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A Majority Of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows (washingtonpost.com)
A new poll shows that a majority of young people do not support capitalism. The study was conducted by Harvard University, which polled young adults ages 18-29. It found that 51 percent of those polled rejected capitalism, that is to say, they did not support it. Only 42 percent said they support capitalism -- there was a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. When asked what alternative system they would prefer, there wasn't a clear winner. Just 33 percent said they supported socialism. When talking about politics or economics, it can get complicated and the poll does little to shed light on what parts of capitalism young people dislike or what parts of socialism young people like. It does appear to suggest young people are frustrated with the status quo and are more focused on the flaws of free markets.
All of a sudden, they will 'support capitalism', whatever that even means.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
People only see and evaluate their experiences; what they have lived. If you put these same college students into another system for a couple months they might change their tune.
All it takes is a trip to Eastern Europe for any American to realize their world is pretty darn good. But given modern politics we might have to bring the Post-Soviet style problems to America firsthand before they can realize the situation.
The ability to invest in yourself so you can produce more is good. I like the free spirit of working in what business you want. Capitalism doesn't have as much waste as another system where everyone gets rationing they may or may not want. Where Capitalism falls short is if you can't get a job at all or can't start your own business. There is no sympathy for those who can't do well. There is no cushion for rock bottom other than hopefully a supportive family. Fix that while also having people still want to work dirty jobs, and you're on to something.
God spoke to me
Where than can take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,-- but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
At a guess I would imagine the part where they don't get a job, can never buy a house, have a huge student debt loaded on them before they start their careers, and if they say anything bad about their situation, get called greedy and lazy by the people who have rigged the system to ensure they and their privaledged offspring own everything.
This probably means that a majority of them don't know what capitalism is. Their college professors taught them it was cronyism, fascism, patriarchy, etc., and K-12 probably didn't put it in a good light either. They're ripe with the kind of cognitive dissonance that buys a Che Guevera T-shirt from a vendor and doesn't put 2+2 together.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Free market != Capitalism.
I wouldn't call the current unchecked, government-supported oligopoly anywhere close to "free".
Just like traffic laws exist to make sure the sociopaths don't have free reign, the equivalent of economic "traffic" laws need to exist.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Adam Smith was never writing about what's called the "free market". He envisioned small-scale peer-to-peer reputation-driven interaction, not what we have.
We need to stop calling Wall Street crony-ism a free market. It's a rigged market working for a few. How many of you out there have chance to not be haggled down to the very minimum that can be paid? How many people are routinely being awarded bonuses, and are they really contributing that level of worth to society? There you have it - resources divided not by merit, but by political and economic clout.
In other words, we have an unjust power differential, the same problem with the state-collectivized system that we refer to as socialism, but there are very different types of socialism out there and they don't all work like the totalitarian state-collective system of Stalin and Mao. Kerala's example of "land to the tiller" redistributes private ownership to guarantee ownership of the minimum tools and resources necessary to be self-sufficient. European social democracy may have problems, but many of those countries do have a stronger middle class and take for granted people in the USA only wish for. Again, the term is glossing over a lot and leaving key pieces out of the USA's public discourse, quite to the advantage of the ownership class who would keep anything demonized that would loosen their chokehold on the nation's wealth.
The key differences in any society, if you were to ask me, are the levels of equality in distribution, and representation in policy, and of accountability - meaning that corrupt officials and representatives who listen to lobbyists instead of constituents would get kicked out of office. Equality, representation, accountability - not capitalism versus socialism.
In those terms, people don't get hung up over whether government is big or small but whether it's in the public interest. Oligarchy in the form of Wall Street or a Communist party gets identified as oligarchy whatever the label. We remember that the real deal is that the people are in charge and can stop their government from going out of control.
So please, let's start talking in actual useful terms instead of red herrings.
The invisible hand does not exist, that is why capitalism has so many problems. Adam Smith got it wrong. The younger generations are screwed. There is no longer a decent path to paid insurance at a nice company with a nice salary. H1B visa holders own those jobs now. I work at a tech company in California. A billion dollar software company, a household name. Several managers from India (located in CA) were telling external recruiters they only wanted resumes of other workers from India. They did this for years. The major qualification was someone who once came from India so we ended up with a lot of technicians who knew nothing about our products and many with very little coding skills. They took almost all the new jobs over time. I checked around and other major tech companies almost all have this problem. Why do managers from India break the rules of companies committed to be equal opportunity employers? If you look at your organization chart at your tech company I bet you notice quickly that Indian managers and executives have tricked HR and managed to hire only other people from India or of Indian descent. At worst I suspect they are racist and believe the blacks, latinos, chinese and caucasian people are inferior. At best they are just hiring their friends, be an interesting study to find out what is going on. However, it is already too late, the young people of this country are screwed.
Only 42 percent said they support capitalism -- there was a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. When asked what alternative system they would prefer, there wasn't a clear winner. Just 33 percent said they supported socialism.
Of course there wasn't a clear winner, they are rejecting what the schools and media have told them to reject, but frankly most of them have no bloody idea what they are talking about.
It's ok, they'll grow up and learn.
In my experience dealing with anyone under 30 years old, most of them have absolutely no idea how the economy works, how money works, what the difference between capital investment and expenses are, and so on. What it takes to turn raw materials into a $2 cheeseburger is completely lost on anyone who hasn't actually studied it.
