not qualify for anything because she had a store! She could barely make it but she oppened it to survive. Yet, the whole neighborhood was full of single moms screwing around with the guys in the neighborghood and living off food stamps. The guy sitting on the appartment steps drinking beer all day and living off social programs because they are poor.
So, many of your blaming the rich, the government, etc. I do not share as if it is the only root of the problem. We as a society have a share of the blame for the country going where it is. I guess I need to stop here because I am sure many do not want to hear where part of the problem is. It is in We the People.... We got the country that we deserve to some degree. We can sit down and whine about it or get up and do something about it for our own lives and our own country. Take care.
Disclaimer - I wrote this while on the train into the city so even by my normal disinclination to edit for grammar and spelling I definitely didn't have time to go over this, for me, an exceedingly long post.
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Originally Posted by ciceropolo
Capitalism by its very nature is a business economic financial model that is 'amoral', which measures success as greater marginal unit profit, and velocity (consumption volume). As such, over time, with the advent of technological efficiency gains, labor is devalued (and humans in turn) and those holding the 'capital' have ability to unduly corrupt political systems, undermine legal systems, and essentially write laws / rules (he who has the gold makes the rules).
A very Marxian view and while Marx's thesis is flawed in many ways his analysis has been to an equal degree rather predictive, particularly regarding the emergence of state monopoly capitalism. Where I differ with Marx, at least for the foreseeable future is the transition to socialism and especially the utopian progress to communism, well at least until Star Date 46379. In the mean time, while capitalism may be failing the 1st world it is making huge advances in the 2nd and 3rd, a sort of perverse payback for stifling economic competition for centuries.
Which brings us to the current paradox, there are two costs that every business must bear - three actually if we include taxes - labor and capital. Of the two, labor is a far more elastic commodity with heavy supply side market distortions while capital, machinery, raw product and materials, are not so much. Of course the result is that companies will seek to lower costs by choosing the more elastic commodity labor than capital which obviously is the reason that we see companies seeking out workers with the least costs and who have the least ability to command more for their labor. This is great benefit to the world's population because it raises the living standard in those countries, increased the productivity and eventually will in turn lead to increasing innovation or a global scale. However this is unfortunate for American workers who for the first time must compete and with global workers on an increasingly level playing field.
So what are free market advocates to do? On one hand we have free market advocates calling for restrictions on immigration which inherently a function of labor markets. Labor moving from one market to another that promises hire wages that those available in their native country. Stopping that free flow of labor is by definition government interference in labor markets.
Free market advocates argue for relaxation of government regulation if not out and out abolishment. That would certainly increase the ability of companies to compete with developing countries, although as you point altruism is not an inherent feature of capitalism so the most likely outcome is that the American environment would become increasingly on a par with China, Bangladesh, India or Nigeria.
Free market advocates also argue, that social safety nets should go the way of the horse and buggy based on the problematic theory that faced with either starving or taking any job for whatever wage would free up more money for capital investment, without of course mentioning that downward pressures on the aggregate price of labor as if there was further need to do so for greater downward pressure on American wages.
I might add at this point that lowering the overall cost of labor comes with an inherent disincentive for technological innovation. The higher cost of labor, the greater the incentive to replace that labor via technological improvements in making goods and services, reverse the formula and what do you get when labor is cheeper than technology, a disincentive for the adoption of technology.
Of course over time, 100 years perhaps, when the price of labor rises in developed countries to where it meets the lowered price of labor for workers in developed countries, the market for labor becomes less competitive and more stable. Great for developing countries, not so great for those in those that are develop unless, they find a way to sustain their own natural resources without environmental degradation, support and retrain displaced workers, and find ways to equitably maintain the living standard of their citizens. But to achieve those goals either business and corporations will have to become learn to become more altruistic or the government will have to make them. To date, I can't think of a single country where the former isn't influenced by the latter.
But the choice is up to the nation, either we advocate for a return to the late 19th century economic models, where the boom to bust cycles were far more frequent and severe, and push for global equalization of labor markets and environmental quality, or we learn to embrace efficacious regulation of capital because as it stands now we have one foot in both models and neither are working to the benefit of the American public.
IMHO - Real Free Market Capitalism really works but is too risky for the next generation of wealth to play with. They work to protect their market share even if it effectively destroys the market. They find more profit and security in buying politicians than production machinery or training workers. This is what is destroying our formerly Capitalist system. We have too many rentiers and too few capitalists.
Sometimes I suspect that knee-jerk criticisms of capitalism are reactions to "style" rather than substance. There's a certain satisfaction in demonizing unhip/smarmy/heartless rich people (unless they're cool rich people, like entertainers, sports stars, or internet entrepreneurs). "Those jerks make $3 billion a year --- nobody could possibly need that much money!" I understand this sentiment, as I've expressed it numerous times throughout my life.
