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Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com)
gollum123 writes: According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively. "This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68 percent viewed it positively," notes Gallup, which defines young Americans as those aged 18 to 29. Meanwhile, 51 percent of young people are positive about socialism. This age group's "views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year," reports Gallup, "but the 51 percent with a positive view today is the same as in 2010."
I knew this was going to happen as soon as "investor types" got involved. This is what they do.
another exciting communism debate
The boomers pulled the ladder up on them.
As long there is strong regulation behind it keep things honest and upfront.
No-small-print capitalism.
... seeing as how fewer than half of them will ever be able to pay off their college loans. Maybe if we want to prove capitalism can work for everyone we should stop letting rich people write all the laws?
Get rid of it.
The young always think there is a better way. As they grow up, they realize that the current way works, while most "good ideas" don't. But, enough new ideas do work to keep the system changing.
- Joe Biden
When you got millionaires and billionaires putthing themselves ahead at the expense of the public, people are not going to have a positive opinion of capitalism.
The people who came before them are rigging the system against them so only they and their kids who made it can benefit. The ladder has been pulled up and these young folks are starting to realize this more and more.
they haven't lived in a (real) socialist country.
For example, despite all the problems you may have heard about in China, life there is significantly improved comparing to before the country's economic reform that turned itself from a backward socialist/communist state into the most capitalistic superpower, even though their governing doctrine is still communism.
If you're not a liberal at 20... https://quoteinvestigator.com/...
COMMMMMIES.........!!!!!!!
Filter error: Your comment looks too much like ascii art.
ROFL
This is what happens when post-modernists take over the school systems and Western Values are treated as bad instead of good.
In other words, 65% of Americans are so dumb, they actually think we have capitalism...
Just remember, half the people are stupider than that...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
What's in it for me? If you work for a wage, you're losing in the capitalist system. You're part of a permanent underclass, destined to suffer at the whims of your betters.
Davis you haven't even had a reasonably decent idea in your entire self-involved curmudgeonly head-in-ass apologist life. Thank God children are smarter and don't listen to your whiny failing attempts to validate ideas, you're a moron.
Darn. You beat me by two minutes. B-b
For those not familiar with it, and who don't want to follow the link and read a page, the current version of the old saw is:
(The article linked by the parent poster tracks variants back as far as 1875 in France.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The system we have now is really corporatism. Very large, essentially immortal, companies that are able to achieve regulatory capture and get laws written for themselves.
Look at the way that the coal companies were able to get an exemption to clean water laws to blow the tops off of mountains and destroy streams and creeks. All so they could reduce labor costs. That's one hell of an externality they got out of.
small "c" capitalism is something a free society has to have, i.e. the ability to buy and sell goods in a relatively unfettered market. No you don't get to sell nuclear weapons, so there has to be some manner of regulation.
corporatism is all about shifting costs to the public and creating a bullshit concept that companies are somehow outside of morality and ethics. They want to be outside of morality and ethics but that doesn't mean we have to let them.
Absolute statements are never true
Fewer than half of young Americans are white anymore, either. Thank you open borders lobby!
More than half of young Americans are morons.
It makes sense younger people would be susceptible to bad ideas and in particular people that say everything should be free. Hell I'd take everything free if I believed someone it was possible. Still these people have no experience, things that are too good to be true often are. And hell at that young age people are voting democrat solely because America is a democracy and democrat sounds similar.
Let's see, the economic system that has raised more people out of poverty than any other, young people aren't sure about. The education system in every country on earth is just..wow.
...that at least 90% of the people do not even understand what "Socialism" is, but they also realize that "Capitalism" has been taken over by "Crony Capitalism", I'm only surprised that the percentage isn't higher.
"And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their world...They're immune to your consultations - they're quite aware of what they're going through..."
Historically, those who created the most value for society typically obtained the most purchasing power. Today though, it seems like too many are getting too much purchasing power, much more than the value they provide, and others not getting enough. The Economist had a story on this, "The question of extractive elites". Other key words to google are "rent-seeking."
Millenials have runaway education, medical and housing costs. Follow the money to figure out why. Naturally they think capitalism is broken.
Also, with the financial sector, something has to be done to rein it in. There's an interesting debate at the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, about "Cleaning vs Leaning" - letting the financial sector involve itself in (very lucrative to it) excesses, then sticking the society with the externalities (i.e. the bill). The Federal Reserve is wondering whether its role should be to clean up ("Clean") or try to prevent in the first place ("Lean"). You can think of factories polluting - they keep the profit, they dump the effluent so those around the factory incur the costs. Ditto with the financial sector.
The problem with relying on "Distributors" to distribute purchasing power is that they accrue too much power and they are merely human - easily corruptible. The society then grows around that source of profit, like a plant grows to sun. Instead of growing around people seeking purchasing power by providing value to society. See how much power politicians have to today, and how hard they try to get tax money, to spend as they believe with help their re-election chances the most. Distributors will distribute purchasing power to those with the best lobbyists, not those who create the most value for society.
is the problem. Not only do they not want to learn or understand what they are talking about, any attempt to bring up facts or heaven forbid show them a country that has failed while traveling down the path they want to bring us will only result in name calling and hurt feelings.
Not only that, but most do not even understand the difference between capitalism and free-market. They think that it is okay to destroy the free-market through bad regulation and then blame the free-market for that failure and by proxy transfer that blame to Capitalism because to have a Free-Market you do require Capitalism, but you do not require a Free-Market to have Capitalism.
The war here is simple... They want us to become Venezuela and even though we are looking at a Nation in destitution they still want it. Because they are ignorant... and it is a hell of a drug! Not even facts will change their view.
And as God said in 1 Samual Chapter 8. When you ask for a King and seek salvation from them instead of God, you have rejected God... "18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.â
It's almost like capitalism hasn't done shit to help 2+ generations of people in a row.
Surely, blaming them for the problem while selling them down the road will serve the generations that didn't get totally fucked over.
The problem is that everyone wants something for nothing. It doesn't exist. Socialism has been tried many times on many levels and it simply doesn't work.
Capitalism has a successful record. It has raised more people up from poverty than any other system in history. But you have to work for it.
As far as the U.S. college debt situation: look at who is running it: Government. Is adding more government to the problem going to solve it? Probably not. Be smart about it. Use community college (or high school) to get GE requirements done cheaply. Get a job to help offset some of the cost, don't just use the college loans to pay for 100% the cost. Use credit cards wisely and don't spend money you don't have. Don't eat out. Ramen noodles and PB&J are your friends.
Before entering college for that 4 year degree, be absolutely certain that's what you want to do. Most of my friends that graduated college aren't using their degree in their current field. Hell, some didn't need a 4 year degree at all.
Trade schools. Seriously. Use them. These careers can be very rewarding and pay very good salaries. Less student debt, start a career earlier and start saving for retirement earlier.
Many 4 year college grads have the equivalent of a home mortgage when they leave school. That's bad for many reasons and a drain on the economy.
Obviously I'm posting generalities. But they are truths. In the U.S. you are responsible for your education after high school. Choose wisely.
Government run education is extremely costly. In my home state they decided to offer free preschool to everyone. In my blue-collar town of 25,000 where up to 40% of the population is receiving some type of government assistance our preschool participation rate was 96%. After "free" preschool was announced by the state the cost per pupil per year went from $1,200 to $3,700 in one year. The new participation rate was still 96%. Why did the state government run program cost 3 times more to run than the private and community based system? Nobody seems to know. How do you suppose that would translate at the college level if college were determined to be "free"?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The problem is that people treat other people like shit, when communities where people are nice o each other can reap the benefits of teaming up. Giving us a disadvantage and resulting in suffering.
My hypothesis is, that such people lack empathy for those they harm.
And that this is simply because they are so far removed from them.
E.g. I highly doubt that they would act that way, when they would risk being punched in the face, or stabbed in the forest, in a tribal village.
And another thing is, that according to studies, westerners, and especially Americans, are far more selfish and seem to naturally lack empathy, similar to psychopaths. I even saw that in myself, when comparing me to immigrants from very backwater countries/towns.
I do not know what caused the latter ... if it is the abuse of mind-altering (prescription) drugs, just a result of unnatural selection, or something the food/environment...
But I do know the former is the result of overpopulation with regard to Dunbars number. Overpopulation naturally dehumanized people, because you simply cannot tell that many humans apart and get to know them to a point where you can feel empathy.
I bet that even if we had no capitalism, people here would still be psycho dicks .
The US has public roads, public parks, and public schools. China has private businesses and personal investments. Socialism versus capitalism is just a matter of degree. Humans aren't ants or amoebas and can't deal with extremes and absolutes and, in those cases where someone does manage to fully impose their ideals upon others, it can take generations for things to recover.