What we have is corporatism, not capitalism.
It usually tries to defend itself by appropriating the NAME of capitalism, which is eroding capitalism's credibility, but it's not capitalism any more than an alien cockroach wearing an Edgar suit is actually Edgar.
The pundits have weighed in with their disdain for uninformed millennials - but don't seem to grasp the basic question their generation is confronted with - how does unbounded inequality lead to equality of opportunity? - a central paradox at the heart of Capitalism.
The reward/optimisation function in capitalism is greed - why act surprised when the end-game is inevitably an oligopoly? All this yada yada about crony capitalism is just a facile rationalisation from people who are unable to provide a clear-cut answer to this simple paradox inherent in a capitalist system. Millennials are seeing through this - and they are seeing through the fact that most ideologically driven systems that fail to take real-world evidence into account, inevitably lead to injustice.
Capitalism can mean different things to different people, and the newest generation of voters is frustrated with the status quo, broadly speaking.
can you blame them?
* the two party political system is really just one party with caveats
* their voice in the election has been snuffed out by super delegates
* laws are purchased via bribes aka "campaign donations"
* billions are being funneled into government defense contracts that we don't need
* taxes are being used to subsidise the fossil fuel companies that are destroying the planet
* they are being enslaved by hoisting debt on them before they even get out of college
* a whole lot of bankers just stomped on the global economy and were then bailed out of a problem they created
* multibillion dollar companies dodging paying billions in taxes
* H-1B fellows are being used to replace them in the workforce
* 0.01% of the population has 40% of the total wealth
this isn't a favorable outcome for anyone but aging psychopaths, so it's understandable that they are unhappy.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The last war and/or global economy crisis that truely leveled the playing field is roughly 70 years - two full generations - ago. The market is completely staked out and capital sucktion is rampant. For millenials the game has been rigged from the beginning.
The efficiency of capitalism as we now it continues to decline. Any millenial feels this instictively. To be honest, I have grown more sceptical myself throughout the decades.
To anybody with a brain to think capitalism as we know it has run it's course. When even billionaires, or especially them, start calling it out, you can be sure that your strange feeling somethings wrong is spot on.
My 0.02 Euros.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This is why these surveys are pointless, most people (and more so young people) group whatever they don't like under an "isim" without any real idea of what it means. Since at least WW2 the US public has worked on the simple minded dogma that "capitalism = good, socialism = bad", neither classification is true or false, but that's what you get when you treat politics as a team sport.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What the GP fails to understand is that "voluntary exchange for mutual benefit" inevitably leads to corporatism, as controlling the market is benefiting to the owners and managers of the largest corporations; a "free market" does not survive for long when people act in pure self-interest.
Pure capitalism is a pipe dream as theoretical communism, depending too much on the good will of its participants to comply with the rules required to keep the system working (such as ensuring that voluntary exchanges are trully benefital to both parties, and not extortions from the strongest party that "can't be rejected").
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Maybe it's because I've been raised in what the Americans would call a 'socialist' country (Finland) but it always irks me to see capitalism and socialism thrown about as some sort of polar opposites, or capitalism in general being talked about as if it's some single clearly defined ideology.
There are many versions of capitalist economies, and some of them are socialistic. In fact, most all of them are that to a degree, as even the US has a large public sector. Capitalism at its core means nothing more or less than the private ownership of the means of production. If the question was framed "Do you support the right of individuals to own goods provided they pay their share of taxes on them?", the answers would look quite different I reckon.
So the problem is not capitalism as such, the problem is they paying of the fair share of taxes. Neo-liberalism and the fact that the US sliding to the right continuously for the past decades has created this tilted landscape in which gigantic corporations and massively rich individuals have been uplifted to a status in which they're quite openly above governments: bribery and outright buying of bills via lobbying has been made legal (and relatively cheap compared to the profits of these companies), taxes can be circumvented easily if you're wealthy, and megacorps are allowed to wreck havoc to the environment and cause global economic meltdowns without any risk of anyone facing any jail time or even significant fines. They're given fines which are slaps on the wrist compared to the kind of money they can make by continuing illegal operations. To them, it's just a cost of doing business, and the cycle repeats.
So is that capitalism? Well, yes, yes it is, but it's not the one and only true implementation of capitalism, in fact I'd argue it's one of the absolute worst implementations of it possible. It's a corporatocracy/plutocracy. And unless you happen to be one of the chosen few who actually benefits from such a system, there's no rational reason for anyone, on the right or on the left, to support such a model. Even a true conservative should realize that the government allowing legislation as well as elections to be sold to the highest bidder skews the market as it means whoever has the most cash can dictate the rules. That's not how a fair market is supposed to operate, regardless of what one thinks of socialist income redistribution policies.
The tittle would be more appropriately stated: "A majority of millenials now oppose free market/laissez-faire capitalism." And that's only a good thing.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Vast majority of people also do not know what any of these things are at all.
Capitalism - private ownership and operation of property.
Free market - market free from government regulations, absence of income and wealth taxes.
Socialism - redistribution of wealth and income based on the politics of the mob, state control of the individual, partial central planning.