But one fascinating thing about capitalism is that it acknowledges selfishness/greed and provides a non-coercive mechanism for channeling that selfishness into more productive channels (of course, the question of whether capitalism fulfills this promise in real life is debatable). It doesn't try to force people to be more decent "for their own good." Ideally, it simply allows two people to contract for goods and services in a way that is mutually beneficial.
But to borrow something from Milton Friedman, as lamentable as the poverty exiting today is, no economic system has done more to help poor and middle-class people than the free market system.
Sometimes I suspect that knee-jerk criticisms of capitalism are reactions to "style" rather than substance. There's a certain satisfaction in demonizing unhip/smarmy/heartless rich people (unless they're cool rich people, like entertainers, sports stars, or internet entrepreneurs). "Those jerks make $3 billion a year --- nobody could possibly need that much money!" I understand this sentiment, as I've expressed it numerous times throughout my life.
But one fascinating thing about capitalism is that it acknowledges selfishness/greed and provides a non-coercive mechanism for channeling that selfishness into more productive channels (of course, the question of whether capitalism fulfills this promise in real life is debatable). It doesn't try to force people to be more decent "for their own good." Ideally, it simply allows two people to contract for goods and services in a way that is mutually beneficial.
But to borrow something from Milton Friedman, as lamentable as the poverty exiting today is, no economic system has done more to help poor and middle-class people than the free market system.
Milton also said capitalism works great as long as it is regulated by a moral government compass. It's not the 1950's anymore and with lobbying, bribes and campaign funding from corps they're hardly being regulated by a moral anything. In other words, capitalism would work great without our government. It's our fault if it isn't working, it's not being regulated.
One only has to look at comparative models like South to north Korea. Then look at china not that long ago and now that they adopted the capitalist market system.
But China has not adopted a "capitalist" market system. They adopted some aspects of capital formations and market based price setting but they haven't abandoned central planning, or heavy government intervention/involvement into markets which is why China as long described their economy as the "Third Way" treating their economic and political system like a menu, choosing somethings for one column and others from another.
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Then look at US situation of those dependent on government dependence.
Let some folks tell it there is this gigantic mass of Americans whose entire lives are supported by debilitating government largesse. TWO percent of Americans receive was is commonly referred to as welfare. 4% housing assistance. The 15% who receive food stamps (which includes over 5,000 members of the U.S. military) are hard working Americans. 26% benefit from Medicaid. Now if you honestly believe that receiving medicaid and food stamps are the kind of benefits that saps the initiative of displaced American workers... well that just insane.
You can't get more from encouraging people to produce less and that is what socialism does in the end. Capitalism only gives people the opportunity to make more. No system guarantees more and some assure your at bottom unless at upper political levels.[/quote]
The inequality growth of the last 40 years just happens to coincide with the massive increase in legal and illegal immigration into the country. I suppose some people think that is a coincidence and the two have nothing to do with each other.
Now, instead of slowing that down, our government is about to put it's foot on the accelerator and have even more immigration, much of which will be poor lower skilled workers who will depress wages even further for lower skilled workers who are already here and are struggling. But, I guess that doesn't matter so long as both political parties get what they want namely, cheap labor for Republican supporting businesses and future votes for Democrats from the poor immigrants.
Free enterprise does create wealth but doesn't spread it around equally, and massive new immigration makes that even worse.
The inequality growth of the last 40 years just happens to coincide with the massive increase in legal and illegal immigration into the country. I suppose some people think that is a coincidence and the two have nothing to do with each other.
Now, instead of slowing that down, our government is about to put it's foot on the accelerator and have even more immigration, much of which will be poor lower skilled workers who will depress wages even further for lower skilled workers who are already here and are struggling. But, I guess that doesn't matter so long as both political parties get what they want namely, cheap labor for Republican supporting businesses and future votes for Democrats from the poor immigrants.
Free enterprise does create wealth but doesn't spread it around equally, and massive new immigration makes that even worse.
This is why the masses will never understand why they are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer. You are focusing on the wrong things which leads you to believe you have a vested interest in siding with people who look like you rather than people in your economic class. For example, do you know the effects of the Fed's quantitative easing? It's basically providing easy money to the investor class to make more money. However, all this extra money printed leads to inflation, diminishing the purchasing power of your dollar. If you're a billionaire who just made more money due to the Fed's policies, who cares if the price of milk goes up or rents double? However, if you are a simple wage earner, inflation will take a huge bite out of your paycheck and those measly raises you get each year will do nothing to offset that. But please, ignore all this and blame illegal immigrants. The rich and the powerful love it this way.
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