Once upon a time, most of the value of the American economy was from actual goods and services, and not so intrinsically tied to the stock market. Since about the late 1970s, the American economy has been tied to the stock market, which has engendered dangerous short term thinking.
This, combined with the hollowing out of organized labor and the ever widening wealth disparity in the US has led to inevitable situation.
What would anyone expect? A heart warming embrace of a system geared to enrich and empower those who are already rich and powerful?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Get rid of the cronies and return to actual capitalism. That may require actual regulation, so Republicans won't let it happen.
We raised a generation of idiots.
If you raised them and screwed it up then YOU are the idiot, not them.
And apparently we didn't teach them history, like how many in the past died due to socialism
You seriously think capitalism hasn't resulted in anyone dying? Evidently you didn't learn much history yourself.
But I feel that capitalism works well for economy building. Once it's big, though, it's kind of run its course and needs to be modified to continue to satisfy the majority of CITIZENS (read: not "CONSUMERS"). I believe we're at that state right now.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Probably why a large chunk of this new generation of muppets still lives at home.
for the stuff you want is always an attractive idea.
Capitalism is bad at:
No where on earth is there a purely capitalist society outside of complete anarchy (e.g. Somalia). Once a government is established, the first thing it does is socialize something: defense.
Some other things most countries socialize:
Education is a prime example of capitalism dealing poorly with long time horizons. If we took loans out to pay for our entire education, it would be 20 years before we could make the first payment. Most debt is expected to be paid off in less than 30 years.
In terms of natural resources, the value placed on them is based on the labor required to extract them. However, air requires minimal labor to extract. You do it every time you breath. Because of this, we have subconsciously, and collectively agreed that no one owns the air. It is shared by all of us as a community. It's a communist system.
In summary, capitalism is a tool in our economic system, that works along side socialism and communism to get resources to people that need them. The trick is choosing the correct tool for the task!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
...when people that never lived under socialist or communist regime start to talk how bad capitalism is and if one would implement socialism everything would be OK - we would live in harmony, almost in paradise.
I was born in 81 in one of the countries of the ex Soviet block. And I can not tell you how happy I am that my children were born in capitalist country. Because they will never know how it is when you can not buy food even when you have money. Because there neighbor will not disappear in the middle of the night because he told the wrong joke.
Americans of today are spoliled beyond anything one could imagine and would like to have everything for free - because it is there right.
But I can tell you one thing, back in 91 at 10 years of age everyone in my class was in the same position to make or build something. At that time I could tell you who will grow up to be successful and who would be a failure.
America died in 1965, do your research. Are 51% of young Americans even white?
The problem is that family life as a kid is basically socialism, so you learn to love socialism.
You get an allowance, cloths, food, a roof over your head, etc. You don't learn capitalism by being a child.
You learn capitalism, by having to work, and apparently half our youth don't like working.
The system we have now is really corporatism
Exactly. Capitalism implies the abscence of government interference in the market, not the presence of it. We are talking about the largest, most powerful, most expensive government in human history, with military bases in some 150 countries around the world. In other words, we aren't just talking about "big" government; we're talking about gigantic government, which is 180 degrees opposite from the spirit of capitalism.
If you look at the actual data, most Americans are still in favor of capitalism and opposed to socialism. Especially amongst Republicans and the older populations. It makes sense - as you get older, you get wiser and more experienced. Our education system is certainly failing young minds across the country, which is likely to be the most prevalent force in why young people are more sympathetic to socialism, but as you get your first job and start working and saving you're usually going to become more conservative.
CNBC is being very selective in which piece of the data it is publishing about because it has an agenda.
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why the hell people don't want capitalism, yet they risk their lives to travel and live in a capitalist country.
So many people believe that the answer is 100% capitalism or socialism. The reality is that some things work better privatized while others work better socialized.
For instance, Ayn Rand believed that all roads should be toll roads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_roads
Fire departments would let houses burn if people failed to pay for their protection:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/
Charter schools utterly failed in Michigan:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/magazine/michigan-gambled-on-charter-schools-its-children-lost.html
All of these services are "loss leaders". They are not profitable, but necessary for the smooth functioning of commerce and profitable endeavors. They simply fail to work well as for-profit endeavors.
On the other hand, Venezuela socialized everything and has managed to collapse their economy. The same situation occurred in the USSR and Cuba. China became a hybrid system and survived. Clearly 100% socialism doesn't work either.
The reality is that we already benefit from services which are best served by government (roads, environment, military, police, fire), while a few services are in dispute (education, healthcare).
There will always be morons that blame the public education system for all the problems of society, claiming that students aren't educated, yet don't deserve a chance to study for a career in college without significant debt. These same people also fail to recognize that the majority of the student debt crisis was caused by private for-profit colleges. These people are not at school board meetings, nor ever volunteer in the classroom.
Successful socialized healthcare examples abound in many western countries, but it would be a sin in the United States to deprive the drug and insurance companies of profits large enough to bankrupt most citizens. Let's make our senior citizens choose between food and medicine.
The bottom line is that older people still think that we are fighting a cold war with the commies. Younger people have a more nuanced point of view brought about by actual thinking. Good for them. There may be hope for the future after all.
In california, kids are so focused on making money to survive, to save their families, to secure their future, since it has become disproportionately cluster-f*k*ed out there..
Be that as it may, with that in mind, how can they stop and smell the roses of Capitalism, much less comprehend the the reasoning behind it, understanding what it's really for..
It's amazing that california still has a school system, considering kids need to be working to help the family keep a roof over their heads. I mean Doesn't education, even poor education just seem to take up some much time, resulting in the loss of productivity.
Everybody just take from the cup of Gingis Khan.
They do capitalism with some social institutions and Horny Wuss loses his jaw-lock on Putin's cock, has to whine about it reflexively. What an old turd lol.
1) Poverty inclines people to prefer socialism. The impoverished tend to think of socialism as a way they can make those rich people give them free money. And of course they think this is fair, since "those rich people" obviously have more than they need or deserve, and "we poor people" need it to survive and be happy.
2) Public schools have a strong liberal political disposition. I don't know if this was always true, but it is now. The overwhelming majority of public school teachers are not just liberals, but extreme liberals, which naturally inclines them to favor socialist policies and slant everything they teach in that direction. The fact that teachers are well paid by property taxes, a socialist policy, might have something to do with this.
Bankrupt.vs.Broke - in the first ism, the state collapsed broke under communism. In the latter ism, a population went broke under capitalism.
51% of millennials see unimpeachable testimony to concentration of power, demographics of corruption and proof positive means how ISM politics ends.
BUT 49% are smart enough to question to what ends adding another ISM means.
We know Train, he sucks Putin's dick here daily. He's full nazi tardo, he should hang next to Drumpf
The rich will be fine and anyway a healthy educated population is a sure sign of socialism gone amuck. #MAGA
Younger people tend to be more idealistic -- nothing new there. A more interesting undertaking would consist of obtaining statistical data about the evolution of people's views as they age. I believe that they become more conservative, but I don't know to what an extent. What percentage of these kids will evolve into becoming the Trumpers of 2045?
What, exactly, does that mean? Capitalism is one of those slippery words that people define conveniently. It's either the bane of all existence which we should eliminate entirely (but hey, I still want to buy an iPhone and sell stuff I create) or the solution to all problems (but hey, I still want public roads and social security).
It's a stupid sort of word that people toss around like a weapon. Contrary to popular believe, Capitalism and Socialism are completely compatible. Also contrary to popular belief, we already HAVE some socialism here in the US. It's called freaking Medicare and Social Security!
We need to stop putting things in these tiny little boxes, and ignoring what anyone else on the "other side" says. Capitalism needs regulation or else it runs rampant and we get rivers on fire, and children working in factories. Socialism needs limits, or else we get masses of people doing no-work, bullshit jobs where they can't be fired.
In other words, some form of sane balance between the good and bad aspects of any system. We seem to have lost site of any balance lately.
Can you name a single instance of capitalism being used as justification to brutalize and murder millions of people?
Work Safe Porn
"I hate capitalism!" he thumbed into his Apple iPhone, and pressed send, and didn't go stand in a bread line of a planned economy.
This is just a combo of lousy instruction combined with grass-is-greener syndrom.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Capitalism has multiple variants. Unfortunately, our capitalism needs adjustment.
We don't need socialism, we need to fix our capitalism.
I'm ready to fix capitalism if you are. Who'll vote for me? I can fix it.
Your signature speaks volumes about your message.
No one has died due to socialism. Many people have died due to single-party dictatorships that called themselves socialist.
In many ways, Canada could be called socialist. Strong social programs including universal medical care. Not nearly as far down that spectrum as some, but still very successful and a higher standard of living and higher average life span than the US, so that says something.