Fascism - redistribution of wealth and income based on the politics of an authoritarian party, state control of the individual, partial central planning.
Communism 1- state controlled means of production, central planning, absence of individual initiative or means of production.
Communism 2 (Marxism) - absence of state control, international socialism based on some ideal 'new consciousness'.
What the millenials are actually rejecting: current mix of fascism and communism 1.
What they are made believe they are rejecting: free market capitalism.
Ignorance may be bliss but eventually it kills you.
You can't handle the truth.
How will they ever know what Capitalism truly is if they continue to use Ad Blockers?
USB, USB, USB!
Most people who claim to support capitalism would reject it as defined by Adam Smith (who also coined the word, long before Karl Marx used it). How many capitalism advocates, for example, would be in favour of a 100% inheritance tax (i.e. not allowing any inheritance of wealth)? The problem with modern capitalism is that it cherry picks the parts of the system that benefit the rich and ignores the rest. A system of socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is not sustainable long term, but that's what we've ended up with.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Have you ever lived of "government cheese" ? It's not much, you often have to be very very creative to survive on it.
You don't always get it neither: you're not handicapped enough, you have inherited 1/16 of family property (which you can't sell) or have a significant other with a high paying fulltime job.
And if you do finally manage to get it, it binds you to another exhausting set of rules and restrictions.
For me it was eventually just easier to get a job than to plough through all the bureaucracy and this is in socialist paradise (Belgium).
But there are people out there who are discarded by the social system and have to "mooch" of their relatives because
their papers don't have the right stamps or they can't make heads or tails of this always-changing process.
Wow, your sweeping generalization of over 83 million people really makes you sound like an informed and thoughtful individual. Well, I'm sorry, you said a majority, so I'll say you've only broadly judged 41.5 million or so (in the US), to give you the benefit of the doubt. What's your sample size? Surely you've met with at least several million of them and discussed political and economic issues with them to form your opinion?
In my opinion, capitalism is the only market form that works reasonably effective and ensures progress and freedom, but it absolutely needs to be combined with moderate egalitarianism and effective laws to prevent monopolies and cartels.
People discussing these topics often base their arguments on false dichotomies, although it's kind of obvious that a reasonable middle ground needs to be found.
Why? Well, regarding the first point, we can always discuss how much wealth should be transferred and in which way, but that there should be universal agreement that some transfer is necessary. You can show that to almost anyone by explaining the Gini index and asking that person at which point society becomes unjust - people will only disagree about where the point lies, but nobody will honestly and sincerely defend a country with index 1. Insane differences between highest and lowest incomes like we have them now in most industrialized countries (the gap has widened dramatically everywhere in the Western industrialized world, not just in the US) are not in the interest of anyone, and particularly not in the interest of people whose own microeconomic theory predicts that monetary transfers from the rich to the poor always increase overall value due to the diminishing marginal utility of money. Nobody who has reached a certain amount of wealth actually needs more money - the idea is patently absurd. But that doesn't mean you need to deny that differences in salaries can be an important incentive that needs to be kept. A reasonable middle ground is called for.
Regarding the second point about cartels, many so-called markets nowadays do not have enough participants to be free markets. If there are only two telecom companies or two major chip makers who magically have the same price structure, then this does not constitute a real market but rather a quasi-monopoly, for example, and something has to be done about such situations. If somebody claims that this is not necessary, this tends to be based on a lack of understanding of economics and how and under which conditions markets work (or it is based on hidden egoistic motives and ideology, and these two don't count in a general discussion of how society should look like). Again, too much regulation is obviously bad while not enough regulation will lead to cartels and hinders progress by blocking small, innovative companies from emerging. A reasonable middle ground is needed.
These things are not very complicated and far less controversial than they are often portrayed in the media and by politicians. Most of the fighting and arguing in fact results from the ideologization of these topics by political parties and interest groups.
My 2 cents.
The problem isn't really capitalism in itself but the case that there is too much corruption involved.
Just look at the Wall Street feeding Hillary Clinton - there is a reason why that happens.
Republicans are today pretty weak - more focused on anti-abortion than the real issues that has to be managed. Ever wondered why Trump is so strong? Well, that's because he actually lifts up stuff people really care about, and that's not only the Mexican Wall he promised but a lot of other stuff too. Bernie Sanders is also an example of politicians really trying to change what's going on. Hillary is stronger because she's a woman and backed by Wall Street.
Don't get me wrong, I still think that the whole field is pretty weak this time and holds mostly sandbox level.
- Bernie Sanders - Grumpy old man (Grumpy cat maybe). Not going to win any election unless Hillary gets kicked out on a technicality.
- Hillary Clinton - Probably one of the most corrupt candidates we have seen in a long time.
- Trump - Pretty rude, shaking up the field by alienating everyone and may alienate most people he meets. But may have the force to actually kick out some of the parts of the government that blocks everything.
- Cruz - Too much interested in promoting the stagnant republican agenda.
- Kaisch - Not significant in this election, he's just in to get his name on the lists for the next election.
You won't get the president you need, probably the president you deserve.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Neither perfect capitalism nor perfect communism have been achieved in reality, but attempts at the former have generally had better success than attempts at the latter. A perfect capitalist system requires a little government intervention in the marketplace to enforce transparency, break up monopolies, etc. A perfect communist system requires the government to *be* the marketplace, which turns out to be rather difficult in practice.
Note also that failures of capitalist systems in which corporations control the market are frequently the result of anti-capitalist principles practised by the government. Regulatory capture, for example, in which the regulations on an industry becom controlled by the major players in that industry, depends on the presence of extensive regulation that would not be present in a more purely capitalist system.
Yup. The Republican Communists. Marxists want the people to rise up and sieze the government and have the government control industry. The Republican Communists want the corporations to buy the government. The paths are different, but the end is the same, though Republican Communism isn't usually the name given, but fascism.
Learn to love Alaska
The only really defining attribute of Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. But if the means of production is owned by a bunch of crony capitalist who are also able to control the political system, then the theoretical ability for individuals to own the means of production is meaningless. I have a theoretical chance of winning the lottery, but on an aggregate scale, that is not a solution to poverty. Capitalism thrives when the means of production are distributed among the population. This creates liquidity of labor, ideas and opportunity. Once a small bunch of people own everything, you can have Communism, Capitalism, Feudalism - whatever you want - and it still sucks for those who don't own any assets.
Our present system cannot survive in a democracy. You can see the political shift already starting. My concern is that instead of fixing up the systemic problems (tax loopholes, lack of efficient markets for land etc) there will be a big lurch to the left. What we need is to stop markets being manipulated, and re-calibrate the state so that it is only producing public goods and not acting as corporate welfare. Then leave people to get on with it. My fear is that we just bring in another central control system, and all the capitalist will have a magical epiphany overnight and wonder out the doors of their corporations and into the inner politburo.
Bernie Sanders - Not going to win any election
He polls 7-9 points better than Hilary vs Cruz and Trump.
Hilary only has a margin of 3 points on Cruz. That's just way too close for comfort.
Furthermore, pure capitalism is leading to its own death because progress is undermining some of the basics of capitalist economy, such as scarcity. Capitalism works because money is valuable. Money is valuable because you can buy stuff with it. Stuff is valuable because there's not enough to cover demand. In a society where basic needs are covered essentially for free, money accumulation becomes much less important. In a society where basic and luxury needs are given for essentially free, money accumulation is way less interesting or compelling to anyone. This, in the short term, leads to a society with an inflated artificial demand. Did you not notice the amount of ads you are subjected to? Yeah, that's why. Of course this is only a temporary solution to a structural problem. Market forces will make sure ads are minimized, and this is something which has a marginal cost of zero, so it will eventually be free for all, which is exactly what is happening with adblockers, and adblocker-blocker blockers. After that, demand will collapse and eventually we will move towards an economy of abundance, not of scarcity. I don't know what that will look like, but certainly it won't be capitalism or communism.
My Stack Overflow user
It's a bit like the "Emperor's nose fallacy." By averaging people's opinion when they have no clue, you don't get any closer to what the best solution might be. But you drown out the experts. See Feynman's chapter on "Judging a book by it's cover"(http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm)
reason defies logic
The problem is capitalism doesn't ensure progress and freedom. It might ensure it for some, but for society as a whole, capitalism left to its own devices is inherently dangerous. We only have to look back to the beginning of the industrial revolution for some great examples, and continuing forward where companies move quicker than regulation and end up screwing customers over by abusing their market share, etc.
What we have is corporatism, not capitalism.
I think the better term for this is Mercantilism, which is pretty much what Adam Smith argued against in The Wealth of Nations. The government makes laws & regulations which appear to be for the purpose of protecting consumers, but actually make it more difficult for other actors to enter the market, thereby reducing freedom of economic choices.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Maybe you shouldn't trust myths and instead look for what research says? Or perhaps science is only good when it reinforces your biases?
Taxing those who can afford it more isn't possible in the current US, the very rich and the super-rich can afford to pay for lobbyists and even politicians (often indirectly, avoiding obvious bribes). Even if that factor is ignored the common psyche of the US makes even the poor thinking that the rich shouldn't be taxed harder - as they think that "the American dream" is real and that they someday will be rich too.
Add to that the tax avoidance schemes the rich can afford.
- Cruz - Too much interested in promoting the stagnant republican agenda.
Wut?
Are we talking about the same guy that many if not most "establishment" Republicans despise so much they'd prefer Hillary Clinton as POTUS over him?
What I've heard from Cruz is a push to return to the Rule of Law where those in power are actually held accountable and insistence on Constitutional limits on government power. Of course if you get your information and opinions secondhand instead of actually researching things yourself, your confusion is understandable.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I know more people working 40+ hours / week who earn below the poverty line than those living off of "government cheese" by a ... huh - a 1:0 margin.
:/ ) That said, there's more people getting screwed than living on the public tit by a 100% margin.
okay, it's more like a 7:0 margin, but that's bad statistics. Also, it's limited by the fact that I only know so many people. (
Nothing ensures progress and freedom. ;-)
However, I take it as a fact that capitalist societies have lead to more technical progress and freedom of choice than any other type of system. But if you're talking about the current US, I somewhat agree. IMHO, you've got a big problem. Lobbyism and the more or less fixed two party system have subverted your democracy and its proper division of power. I was thinking about capitalism in a slightly saner system, one that has a number of parties with changing coalitions, stricter laws against corruption, a fairer justice system, stronger anti-cartel laws, a better electoral system, ...