There is nothing that says that competition has to be absent in a socialist system. What socialism is saying is that there has to be a better way to distribute income and wealth than the system we currently have. Capitalism is failing to attract young people because in its natural state, it is a system that encourages coalescence of wealth into the hands of a very few. A system of financial oligarchs. The whole array of financial rules that try to make stock trading fair, anti-trust laws, and consumer protection legislation work to partially correct some of the more egregious natural effects of capitalism, but those protections are failing more and more.
Young people are failing to flock to capitalism's banner for the reason that they are simply better informed. The standard of living has improved all around and the young don't have to fight for survival. They are more global thinkers, and less personally greedy. And they are seeing the results of generations of capitalism and what it is doing not just to third world countries but our own. Corporations are getting absolute erections at the possibilities afforded by the use of technology to control and gather wealth. iphones and their walled garden, smart TV's and home voice controllers that send all your voice to central servers for processing, social media that is rife with fake news and social manipulation, DRM methods that restrict people from even the fair use of their purchases. Pharmaceutical companies purchased by larger corporations where their product is subsequently raised in price, not by double, but by factors of ten or a hundred.
I don't have a replacement system to propose that fixes everything. But I do know that we have to have a discussion about it and try something, because the system we have is broken, and it's getting brokener.
Greed is simply not a principle that can sustain good public policy.
or the Soviets. You do understand that people can misrepresent themselves, right? China is a Kleptocracy, which is where America is heading.
If you want to see Socialism in action look to the Scandanavian countries. Also Germany, France and Canada. Venezuela seemed to be making a run for it but couldn't shake the centuries of political corruption. I think if America hadn't sanctioned them and locked them out of the world banking system when the price of oil collapsed then they might have pulled out of it. Yeah, their ruler's a dictator, but so's the king of Saudi Arabia and we're helping him bomb Yemen, so it's not like we've got much of a leg to stand on. OTOH we did just use their collapsed economy to seize a bunch of their oil assets. Funny how that always seems to work out (RE: Iraq, Afghanistan).
TL;DR; You're misrepresenting socialism, either intentionally or by mistake. Please stop it.
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...or fucking MSNBC?
Own a smart phone? You're a fan of capitalism. End of story
40 years of propaganda will do that.
Whatever you want to call the system we have now, it is the most successful system the planet has ever had.
Name one system that has even come close to raising the standard of living for everyone in the world like this one has.
And before you spit out your milk, yes, it has its flaws and you could even say it's failed some people. But over all there is NO better option.
If you think there is, Name it. Provide evidence that its worked on as wide of scale as this one.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The public education (indoctrination) system is a major cause.
I feel that capitalism works well for economy building,
Correct. Capitalism serves the needs of the masses so long as you are experiencing significant growth. When the growth slows or stops, as it must if we are to avoid destruction of the biosphere upon which we depend, pure capitalism has run its course. At that point, [more] socialism is needed in order to serve the masses, who are no longer offered a share of excess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, now they want another trial at what failed in the Eastern Europe
What failed in Eastern Europe was communism. I'm not a huge fan of socialism but it is far less extreme than communism. Europe and Canada are now somewhere on the spectrum between socialism and capitalism, trying to find a balance between allowing people the freedom to generate wealth while also ensuring that some of that wealth provides a social safety net for those less fortunate.
Pretty ironic since the only thing milennials have exposure to is oligopoly. We haven't had capitalism in America for a long time.
Everything wasn't handed to us on a platter simply because we exist. So we advocate stealing from others (ie, socialism) and having illegitimate organized crime for a government (ie, socialism). We're entitled to crush everyone's liberty and property rights and subject everybody else to socialism because we suck, boo hoo.
... 3 hours in.
There is no single incident but lost of smaller ones e.g. the Bhopal gas disaster plus lots of similar accidents often caused by companies prioritizing profit over people's safety with the dumping of toxic chemicals, refusal of valid health insurance claims etc. On top of this, there are the unknown numbers of preventable deaths caused by the US's lack of free, public healthcare which is a socialist idea.
While these do not meet the standard of "brutalize and murder" it is also true to say that I cannot really think of any incidents where socialism has lead to much of this either except for similar isolated incidents with the trade union movement. On the other hand, Communism has clearly caused massive suffering on this sort of scale so perhaps you are getting communism and socialism confused? The two are not the same.
Thank you for your reply, it's nice to know I'm not alone in that line of thinking.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The thing I find so disheartening is how many younger Americans reject Capitalism, in favor of a form of Socialism -- without realizing that this isn't as simple as an A or B pair of options. If you want Socialism, fine .... There are many places in the world actively practicing it, and you're welcome to move there. America was created as a unique experiment in the world, creating a Democratic Republic. IMO, it's proven itself not only viable but arguably superior to many other forms of rule by central governments. I wholeheartedly believe that as a U.S. citizen, I should do everything in my power to preserve this framework.
Obviously, we have a lot of flaws, corruption and other negatives. But show me ANY government that's perfect, except on paper.
IMO, what we need to be focusing on in America is how to move forward, to PRESERVE the Democratic Republic that our Founders created and made into a reality. Corporatism is really what most people are complaining about when they say they're anti-Capitalist. Corporatism is simply a situation where big business managed to collude with government to avoid being governed fairly by it. This can be addressed and mitigated without resorting to Socialism!
America has already done too much dabbing in Socialist practices to appease various groups. Even when it creates a "workable" solution to a specific problem? It weakens our whole system of government, because it means we took an "easy way out" or shortcut, copy-catting what other countries did, rather than finding an answer that doesn't go against the principles that built what we've got here.
Perhaps the place this "battle" is most evident, today, is the healthcare debate. Single-payer or Socialized medicine is something I just can't accept, even though I accept that it's ONE solution that basically works for other countries. If we stick to our core values and principles that defined America, I think we have to conclude it's unfair to demand medical professionals all get paid a fixed salary, as dictated by Federal government. I think we have to conclude that no, healthcare is NOT a right in America. You have every right to pursue better health for yourself, obviously. But as soon as you need medical care, you're demanding the services of another person or group of people who invested many years into education and training to be good enough to perform those services. They aren't your slaves, nor do you have a right to force other American citizens to pay their fees to treat you. We DO need to stop the collusion/ Corporatism that allows big pharma to get protectionist treatment by government for exclusive rights to sell medications, and to prevent competitors in other countries from importing their offerings here as legal alternatives.
The Soviet Union failed at that. Yes it was Communism but they aren't too different. Even in socialist countries today you still have the haves and the have nots. People fail to believe that society stratifies on its own and not by the will of some uber ultra elite. There are those that will work to the bone to secure their lives and there are those that will complain that the man holds them down, even when the man is the only thing propping them up.
I've got a buddy with Type-I diabetes. The kind your born with and that you die of without insulin. He can't work because the illness kicks the crap out of him for about 2 months every year, and it's a random 2 months. He barely made it through high school. Smart guy, but not Einstein grade smarts so no employer is going to put up with him.
He's pretty right wing. Has a got family who worked in defense. So he gets his political views from there.
When asked about healthcare he understands that he needs socialized medicine or he dies. Again, he's smart. He's figured out that in a pure capitalist economy he couldn't possibly earn the money to pay for his care. You should hear the convoluted mess of a healthcare system he came up with that preserves his ideological system while ensuring he gets care. It was like Obamacare but with much bigger subsidies and more guarantees of care. To his credit when I pointed out that he agreed that he'd basically created a socialized medicine but with a 30% surcharge for private insurance profits.
I'm not saying we can't have a mixed system. I'm in favor of single _payer_, e.g. the gov't pays but otherwise stays out of things. But that's still socialism. At some point I think we have to admit that capitalism as we idolize it just plain doesn't work.
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for every one person I see with real hardship resulting from a debilitating medical condition, or family situation that inhibits earning potential, I see at least half a dozen or more who are in a financial quagmire resulting form their own lifestyle choices.
I disagree with your perception. People don't choose a lifestyle, they conform to what is expected.
Naturally I am very ascetic, for a western person. Most of the money I spend on "lifestyle" is because I can't acquire or keep career positions without them. When I wasn't looking for a job, a 10 year old desktop computer and 18 year old laptop was good enough. Eating home-made potato soup and driving a 24 year old car I fix myself worked great for me. Tattered clothes are not bother either. The motto of the modern ascetic is, "fit for purpose is all the good you need."
But when I'm at work, or looking for new work, I must adopt a radically more expensive lifestyle. Pull out a 2008 cellphone that cost less than a hundred even then during an interview for a devops job and you will get odd looks. Drive anything that has rust on it or a suit that is obviously a 180 dollar off the rack special and business treat you like you don't deserve to sweep the floors. Worse, looking like you are from an inferior economic class despite piles of accolades, training, education, and experience in your field very much reduces your compensation; the only way companies show their respect.