Socialism ensure no progress and no freedom. There is absolutely no real life example where socialism has succeeded to promote progress, innovation, increase global wealth and freedom.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I'd love to see those answers. And then ask if they support it.
Apples and oranges. You can have a corporatist system that is perfectly capitalist. You can even have a completely corrupt perfectly capitalist system.
"Free" is not part of the technical definition of capitalism. All it means is individual ownership of industry for profit. In the vernacular, people try to impute all sorts of magical properties to capitalism, giving it some quasi-religious sense of moral rightness and justice, but at the end of the day, it just means that the money goes in some guys' pockets, even if it's just a very few guys.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Adam Smith did not support a 100% inheritance tax. He rejected it, and such a tax would be antithetical to capitalism. He was opposed to any inheritance tax on children who still lived in their father's household when he died (because "[t]hat tax would be cruel and oppressive"); he wrote that inheritance tax on "emancipated" or "forisfamiliated" children -- independent adults with their own means and families, with established households -- would be as sustainable as any other tax. Almost all capitalists you'll find today agree with that.
The stagnant political agenda based on religious right-wing rules like anti-abortion (which should never be a political issue).
Another issue is that the republican party want to get rid of the network neutrality regulations put in place by FCC.
It's time to clean up the act and adapt in order to make it possible for any citizen to be prosperous, not just those that have rich parents. The middle class is dying and the republican party isn't even admitting it's a problem.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Either you believe in property rights or you don't. If you believe in property rights, a 100% inheritance tax (and even a 1%) is totally unacceptable. If you believe in property rights you have the right do decide what to do with your own property, like, for example, giving it to your designed heirs.
You either believe in false dichotomies, or you don't.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Free markets can work in microcosm, and do. The problem is one of scale. Lassaiz-faire fails at the national (or even regional level) because they cease to be free of outside intervention; instead of government intrusion, it is another private entity manipulating the transaction between the vendor and consumer. Modern regulated markets do not unduly impact the freedom of consent between vendors and consumers, but curtail the worst excesses of large corporations under lassaiz-faire.
think that "the American dream" is real and that they someday will be rich too.
It's working for a lot of immigrants in my old neighborhood. Second generation no as much.
"In my opinion, capitalism is the only market form that works reasonably effective and ensures progress and freedom"
If your idea of freedom is taking advantage of others? yes. A free market system is the only one that ensures progress and freedom
A free market system is an economic system based solely on demand and supply, and there is little or no government regulation. In a free market system, a buyer and a seller transact freely only when they voluntarily agree on the price of a good or a service. For example, suppose a seller wants to sell a toy for $5 and a buyer wants to buy that toy for $3. A transaction will occur when the buyer and the seller agree on a price.
Capitalism is focused on the creation of wealth and ownership of capital and factors of production, whereas a free market system is focused on the exchange of wealth, or goods and services. A free market system is based solely on supply and demand and leads to free competition in the economy, without any intervention from outside forces. On the other hand, a private owner in a capitalist system can have a monopoly on the market and prevent free competition.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Can you define Socialism? Because all industrialized economies have since degree of Socialism.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I can't blame them either.
I think the only reasonable system possible is one which has private ownership, free and competitive enterprise, and a government providing basic services, ensuring security and regulation, and promoting fairness and equality by e.g. making sure everyone has access to health care and education.
If this is 'capitalism', I'll take it. You can also call it the Rhineland model or social market economics, or whatever you want. I want it :)
What we're seeing now is: .5% per annum), while average income increased by 100%. In other words: the economic growth since the seventies has almost entirely gone to the above-median earners: the top 1% share of income jumped from 10% in the seventies to over 20% now, with a large part of this increase going to the top 0.1% (i.e., not us).
- wage share of income falling relative to capital's share [1]
- real median income stagnant for the past 20 years even though real average income has increased by 25% [2]. Over 50 years median income increased by 25% (not even
- governments are unable to provide basic services because the rich don't pay their fair share of tax [4]
- governments are unable to provide basic services because they are unable to reform entitlement/welfare systems which are in fact transferring money from the relatively poor young to the relatively well-off old [5]
- markets aren't acutally well regulated, especially in the US, and too many industries have (near-)monopolies, causing profits to be historically way too high [6]
In Europe, 'capitalism' means that old people have either permanent contracts with generous benefits, or are already enjoying their equally generous retirement which they entered between 55 and 65. Young people have temporary contracts at stagnant wages, are unable to buy a house because of (1) inflated prices due to government meddling (green belts, mortgage interest deductability); (2) they don't have a permanent contract; and (3) new lending regulations means banks are a lot more stingy than even 10 years ago; and will not retire before 67 on a defined contribution scheme, which is pretty bad news especially given the essentially zero interest rates and government bond yields. In the US (and increasingly the UK), added to this is a nice pile of student debt. If I were young(er), I'm not sure I would think this is such a good bargain...
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2) https://research.stlouisfed.or...
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
5) http://www.economist.com/news/...
5) http://www.economist.com/news/...
What is rejected? The concept of capitalism or the idea pushed from some political parties.
Much like "Patriotism" do you need to be an American flag waving, car stuck with yellow ribbons to be a patriot? Or can you be a Patriot by concerning yourself with identifying the current problems and challenges in our government and work to fix them to help improve our nation for the long term?
Or Religion? Are they those guys who knock on your door and tell you that you are going to go to hell because of your modern lifestyle. Or faith based institutions who reach out the public and offer charity and services to the community and offer teachings of tolerance and understanding?
Capitalism had became one of these politicized words. For the most part it does more good than harm. However there should be regulations to minimize its harmful elements (Preventing the sale of harmful goods, insuring that monopolies don't form, ensuring that trade is being conducted fairly...) Capitalism isn't buyer beware consumerism. But allowing freedom to sell/trade goods and services with its value based on the supply and demand of such products and services. For example Communist Soviet Union had a problem shortages of common items, because the government was trying to filter out what it thought the people needed and not actually what the people really wanted. So some days the store may be overstocked with cooking oil while the next day it may have bread. While the demand for bread was much higher then cooking oil, it was treated equally thus creating a shortage in bread, causing the infamous bread lines.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Socialist capitalism is probably where the balance is.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Lazy? I know people who are working more than two jobs a week, with 2+ sharing a one bedroom apartment just so they can pay rent and get food on the table.
Lets be real here: The millennials I know work damn hard just to try to survive. It isn't a work ethic or lack of ambition. It is a system that has stopped working for them, and the system blames the millennials for it.
Times are changing, and not for the better. The high paying manufacturing jobs are now in China and Mexico. The jobs for development and IT are being offshored, if not, H-1Bs hired because of the tax benefits and the fact that an H-1B knows he gets deported if fired, so will do anything in his/her power (ethical/unethical) to keep working. On the low end, illegal immigration has slowed down because it is easy to get a H-2B for seasonal work. The only growth sector in the US is corrections officers, and even that is stagnant right now.
I do call bullshit on the taxes. My income tax is a fraction of what it would be under Reagan. In fact, it would be nice if more taxes were collected from corporations before they stash their gains overseas. In times past, companies paid their fair share. Now, the tax burden is on the poorer people who can't afford the biggest loopholes. In fact, I actually pulled tax burdens of people I know and compared them to publically released forms of politicians. Why the hell is someone making minimum wage paying far more taxes than someone making 6-7 digits a year, and paying $0 to Uncle Sam? This isn't "let's soak the rich", but "lets get people to pay their fair share."
tl;dr, I don't blame millennials. Everyone tells them they are fuck-ups, but they work harder than any generation previously, and can barely survive. It is no wonder why they don't like a game they can't win, or even succeed at. Because there isn't any real hope of earning even near what their parents (much less grandparents) did, and for their generation the political system gives them nothing but a middle finger, it is no wonder why seeds from toxic ideologies from Daesh or other extreme sectors are growing fruit, when before 2008, it wouldn't even have been thinkable.
Except that the large drug companies spend only a small fraction of their budgets on R&D, and spend more on marketing. It's small companies and universities that develop half of all new drugs in the US, despite raking in far lower profits.
As for the military, has it ever occurred to you that most of us actually don't want there to be a giant hegemonic power (you) throwing around your military weight in the world?
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
In my opinion, capitalism is the only market form that works reasonably effective and ensures progress and freedom...
Capitalism absolutely does not protect individual freedoms and there are increasing examples of this. Just look at copyrights and patents to see how companies would like to severely restrict our freedom in order to make money. Other companies support laws to prevent grey imports so they can charge more in some countries than others etc. If individual freedom gets in the way of a company making more money then they are only too happy for us to lose it.
Capitalism works when companies are small in size because small companies need the same freedoms which individuals want in order to compete and they lack the resources to manipulate countries into passing favourable laws. However once you get huge companies they seem to switch (with a few exceptions) from innovation and growth to aggressively defending their existing wealth generation mechanisms by actively trying to restrict the innovation and freedoms of others. This is where capitalism fails although, like Winston Churchill said about democracy, it's the worst form of economic system except for all the others which have ever been tried.
it will still have problems without a lot of oversight. look at car manufacturers -- now that is some capitalism, right? they want to make money, they need efficiency, they need talent, they need a work pool, they need a global supply chain...and they need oversight or they will get people killed over a frickin ignition switch or ruin the environment even more than we thought because they will lie about emissions tests and the like.
without oversight other companies would hire child laborers---which we are ok with as long as they arent *our* kids, in *this* country--or theyd give people shit pay and benefits and let the top execs take it all for themselves, or theyd dump chemicals in public water sources or do whatever they want.
capitalism can get a whole hell of a lot done, but i needs a whole hell of a lot of oversight not to fuck up everything in its wake as it moves us forward. i'm scared about the price we are paying for it sometimes
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
What a load of condescending crap!
Your implicit assumption that nobody in their late teens and early 20's has any capacity for critical thought is, to be charitable, inaccurate.
And then there's your blatant ignorance of the fact that just about every country providing a really excellent standard of living for the majority of its population would be identified by you as "socialist".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I don't think you understand what socialized medicine actually is. You pay taxes, they fund the health system. Doctors get paid a set wage, not per treatment. And insurance companies play no part...
"Millenials" are (archaic short form of) adulterous wives? That's an... odd accusation to make.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Speaking of trust, we should not trust headlines. The polls shows capitalism is the preferred system among millennials. Using the twisted approach of the author, the poll shows that 65% of millennials reject socialism.