Making and retaining friends requires the same investment. I have a living room filled with furniture and entertainment options I don't use. A few thousand spent so company can maintain their lifestyle at my expense in my house.
And I'm sure you can imagine what women think of ascetic men.
We live in a capitalist society where you must spend money you might not have on things you don't need or want in order to get the things you do need or want, even if the latter are in the "best things in life are free" category.
Capitalism is doing just fine.
I worry more that government by representative democracy has become unworkable. We need drastic action, and quickly. I don't know what it is.... I have wondered out loud before if we should form a third legislative body, a sort of jail where we put people from either existing house when they stonewall, change the rules,. obstruct, etc. How we choose who to put in there is a question, essentially whoever behaves badly (by some objective measure) goes to jail for a year. Or slash a legislator's vote value to half a vote!
Now I know how *I* identify obstructionist legislators but someone smarter than me needs to find a
way to do it objectively. Whatever it is, there needs to some incentive for legislators to compromise and make some progress. The penalty for not doing so should be severe, (It used to be that they weren't re-elected but clearly that no longer works. Voters now reward obstructionist behavior)
Or maybe we should just get an AI to run/be the congress.
I reserve the right to make this more coherent later... end of sermon!
cw
chris watts íë¦ìS ì(TM)ì
I think Americans need to travel abroad more and get a broader perspective. :) oki, I exagerate
That is problematic.
No guns
Driving at 18, not 16
Drinking from 16 on, not 21 (even in public on a bench in a park)
Having sex from 14, not 18
Walking to school
No police sirens all day long
Working and afordable public transport
No elevstors in most houses
Food that actually tastes
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You should not comment on the greatness of socialism until your tax bill hits at least $5,000 a year.
Regulating pollution causing industry has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. Government should regulate irrational behavior.
Work Safe Porn
Everyone should live in a commune for a year in college or there abouts. Naturally, maintain your studies etc but much of the romance of utopian economic models is that people don't really viscerally understand them... understand the pros, the cons, the function, and the dysfunction.
Live in that context and the attraction of the greener grass on the other side of the fence loses its luster.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
NEWS JUST IN 50% of People below average intelligence, read all about it!! ... even less vote, continued south American Importation will push it further down
small "c" capitalism is something a free society has to have, i.e. the ability to buy and sell goods in a relatively unfettered market.
You're confusing a free market with capitalism, which is not the same thing. It's also a very common mistake to make given the propaganda in the US that intentionally wants us to associate "freedom" with capitalism.
Capitalism simply means private ownership and control of resources -- land, natural resources, and modern industrial means of production. Private ownership means generally speaking a person (a dictator or monarch) or a small board of directors (an oligarchy) make all the decisions about the use of resources and production. On the surface, this seems like a very fair thing -- you own it, why shouldn't you get to decide? -- but the problem with this line of thought is the scale we're talking. When a capitalist decides to clear cut a forest, that forest is now gone and even if he sells the land later, no other person gets to use that forest ever again. What if someone else wanted to create a park? Too late, capitalist decided already. What if a majority of people in the area wanted a park instead of a clear cut field? What if that forest and all those tree roots helped soak up water and prevent flooding, but now without it, surrounding neighborhoods easily flood? What if that forest held a rare species of tree or animal that could have lead to a medical discovery? Even if we needed to cut the trees down for firewood or paper or whatever, maybe we would have preferred to the wood go to local community members and not sold in China or wherever? Too late, capitalist already decided.
That's the problem with private ownership of resources and production. Most if not all resource use decisions actually impact all of us, at least community-wide if not planet-wide (as climate change is producing). And yet we are allowing monarchs and oligarchs make those decisions for our communities and nations without any input. Is that fair and just for someone else to decide things that impact your family and community without you having any say in the process whatsoever? I understand you might not always get what you want, but right now you don't even have a vote. A CEO decides and that's it, can legally do what they want (within broad confines of regulation that politicians continually cut and weaken) and completely ignore you and your family and your community. If it makes your house flood more, they don't care. If it causes environmental damage that gives you and your family lung cancer, they don't care. You don't have any say.
Socialism is the idea that resources and production should be publicly-owned and democratically managed. That's really all it is. Because of certain historical events people confuse socialism with authoritarian takeovers of those countries, but again, like the free market and capitalism, they are not the same thing. All we're talking about it more democracy, that you and your family and your community should have a vote and decide how those resources are used and that it should not be left to private decision-making behind closed doors by people who don't necessarily live in your community or even country.
Note also, as a common misconception, that socialist theory typically distinguishes between "private property", which is private ownership of natural resources and industrial means of production, and "personal property" which is your family home. Socialists don't generally care about your family home or your toothbrush or your clothes or your car, do whatever you want at home when you're not bothering anyone. No one is going to take your house. It's about democratizing economic decisions for the big industrial questions that affect all of us, it's about making sure no one businessperson CEO can force their economic vision on you and the community, you have to all agree together democratically. You get more individual freedoms and more say-so under a democratic system -- both politic
As long there is strong regulation behind it keep things honest and upfront.
It's when you have a lot of regulation that capitalism changes to Corporatism, since only large companies have the cash to abide by, and pay for changes to, regulation.
There is a place for some regulation but "strong regulation" is where capitalism starts and decline begins.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like 1984 warned, capitalism and socialism are dead words that have little actual meaning and have become almost empty brand names. It is extremely difficult, especially in the USA, to have a serious discussion about either ISM.
Capitalism that Smith promoted he justified using socialist arguments, it still is to this day! When you say something benefits the most people in the long run as a reason for doing something you are taking a socialist position. "The needs of the many out way the needs of the few".... to quote Spock. The argument for capitalism is that it's the best system for everybody in the end to let some anarchy decide winners and losers. We keep fighting over how much anarchy to allow and what kind of controls when we impose rules. When you have no anarchy, you're on the communist side of the spectrum -- and as usual, simpletons on either side see any steps way from their position as a binary.
Americans especially confuse communism with socialism; so much they seem to think they are synonyms.
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Or young people see the generation before them loaded with debt and unable to afford to purchase a house, see a political ruling class that does not care about them, and see companies making record profits and all the money going to an increasingly smaller percentage of the population and are realizing "yep, the system's broken".
And everything you describe is a symptom of consumerism, not capitalism.
Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.
Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
It's easy to confuse the two, and certainly they're related, but it's not as simple as that either. Private ownership of resources and the means of production gives one a vast amount of economic power the larger a business grows, and at some point that economic power is enough to project political power as well. The ruling class becomes all about pleasing the private corporate owners, partly because they might personally profit from such arrangements, but also because of a concern that the private owner will hurt the economy and community or even nation as a whole if they don't get what they want. How many times do football teams threaten to leave if they don't get a publicly-funded stadium built? How many times does Harley Davidson or other companies threaten layoffs and to go to other countries if we don't give them free money in the form of tax cuts? How many times have the banks insisted they need a bailout or they will let the mortgage market take down the world economy? Capitalists essentially hold the rest of us for ransom with their economic power.
the root problem is that too many people feel like they have to own the latest iPhone and iPad or Samsung Galaxy phone and Galaxy tab (as soon as it comes out each year) as well as drive a new Mercedes or BMW, go on an overseas vacation every year, and go out to eat with friends every night when they are in their 20s and early 30s. When young adults spend 110% of their earnings and don't start saving for retirement until around age 40, of course we are going to end up with the state of things we see now.
Hang on here, has it occurred to you that capitalism has caused this? I think you're conflating two different groups of people here. The poor can't afford BMWs or overseas vacations. Most grocery store meals are designed with "the family of four" in mind and so depending on what you eat when you are out (and how many leftovers you bring home for tomorrow) it can be cheaper to eat out than cook at home and be wasteful. Most people don't buy phones but rather lease/rent them, and you get automatic upgrades every year or two, so it's entirely possible for someone to have the latest phone and still be paying only $20 per month or so, and it's not exactly easy to find a job without a phone number and internet access (for many people, their phone *is* their way of accessing the web and email too, they don't own high-powered desktop rigs) so it's a necessary expense.
The expensive lifestyle problems are the rich being wasteful, which capitalism encourages because you have to always buy to make more and more profit. For the poor, they are expected to take on more and more bills and debt in order to keep up with the middle class and have even a chance at getting a job and avoiding poverty/homelessness. The poor cannot win that race long term, and we're seeing that in statistics as more and more people drop out of the workforce, are forced out of their homes, declare bankrupcty, all while wealth inequality skyrockets.