You should read that Wikipedia link you gave, because Mercantilism wasn't what you described it as. The intention (apparent or real) had nothing to do with protecting consumers
You misunderstood what I wrote.I didn't say mercantilism had anything to do with protecting consumers. I'm saying that our current government system passes laws & regulations under the claim of protecting consumers when the reality is that it protects big business by shielding them from competition. McDonald's & Walmart can afford a minimum wage hike, mom & pop corner stores operating on low margins can't. Almost every form of licensing and regulation helps to give the existing players an advantage over those who are considering entering the market.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The poll shows even more millennials (over 60%) reject socialism, if you use the logic of the author.
What the poll shows, clearly, is a that of all the choices Capitalism is the preferred one among millennials.
R&D is not the only big ticket cost for drugs. Every drug put on the market for the last 20 years or so has been the subject of huge "bad drug" lawsuits--often quite dubious--with billions of dollars of settlements required. It's no wonder that pharma companies have to charge extra to fill those reserves to pay off the inevitable suits.
> A majority of "millennials" probably couldn't find their ass with both hands
Millenials 'started' in 1982. The oldest of them are 34 this year. Some of us have been out in industry for a decade and seen parts of the world.
"I don't like capitalism!" he typed on his iPhone or Android phone, and pressed send, where it went out wiressly to a router or a 4G connection, and from there into the massive lightning fast backbone of the Internet. He then settled down to play Tom Clancy's World of Assassins Creed on his X-Station 760 PC with the new 980 graphics card, all of this developed over the past 30 years with trillions in private investment.
"Shall we meet at McDonald's for lunch?" came a message. "Nah, how about Cheepotl or whatever it is?" "Sure. Cya soon."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> Have you ever lived of "government cheese" ?
Oh man that is good stuff. I used to have it at my grandmother's - she had plenty of money but kept it well hidden and scammed the system to get subsidized housing, free food, etc. yet miraculously always had the funds to travel and go to the casino. But anyway, that cheese... real American cheese made of mixes of various cheddars and it made the best grilled cheese sandwiches ever. I wish I could buy that exact cheese in supermarkets - I haven't had it since the '80s when my grandmother stopped scamming the system and bought a house in Florida.
But then again I can't blame her... RI has oppressive tax rates relative to what you get for your tax dollars.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The younger generation today is more informed. They have seen what has happened in the economy in the last 10-15 years. They have seen what has happened to their parents, families, with the effects of globalization(China), immigration, college debt, etc; They are no dummies.
How would any objective person expect them to react. They see now, very clearly, that "the game" is rigged. It has been going this way since the 1980's. Many spoke up about it, including the fantastic Bill Moyers.
If anyone had been paying attention, like Bill and others like him who had the courage and intelligence to document how the American middle class has been gamed, time and time again, they wouldn't be surprised AT ALL that Millenials are skeptical of what passes for "Capitalism" in the US.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
We do seem to have too many people at the bottom who are inherently lazy (all people are lazy to some extent)
If you're an American You're ignorant. Welfare ended in 1996. Unless you're disabled you get no check unless you can PROVE you're looking for work. Oh, were it not for Britain's generous welfare, there would be no Harry Potter.
But you just keep listening to that drug-addled rich hypocrite Rush Limbaugh, fool.
Free Martian Whores!
I think 30%-33% taxation or so is PLENTY.
I don't think the problem so much is not taxing enough....the US Feds are bringing in RECORD amounts of tax income. It is how they waste and spend it for the most part.
No one should have to pay half or more of their income in taxes, that just kills incentive.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And that only applies to Federal tax. The poor pay gasoline taxes, sales taxes, state income taxes (in Illinois at the same rate as a billionaire), cigarette taxes, and their landlord's property tax on the property they live in (you don't believe landlords exist out of the goodness of their hearts, do you?).
Free Martian Whores!
Your freedom personally? I'm sure I can find someone on the darkwebs that can arrange a "contract" for that.
On a more serious side there are plenty of products that cause harm to people other than the purchaser through pollution.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Lazy? I know people who are working more than two jobs a week, with 2+ sharing a one bedroom apartment just so they can pay rent and get food on the table.
I wish the above AC had an account, or I had mod points today. My youngest and her fiancee both work full time and go to college full time. She's an honors student. I could have never accomplished that.
Free Martian Whores!
If it has anything to do with Marxism, it's because we are currently living in a situation where capitalism looks a lot like Marxism, so it's hard to say one is better than the other.
Capitalism only makes sense if you have free markets. Without free markets, private ownership of industry is virtually indistinguishable the king or the state owning industry. Capitalism==feudalism==communism. All of the usual virtues that we normally talk about in the context of economic success (hard work, intelligence, inspiration, etc) have little bearing on the situation. What really matters is whether or not you recognized those values as worthless and saw what really matters: gaming the system though inheritance, bribery, theft, clan/party-membership or whatever. And of course, the main reason to game the system, is to prevent a free market from emerging!
Look at some of the things that you hate the most. See any monopolies? See any byzantine legal frameworks? See any immortal business owners? Any chance, that even if you were a genius badass motherfucker, you would be able to enter into competition with the established players?
So of course who-owns-it is irrelevant and it's hard to get excited about capitalism, because all the advantages that would have arisen under Adam Smith's vision, are denied to everyone anyway. It's already centrally planned so why would you care whether the planners are a group of VCs, or a king's court, or the Soviet central committee? Corruption makes them all look the same to anyone coming from a free market perspective.
Now granted, not the entire economy is like that, but a lot of it is, and especially some of its most visible parts. You're reading this thanks to your ISP, for example, and if you're American, you know that ISPs have *cough* transcended free markets. And many people are reading this on a computer where it's against the law to modify how they're reading it, and maybe it's illegal to maintain the hardware too. Anti-free-market forces and mechanisms are so ubiquitous that many people barely even notice them anymore (and don't normally describe their intent as "prevent a free market from happening"), but your don't fail to notice how much so many things suck by law. As long as you don't honestly ask yourself "Is this really capitalism?" (in the sense that someone 250 years ago would recognize) then it's easy to conclude: capitalism sucks.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Aw, quit whining about taxes.
I'm so sick of hearing people cry about paying into society. You want infrastructure? You want the CDC, NIH, EPA, DOT, FDA, etc., you pay taxes. You want civilization, you pay taxes.
Crybaby tax-dodgers, from all levels of the economy, are the one of the main reasons we so many problems in the U.S., along with the anti-regulators.
no one supports an inheritance tax on dependent children.
but what you said is effectively the same as supporting an inheritance tax as it is commonly understood to be.
that is because Adam Smith supported the basic concepts of fair competition* and level playing fields, things which inherited wealth undermine. inherited wealth is a distortion in the market, bestowing on an actor opportunity they didn't gain through the market. and as such Adam Smith was not a fan.
(i'd use the word meritocracy, except meritocracy is not the word to use, unless you define the source of merit carefully; for ex, he didn't believe in merit from assumed position or inherited wealth)
He may have believed such situations as competition and level playing fields should arise naturally through mutual agreement and restraint, but reality has shown they do not, as all it takes is one self-interested person to poison the pot. In point of fact, Adam Smith's views on capitalism and markets based around fair competition dovetail nicely with government rules meant to accomplish and foster such, as what is government but an abstracted form of mutual agreement (at least in in its ideal form), albeit one able to enforce those ideal level competitive fields under force of law ?
(the fact that government itself can be subverted doesn't negate its role; rather it forces upon the users another layer of vigilance, that of maintaining control over their government from those who would subvert it)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fullness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural. There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death." —Adam Smith (emphasis added)
That isn't a statement against inheritance at time of death, which in any case is indistinguishable from a gift given by a living owner just prior to death. It's a statement against the dead having the ability to impose rules and restrictions on their (former) property which endure long after the original owner has died. The full rights to dispose of any property must always be distributed among its living owners.
The current system is a compromise—most jurisdictions allow property to remain subject to the original owner's influence for at most one generation after inheritance.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
As for the military, has it ever occurred to you that most of us actually don't want there to be a giant hegemonic power (you) throwing around your military weight in the world?
Cool - so when can we expect these nations to build up their own to a number sufficient for self-defense, so that the US military can remove themselves from those places? It might break some national budgets, but...
Also, we'll require a treaty stating that such countries are not to call on the US for help if they run into trouble.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The Cultural Marxist Subversion of the Free World has resulted in weaponized zombies who prefer Big State authoritarianism and Central Planning over voluntary exchange for mutual benefit (the 'Free Market' - "capitalism" is the World the Marxists use for the Free Market). The nice thing is reality can only be defied for a short time, and those zombies will reap what they sew. And for all the sane people out there, buckle up, it's going to get rough as the Collectivist-Islamist Axis spins up to full speed.
I love this Cold War rhetoric, where no arguments are made. All it does is comforting what you already believe in. The funny thing about it is that it can usually be reversed. Let's see if it works:
The Cultural Capitalist Subversion of the Free World has resulted in weaponized zombies who prefer Corporation authoritarianism and Market Diktat over wealth redistribution for mutual benefit (the 'Regulated Market' - "Marxism" is the World the Capitalists use for the Regulated Market). The nice thing is reality can only be defied for a short time, and those zombies will reap what they sew. And for all the sane people out there, buckle up, it's going to get rough as the Military-Imperialist Axis spins up to full speed.
Note that I define myself as a capitalist, I am just pointing out that your post is just empty propaganda.
says Harvard University's study actually.
All of which make extensive use of publicly developed science and technology too (e.g. ARPA for the internet) so what's your point?
Even if they didn't, it's a bit like saying if you send something through the post you must support socialism because you're using a government service. Or that someone in the former Soviet Union would be hypocritical to be against socialism because they used such institutions every day.
Would you please stop trying to put the blame on us for everything you fuck up?
It doesn't take the Illuminati to fuck up the US. That fuckup is one of the few things left that are 100% made in the U.S. of A.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If Trump is winning, I suspect the problem lies with the Illiterati, rather than the Illuminati.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Of course! All taxes and other costs of any good or service us ultimately paid by the person at the end transaction. And as to corporate taxes, this is the US, corporations don't pay taxes. They only pretend to.
As to cigarette taxes, I'm happy to have vices I don't do taxed.
Free Martian Whores!