This is all capitalism. It all stems from the wealthy using their economic power to extort money out of the poor. It creates a dog-eat-dog culture of consumerism and stru
This is wrong.
https://wichitaliberty.org/free-markets/myth-markets-depend-on-perfect-information-requiring-government-regulation-to-make-information-available/
People act as is "democratic" means its good... Yet almost every 20th century regime that killed millions was started on a democratic vote or popular uprising. The thing they all had in common was some form of collectivism and/or socialistic form of government(fascism/socialism/communism). Even in the 21st century we have Venezuela as an example, not as horrible as the USSR but nobody would prefer it to capitalist nations. Capitalism is synonymous with liberty, the two coexist because liberty is the freedom of economic association. What Denmark, Sweden, Norway have are fairly capitalistic economies with a strong social services. Most economic analysis put the nordic countries as having greater economic freedom than the US(less regulation to startup). Socialism and communism are only different in popular analogy, in practicality they both centralize power and promote dictatorial authoritarian governments. Socialists coexisted with communists during every revolution and were summarily expelled or executed when stronger willed people took over the movement.
So, the govt is supposed to be there for preventing people being stupid with their own money, making decisions for them?
I mean, there was no one with a gun to their heads telling them to take out all these massive loans.....
The gun is called "poverty, starvation, and death".
Yes, people will take out loans and go to university when they are told that is the only way to find a "good job" and provide for themselves and their families. That is what business leaders and politicians constantly drone on and on about. Right now they're pushing "everyone needs to learn coding to get a job". It's the same pattern.
You describe an extremely unforgiving and authoritarian system if there is absolutely no help for "being stupid". Do you think an 18 year old fresh out of high school should know as much as you and make every decision absolutely perfectly for the rest of their lives? Did *you* make all of the best decisions at 18? It's not like we're cyborgs and can simply upload all of human knowledge to high school graduates on their day of graduate. People will make always continue to make bad decisions, but that doesn't make them bad people or even stupid. Maybe they just haven't learned yet, the world is complicated and often unpredictable, and they will learn for the future from the experience. In fact making mistakes is pretty much the only real way to learn and master anything. They deserve help and education and sympathy, not scorn and anger and callousness. We all do.
what's in it for them? DEBTORS' PRISON
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The young always think there is a better way. As they grow up, they realize that the current way works, while most "good ideas" don't. But, enough new ideas do work to keep the system changing.
Wait a minute, is it that the current way works can never change, or that new ideas do work and change the system? That seems pretty contradictory there.
At one time we lived under monarchies and feudalism. We moved to constitutional monarchies and mercantilism. We then moved to republics and capitalism. Is it really so hard to imagine that there is a next step in human social evolution after what we have today? So hard to admit that we are nowhere near perfect yet? And yes, we will probably move toward "democracy and socialism" next because each step has been about expanding rights to more and more people. People of the future will look back on the poverty and environmental destruction under capitalism and the "right to private property" and shake their heads just as we do to the "divine right" of kings before us.
It wont go well.
This is true for most people, myself included.
whoa is me, I got a social liberal arts degree from a private school now I can't cash flow my student loan! Capitalism sucks, whine, whine, whine....
Hardly, true capitalism punishes bad choices and rewards hard work. Believing 20 somethings run the world is movie BS. Study hard, do a good job, pay your dues and when you hit 40 or 50, you get ahead and have enough experience to run the show.
One of the problems is you've all been babied by "everyone is a winner and gets a ribbon!", that's not reality. The real world is full of winners and losers. Some ideas a bad. Some people are bad. That's life.
Youth disenfranchised with the previous generation resulting in different movements such as the hippy movement, the punk movement, and now the social network movement. What I do notice is that all the previous movements actually tried to act on their beliefs, hippies tried communes, punks got together, all I see now is just random bitching and no actual effort.
What remains is a plutocratic corporate socialism sold to the masses as free market capitalism. No wonder they don't like it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yes, I think that's what people mean.
I don't think everyone really cares about the income itself, though. (Some do, but I'll let them present their perspective.) There's a widespread belief that "the 1%" essentially has more votes than other people. They are not merely more wealthy; they have more political power. They have your congressperson's ear, they can afford to litigate when other people would give up and accept unjust court decisions, etc. Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.
This doesn't really have to do with capitalism, though, and applies no matter who owns the factories. We have decided not just that industry should be in the hands of private investors, but that government and public policy should be in the hands of private investors. That was a strange decision and I don't think it's something Adam Smith advocated.
You might not care that Joe Billionare has a bitchin' car, but you probably care that he can have whatever laws that he wants, so the government works for him instead of you. His business is legal. Yours is illegal. This makes Sammy Adams and Tommy Jefferson angry.
Not the only answer. Democracy is another idea. If Joe Billionaire's billions only get him a bunch of bitchin' cars and hookers, but doesn't get him any more representation in government than a homeless hobo, I think that would remove a lot of peoples' (but not everyone's) objection to income disparity.
How capitalism fits into all this, isn't clear. Joe Stalin was also the 1%. Let's just say that America doesn't appear to be any more free of corruption than other countries, on average. But money is the currency; corruption works for you if you have it, and against you if you don't. So corruption ends up looking more like a rich-vs-poor thing, than honest-vs-dishonest.
The system we have isn't Capitalism, it's Cronyism.
So you're saying "that's not REAL capitalism!"? :-) funny that many don't let socialists get away with making that same argument.
Can you point to a time when we *didn't* have cronyism? Because the last time we had such concentrated wealth and lack of regulation and oversight was the Gilded Age, the height of cronyism and poverty. If you're referring to economic prosperity since the world wars, that comes partly from being the major economic power left standing as well as FDR's New Deal and progressive reform that actually took very strong cues from Socialist Party demands (the Socialist Party was actually winning seats in Congress and state legislatures as a third party and that was enough to scare the establishment into giving into some of the demands). So in modern US history we've actually done the best with progressive/socialist reform and the worst under deregulated "free market" capitalism (that quickly becomes cronyism).
So why is it so wrong to point out we've never had real full socialism either and should give it a chance? Socialism is about economic democracy instead of the economic dictatorship of CEOs under capitalism, what's so wrong about democracy?
No sooner that someone drawns up an ideology (or laws, or tech, or some other system) to curtail some undesirable trait of humans, some other guy starts to think about a loophole to get around the constraint.
The other problem is obviously that some human(s) with his (their) own shortcomings draws up the system, so it can never be perfect.
When looking for reasons why the world sucks, instead of looking for something to blame outside you, why not start with some decent old-fashioned introspection?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I can't believe you. That was an eloquent liberal dissertation on not being a dick. But you are a republitard AND a dick, going by your past posts. How can you reconcile both points of view without your head assploding?
Uh, anyone who died because they couldn't afford to pay for medical treatment? Anyone who died because of improperly disposed chemicals or toxic waste? Anyone who died as a result of unsafe manufacturing practices in factories? Capitalism encourages companies to cut costs any way they possibly can, even if it puts human lives at risk. Capitalism has killed millions.
What were the "consequences that society put on father that abandoned thier kids"? Fathers have been fuckin n duckin since fucking was a thing. You have rose-colored goggles on.
not everyone can. For a lot of folks it's hard to be stable for 6 years without a college degree to fall back on. Post high school tuition waivers (usually worth about $4k/yr) generally require you to enroll full time and finish in 4 years. A lot of the grants do too. If there's a break in your enrollment you're kind of screwed.
Also, if you did it for $24k you I'm guessing she didn't go to a regular public U (or she got a bunch of scholarships). These days you're looking at $12k/yer. Now, if her income was low or nonexistant (and the income of her parents wasn't factored in) grans & scholarships might have covered half of that. Again, great if you can get it. But scholarships are hard to come by and as mentioned most grants want you full time.
Source: I've got a kid in college right now for Nursing. It's costing me $16k for her last 2 years (each) alone. That's before I account for the car she has to have (clinicals are too far apart to bus too and Uber costs more than the car, so unless she's secretly Nightcrawler she needs a car) and for food/rent. I could have forced her to live with me and saved about $6k/yr if I had to, but that's about it.
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because if you don't someone else will. They'll get all those "dumb" people who aren't eating. Give them rifles and boots and, well, I think you can figure out the rest...
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insisting that the farmers double plant. Nobody had the guts to tell him no because he tended to murder anyone who disagreed with him. That's not communism, that's fascism. The only difference is Mao borrowed Karl Marx's books. His tactics were straight out of the same playbook kings and emperors have been using for centuries.
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is over 50% when I include the health insurance (which might as well be a tax even without the mandate that I carry it). That's _all_ my taxes. VLT, sales tax, income tax, etc.
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for all those taxes I get nothing but endless war and cheap oil for a car I can barely afford.
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And you think only in capitalism, there are corners cut? Jesus Christ. Look at Chernobyl. Look at pretty much anything from the Soviet Union and you'll find the same examples, has nothing to do with capitalism alone.. Read about all the radiation dumped into areas from other reactors near Chelyabinsk. Just read some history....
it was more or less the defacto economic system, yet there was poverty. Technology raised those people out of poverty. Scientists did. The economic system was incidental. If anything the rapid pace of tech made it so the ruling class couldn't monopolize the wealth generated fast enough to maintain control and prevent upstarts. They seem to be adapting at last and with it we've seen a general decline in standards of living.
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Ergo, liberals tend to prefer a free market economy, whereas conservatives prefer a more centrally-planned one. The currently president claims to be a conservative too, and he's for tariffs, immigration controls, etc so the government can manage supply rather than leaving it to the market. The free marketers, OTOH, are given the supposedly-insulting (?) name of "globalist" because they want commerce to be less restricted.
These left and right labels sure are getting complicated. In 1968 I would have been called a conservative, but in 2018 the same opinions are now "liberal." If you wanna stay a conservative, you need to follow the fads of the times!
No, socialism has a broader meaning than that. See this. In particular, "worker self-management of production" is a key element and that directly relates to trade unions which are clearly a step in that direction. Strict regulations on private industry is also another tool which falls under the socialism banner even though ownership may reside in the private sector. In a free, public healthcare system often the hospitals and clinics etc. are all government owned and hence socialist, although private companies may be contracted to provide services too.
Canada and much of Europe is socialist to varying degrees. It seems to work well where the competition required to make capitalism work is impractical e.g. utilities, public transport, passenger trains etc. Even in the US you have strict regulations for utility providers which is on the socialism spectrum.
Capitalism is when the business owner and senior level jobs aka Walmart pays their employees the least amount. Capitalism is for the business owner NOT THE WORKERS.
The only group that protects the working class is a UNION like the Auto UNION that helps bargain on the behalf of the working class.
Most countries has some socialism.
Western Europe, USA, and communism has some forms of socialism.
Example:
American Highways and Public Schools is a form of socialist program for every citizens.
Real Capitalism is when we have to pay to send our kids to school like from k-12.
Real Capitalism is when we have to pay a toll bridge to drive on the highway.
the insurance industry spent half a billion dollars killing it. Multiple studies have shown that short, intense ad blitzes can turn the public off on virtually any issue. The insurance companies are fighting for their lives when it comes to single payer, so they'll spend any amount of money to kill it. Plus since they're the gatekeepers on life saving medicine they can easily make the money back by overcharging on premiums. The only question is can they go too far. I think if the Republicans like Paul Ryan get too greedy and manage to kill Medicare that'll probably be the end. Once the old folks have to deal with private insurance all bets are off.
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And without the incentive to make money, technology and science won't exist. One characteristic of humans is to say 'what's in it for me?' It may not be money, quite, but an academic will scratch and claw to get (say) a chair with his name on it, even for no increase in pay.
1). Things are so terrible, they cannot get any worse!
2). Things are so great, and we should not even try to get better!
Fact is, people try to improve upon their circumstances, and if they lose under the current system they want to change that system. It is psychologically logical.
However many also think, "I want the present system +, where the + is one or more problems solved." This presupposes that those problems can be solved without other negative consequences. And that's where a great many detail devils reside.
Those young people (mostly) haven't experienced Communism, and fewer still real Fascism. OTOH, I still applaud structural changes that benefit the middle class. Somehow we've gone off track by making changes mostly for the wealthy and those people didn't really need the help. And the assumption that "jobs and wealth" would be created was an article of faith, without any costing or follow-up to make sure that happened.
The police/or laws themselves are not socialism !! (Unless the actual law is socialistic in nature)
The word you want is over-regulation.
Is to allow for rampant uncontrolled capitalism. I didn't create this problem; you did.
Most people posting here are confusing Capitalism with Free Enterprise.
Capitalism requires rules, laws, courts, and enforcement of those laws, because someone is putting up the CAPITAL for your venture.
Free enterprise would have no rules or laws and would pretty much be the end of everything.
So, all of the people dying in Venezuela from lack of medical care are what... Doing it voluntarily?
You mean socialism. Not capitalism, which has only ever increased poverty and wealth inequality. Job creation? That comes from demand, not capitalism.
Good on them! Will make it easier for them to work extra hard funding social security and all the outsized public workers pensions.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Problem is that it always seems to be needs > abilities...
I graduated HS in the late 70's. We didn't have any of that crap. But for the last 20-30 years, the indoctrination centers called government schools, have been feeding these kids the dictate that capitalism is bad, socialism is good, America is terrible and on and on. So, it's no surprise to me, that a poll would reflect that. Lenin once said something to the effect if you give me the mind of a youth, the seeds I plant will never be undone. Or something like that. Well, how about we put some WEED KILLER on those plants!
....I, too, have developed a distaste of what has been done with capitaslim. I'm an early X.
Yes, people must make things, and sell things. Fine. Do it. But do it with a sense of fairness. What I see reminds me of warfare, not a competition. Honestly -- it's shank your competitor before he does you in first. It could instead be like a race, or a ball game, but no.. it's WAR.
But for fuck's sake, nothing's made here (broadly speaking) anymore, a very few people are raking in the profit$ -- those who own the companies which have their shit manufactured overseas, and those who own the stores that sell it.
.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
A big sinking boat raises all the rest.
You forgot the "sarcasm" tag. People might think you are serious.
Yes, lucky. You were lucky you didn't end up on crack, lucky your piece of shit dad didn't sell you into prostitution at 12 because heroin, lucky you DIDN'T STARVE TO DEATH AT 27. Go be part of the poor class in India or Somalia and then tell me that luck ain't shit. There you're "lucky" you found some sheet tin to make a "house" with today and you managed to not get raped and robbed.
#FirstWorldProblems indeed.
With privelidge comes blindness and you're blind as a god damned bat.
Of course that's your contention. You're a first-year grad student; you just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably. You're gonna be convinced of that 'till next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you're going to be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
Fuck you.
he understands that he needs socialized medicine or he dies.
Socialized medicine could provide him with insulin paid for by taxpayers, who did not consent to the amount the IRS confiscated from them. (Indeed, even those who call for higher tax rates hire accountants, or meticulously go through tax-prep apps, to minimize their own personal tax bill.)
Or, private charity could provide him with insulin paid for by people who provided the funds voluntarily.
You might think that voluntary charitable contributions could never grow large enough to replace the nanny state. That would be wrong. Year after year, the amount Americans donate to charity breaks the record set the previous year. It grows faster than GDP grows, for reasons I won't get into in this post. In 2017, the amount was $410 billion -- which is within the same order of magnitude as the coercive (and highly inefficient) government wealth redistribution programs.
Within our lifetime, we might see voluntary charitable contributions exceed the size of coercive government wealth redistribution programs. Even though this would result in a much more robust social safety net, some people loathe the thought that government would no longer have control over the social safety net.
Three things prevent charitable contributions from growing even faster than they do now (thereby delaying the day when the nanny state is no longer needed) -- and all three are related to taxation.
1. The tax rate directly affects charitable contributions. When people receive a tax cut, yes, they keep most of the cut for themselves, but they also give more to charity than they otherwise would have. If you take into account the fact that private charities create social good vastly more efficiently than government social programs do, cuts to the government programs do not cause proportional reductions in social good, and in some cases may even cause net increases.
2. The tax rate indirectly affects charitable contributions, because lower taxes result in higher GDP growth, and more charitable contributions that arise from that GDP growth. (No, I'm not an anarchist who believes the tax rate should be cut all the way to zero. But I suspect we are far from the "sweet spot" that maximizes GDP growth and the growth of charitable contributions.)
3. We're held back by the attitude that "federal, state and local governments are already taxing me, and in the aggregate transferring over $2 trillion per year from the top 40% to the bottom 60%, so why should I give more to charity?" All of us suffer from this transference of social responsibility -- away from individuals, and onto faceless bureaucrats -- to one extent or another.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
In other news, a majority of young Americans are retarded (in the clinical sense, before political correctness rewrote the DSM) snowflakes, and big government likes them that way because they are easier to control. Wind 'em up, spin 'em around...
Also, we're besties with North Korea and war with Russia is imminent. No wait, that was yesterday's copy. Today we are besties with China, war with Iran is imminent and neither Russia nor China play fair and we are very upset about it.
I stopped after the first statement. You don't live on this planet Earth. The people who work the hardest and longest are paid the least and do the shittiest jobs. You ignore reality.
Capitalism and Socialism don't exist! These words are not nouns; they are labels, and they are grossly generalized labels at that!
It is all right to argue the merits of generalizations (philosophers do it all the time), but before you can start the comparison you must have an agreement on exactly what those terms mean.
Do you want to have some fun this week? Just go around asking your friends and acquaintances, "What is Capitalism?" or, "What is Socialism?" or even, "What is 'Capital'?" They may never forgive you, but it will be amusing.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Rinky-dink embargoed communist Cuba developed a vaccine for lung cancer, and sends far more doctors to disaster areas than the infinity richer USA does. The Soviets put a man in space long before anyone else did.
Just because capitalists operate on pure avarice, doesn't mean the rest of humanity does the same.
Charities don't give the money out equitably. For the most part they have an agenda and you either have to meet a criteria or do something for the charity. What happens to the people who don't meet the criteria or are incapable of what is asked? Gay youth make up something like 40% of the homeless children. I can guarantee you that most of the Christian charities would ask them to "renounce their wicked ways" before helping them. Since being gay isn't a choice, that would be a little difficult for the kids to do.
Charity isn't a guarantee. You say charity would be a more robust net and that may be true for some, but the net would definitely have larger holes in it than the one the government provides. A thin blanket is better than none at all.
I would also point out that terrible people always find a way. If we were to switch to social safety nets based on charity, there would immediately be people taking advantage of both sides of the system. The rich would use their promises of donations to distort the missions of charities to favor the rich and the scammers would set up shop finding ways of getting more than they should. That is inevitable.
In fact, while writing this, it occurred to me that shifting everything over to charity would allow for much less oversight. There would be more grift. What is the purpose of that? The charities that you know may be stellar, but you can't deny there are terrible people out there willing to use the word "charity" to make money. Heck, our president uses his "charity" to pay off his legal fees. It's like we are in a cave of scarcity and you anti-government people want the rest of us to throw away the flashlight. And it really sounds like you just don't want to pay taxes for the programs that you disagree with and to hell with other people.
Also, Medicare alone is 702 billion dollars per year. 402 billion isn't going to cover it.
Also, also, I realized that the system you are suggesting would resemble the scholarship system for colleges. Have you ever applied for scholarships? It is a PITA. It is always not enough, there are always conditions on the money, and you always find the great ones after it is too late to apply. Scholarships are what happen when you leave college tuition funding to charity.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Socialism sucks. I don't want to pay for a lazy ass to stay home, smoke weed, bang out offspring that are going to repeat.
I am will to help the handicapped learn a trade where they can support themselves, and to help feed and house individuals that are so
handicapped that they can not fend for themselves. But if an individual is able bodied they should be forced be given a task to perform..
clean up trash, ping bridges, fill potholes, serve food in a soup kitchen,
I know I am simplifying this too much, but here goes...
Capitalism in its very NAME defines that your success in the system is determined by the amount of CAPITAL that you own.
Guess which group in society holds the least amount of capital?
Maybe the disillusionment comes from the fact that young people believe that with every passing year it becomes more difficult to accumulate capital if you start from ground up?
Now, I don't know if this is actually true, but my instinct and personal experience tell me that it is so, and I am sure a lot of other young people think the same. I think we should not fascinate ourselves about what is "true socialism" here, because surely the goal for young people can be summarized as "anything but this".
captcha: exclude
> No elevstors in most houses
Uh, I no of no house with an elevator in it. Some might have motorized chair-lift things to go up stairs (for disabled/elderly). A few might have dumb waiters. But no elevators that I know of.
Capitalism is eating itself: less than 5% of population owned more than 90% of wealth. This is unbearable, and going to singularity... Think about it...
Boom and bust and unemployment are inherent to capitalism, without bust, there can be no boom and no reallocation of wealth upward, and without unemployment, employees can demand too much of a fair share of the profits.
Capitalism works on greed, which is a bit more reliable to get than altruism, but it unfortunately REWARDS greed, so therefore the worst people rise in power whilst the best lose it.
You proclaim that the other systems DO need perfect information to be perfect. Tell us what they are and how. And, please, no special pleading, it has to be in a similar way as the free market is DESIGNED around perfectly informed customers.
If loans were not usurious then you'd have a point. A fairly meaningless one, but a point. As it is, the loan is paid back several times over, and none of that extra money is earned by the person who loaned the cash. THIS is why economics in a capitalist system is always and only ever will be trickle UP.
You want a house and can't afford it outright, you have a loan. The more you have in cash the better rate you get AND the less you loan, making the house cheaper and cheaper as you get wealthier. But the amount extra you pay went to someone with EVEN MORE MONEY than you.
Hell, if you have more than enough to buy outright you can take the loan out ANYWAY and get so low an interest rate that you can make more than that investing the unneeded, along with that you get tax relief on the loan repayment. You HAD the cash to buy outright, but "borrowing" it worked out to gain you MORE profit.
Socialism is not equal poverty you shitheaded moron. Fuck, CORPORATIONS are vastly more purely that than Stalinism is (which you are DEFINITELY confusing with socialism, and Stalinism is not even a you claim: that's just merkin propaganda, as reliable as ISIS radio). For a corporation ALL the profit goes to the CEO/shareholders who then pays all the bills and keeps as much for himself as possible. ALL the work goes to the workers who get the choice of death or penury, the latter of which ensures they do not have the resources to leave or demand a better cut of the profit of their work.
Because they never earned it. They didn't earn the several family homes, the businesses, the products of the workers in those businesses, they just inherited it, even if they were a retarded orange shitstain or a cockgobbling whore while those who DO have the brains to make that pie larger are stuck in a poor housing area where the school cannot teach them due to lack of funds and whose parents have nothing to help him up to better things with and so is left AT BEST to get a job at some shelf stacking warehouse or fast food store.
Inheritance tax should be 100%. If you want to give your children a hand, DO IT WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE. Hand over the family business as if you were selling it to your child, pay the tax needed for selling the business. If you know it will all go when you die to the government YOU WILL SPEND NOT HOARD, and taxes are on money moving, not standing still, so tax revenues will rise and therefor the tax rate can drop, making it better deal to move the money more, increasing tax revenues.
Either that or China is capitalist, as was Russia. they had a stock market too.
But none of that is the case, you are a clueless idiot with one idea in mind: that socialism MUST NEVER WORK, so if it DID work, it cant have been socialism.
The factual stuff is ok. The rest..maybe you are mistaken? US isn't all a Jerry Springer episode.
Food that actually tastes :) oki, I exagerate
No you don't! I've traveled abroad several times, and was amazed at how good the food and wine is for so much less money...the best restaurants I've been to in the U.S. are all mom and pop ethnic restaurants (thai, ethiopian, etc). In my experience, even food in the U.S. is far from the best.
I am curious about how other age ranges feel about capitalism right now too.
The funny thing is that capitalism is still the best method for managing resources since the inputs and outputs are decentralized; however, once everything gets centralized like it is right now, I would have to ask if it is really capitalism or if it has morphed into something else.
TL;DR, asking today's youth about capitalism is absurd since we do not really have capitalism right now. Maybe a form of corporate fascism since companies seem to be able to buy laws with impunity.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
odds are that nobody wants to tell the GP they've been through a bankruptcy. You're not supposed to talk about it. What do they call us? Temporarily inconvenienced millionaires...
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Capitalism. Kids hate the very thing that provides them a life unfettered by need, want or discomfort.
Do you think people are not dying in Communist China for the same reasons? Industrial pollution, poor workplace safety, etc? That's not a failure of capitalism in itself. Now, that's very different from getting a bullet to the head, or being sent to a forced labor camp to work until you die, because of your political beliefs. That's what we're talking about when we say "communism kills" - governments actively killing their own citizens due to ideology, by the tens of millions. Can you show me a capitalist country that does that?
The one everyone keeps ignoring, is military spending.
Like or hate the US, they spend a gob on the military, and most of Europe falls under that protection umbrella.
Remove that protection (or fascism, or imperialism or whatever you like to call it) and SOMETHING will need to fill the newly obvious vacuum.
Either each country will need to increase expenditures in that area drastically, or there may be a remaking of borders. And that money has to come from somewhere.
If you believe the US removing it's military presence will revert everyone to lions lying with sheep, you're pretty naive.
Socialism is not government providing some services. It is "public" (aka, government) control of ALL means of production. This necessarily includes all resources for production, like labor. It is not "single-payer healthcare", nor is it European-style Democratic Socialism (which is entirely Capitalist, but with more services). Democracy and Socialism are fundamentally incompatible. Marx was right about the inseparability of political and economic systems. To deny the people the right to make economic decisions is to deny them the right to make political decisions. To concentrate economic authority is to concentrate political authority.
Communism is a modified form of Socialism. It essentially is Socialism with the goal of becoming an anarchic utopia. As that is a practical and theoretical impossibility, there is little effective difference.
Capitalism is private control of the means of production, generally operated for profit. Unlike Socialism or Communism, it does not seek to change human nature or avoid it's more inconvenient aspects. Capitalism accepts humanities flaws and uses them. It sets greed against greed, and cheaters against cheaters so that they must establish fair rules to protect themselves from each other and thus each other from themselves. Unlike Socialism or Communism, it uses self interest instead of trying to supplant it. It is not perfect, but never claims to be. It has within it both the room and the means for improvement.
Corporatism is not corporations running everything. That is Corporatocracy (which is entirely theoretical so far). Corporatism is a decision making process involving government and industry stakeholders (businesses and labor). It predates Capitalism (in the form of guilds), and has been used by Capitalist, Socialist and Fascist systems.
China is not Capitalist. It is a Socialist dictatorship that allows for semi-private enterprise.
Socialism cannot make people more free. It will reduce the number of decisions people have to make, the number of things they have to pay for directly, and the number of responsibilities they have, but this is not freedom. If it were, none would be more free than the slave.
It is significant that the word "feel" is used here. Since the majority of people simply feel instead of cerebrate, what do these kinds of articles accomplish? I wonder what percentage of Chinese young people "feel" about totalitarianism? Capitalism is and never was something you felt good about... it has too many issues. However when studied, considered, compared, and evaluated... capitalism beats the stuffings out of any other approaches.
They can give me all their money.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The beautiful thing about private charity is, you're in control. If you feel gay youth are underserved, that's where you can direct your dollars. You don't have that power when you write a check to the IRS.
Apparently you're not familiar with CharityNavigator.org. If you choose charities that have earned four stars from CharityNavigator, your dollars will be spent exceptionally efficiently and griftlessly.
Again, that's better than government attempting to do social good. It's terribly inefficient at that. I have participated in legal grift when I traveled on government contracts. The per-diem allowance is so extravagant, I was always able to stay at four- or five-star hotels, and enjoy fine dining every evening. That's totally unnecessary for someone at my level. I would have performed the job just fine, and taxpayers would have been much better served, if my lodging had been restricted to two-star hotels.
The PITA scholarship application process you described is what happens when privately-funded scholarship dollars are scarce. As the number of such dollars increases, the process will necessarily be relaxed somewhat, because it wouldn't be possible to give away all those dollars if the process remained as stringent as it is today.
It's true that private charities are more willing and able than government to make judgements about who is truly needy, and who is merely lazy. Don't act like that's a bad thing. For as long as the social safety net remains finite in size, it will be important to direct resources more in the direction of the truly needy, and less in the direction of the merely lazy.
Medicare alone is 702 billion dollars per year. 402 billion isn't going to cover it.
That's why I said "Within our lifetime, we might see voluntary charitable contributions exceed the size of coercive government wealth redistribution programs." I pretty clearly acknowledged that we haven't yet reached that point.
That reminds me. Private charities do not build up unfunded liabilities. Government entitlement programs, on the other hand, have built up $210 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities. In other words, $210 TRILLION in future obligations, for which we currently have no idea where the money will come from. The unfunded liabilities will inevitably begin to come due, like an apocalyptic balloon payment. This fact alone should make everyone want to make a shift toward private charity, rather than doubling down on the programs that created the unfunded liabilities.
I've heard people describe Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs as "successful," but they couldn't possibly be aware of the unfunded liabilities while making that characterization. Johnson himself, if his advisors had been able to foresee and warn him about the unfunded liabilities, never would have endorsed his Great Society programs. He didn't have a deathwish for his country's economy.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
You donâ(TM)t even have to go to China, just hop across the northern U.S. border.
I like, in a sarcastic way, how you skirted the idea that charities would only help those they deemed worthy. I suspect that 'lazy' has a wealth of meanings for you. I am familiar with Charity Navigator. I would point you towards Rotten Tomatoes, which was, more or less, subverted the moment the big movie studios took a hit in profits they could trace back to the site. Do you think that the mega-churches would fail to do the same to Charity Navigator?
Republicans whine about unfunded liabilities, then spend big. If they were concerned about government debt, they wouldn't add to it every time they get into power. Also, stuff like Social Security was designed to be "unfunded." We pay taxes to fund those currently on SS, as future generations are to pay for us. The only way the system breaks down is if people stop paying taxes (which could come about from a number of apocalyptic scenarios).
Again, this comes back to you and those like you. This belief that anything that doesn't directly benefit you is a waste of money, no matter the net benefit to our society as a whole, that people who need assistance are just "lazy." It is short-sighted, narrow-minded, and it is dragging the US down more effectively than any outside agent ever could.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
are positive about more than half of younger Americans.
get to the point where they got theirs, so why fight so the other guys they used to bitch with can get theirs too?
I've seen this more and more as I grew up. At some people the anarchists, socialists, and free market capitalists alike get to a point where they have theirs, and they want to keep having theirs even at the expense of others around them, or the priciples they espoused on their way to their current success. If you look at the practicalities of how they became successful, it was always by selling out just a little of their morals at a time until they are financially flush, but morally bankrupt.
I think that sums up the majority of people in life, and explains why the status quo so often remains the status quo until long after it has lost tenability.
Given a few infamous cases of "affluenza", people are provably correct about the wealthy getting special treatment in law. Commoner goes bankrupt, sorry but your student debts will follow you through the bankrupcy. Bank goes bankrupt, it's here, have a billion dollars to make sure those executive bonus checks don't bounce.
In some states, poor people still go to jail (debtor's prison in all but name) if they can't pay a fine. Cash bail is simply unaffordable for many. Even 10% of the bail is out of some people's range and you don't get it back even if you're not guilty. And of course, public defenders are chronicallu overloaded and in some states only available if you're indigent (but not if paying the lawyer bill will render you indigent). Of course that's not even an option in civil court, so a corporation threatening to sue you is effectively an edict from the king.
Essentially, being poor is expensive and to many it feels like being kicked when they're down.
He saw this shit coming from a mile away...
You can work without the chair, but it is more fatiguing to the individual. You can work without the table, but it limits you to not building anything larger than your lap. ...
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They've been told College is THE path to wealth.
They've been sold on a line of majors/degrees with limited-to-no ACTUAL utility in the jobs market.
They've been promised corner high rise offices with a sexy secretary and and expectation of being paid six-plus figures to do little more than browse porn and post on Twitter for 8 hours a day.
Now, when all the bullshit they've been sold by the communist-infested educational system turns out not to be true, and that they're tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and can't even get a minimum wage job asking about fries? Then you tell them, that with their level of non-income, they're now firmly in debt for the rest of their lives?
Then you have a bunch of communist agitators come along and tell them "free stuff, debt forgiveness, life will be unicorn jism, fairy farts and orgies every day", of COURSE these people are going to be down on capitalism.
"I didn't do any research! Now I can't get ANY job with my Masters in Intersectional Lesbian Basket Weaving Studies!"
Note: STUDIES. Because the courses for Intersectional Lesbian Basket Weaving were "too hard".
"I'm mad and I now think the world owes me free everything!"
And this is why anything that's NOT STEM or an actual jobs-oriented major should only be offered on a cash-only basis.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This article was posted on the 14th and has tons of comments from that time. It's now the 16th and it's the second article with a new posted time of the 16th. CNN paying Slashdot to keep its link near the stop? Slashdot trolling members to get more hits? WTF? The site can't even manage to list articles in chronological order and/or not screw with posting dates. I really hate the modern web where whatever drives the most hits or interaction from users breaks all norms and 'rules' to stay on top. Fuck you guys for degrading the awesomeness of the world wide web. No one will ever hear another phrase of Slashdot from me and I used to recommend the site to people all the time.
If you want people to see popular topics, then have them sort by posting count. Don't fuck with the natural ordering of posting nor create fake articles to increase your greedy bottom line. At the very very least, if you're going to delete an article and repost it with a later timestamp along with all the previous comments then make an update to the article summary explaining as such. You guys fail at even the basic level of curiosity.
...Communism, not once. People turn to leftist ideals like communism in a similar way to how drug addicts start:
They think they'll get something nice (free stuff), however (always) *everyone* ends up poor, and you have the equality and freedom of people living in a prison.
Life sometimes isn't fair, that's the nature of life. Taking philosophical cyanide - and forcing others to take it too - fixes nothing.
Plenty of study shows that coal kills prematurely 100K to 1M people worldwide. e.g. for EU https://phys.org/news/2016-07-... . And that's with today standard you can imagine what it was with 1930 standard. Capitalism killed far far many more people than communism by simply offloading externalities.
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I see a lot of conjecture in your posts and very little evidence. I'm a Christian and when I've personally taken it upon myself to help out a family at Christmas time, or something like that to my knowledge it has always been to help people not of my faith. People who on the surface appear to have a different sense of morality than I do. You may be right about some of those moron churches who feel like it is more important to be right (or think you are right) than to be kind, but good people exist inside of Christianity. Outside of it too. I think the overwhelming majority of people are good regardless of their faith or lack thereof. Good people will do good things if they have the opportunity.
Some Christians might not choose to use their gifts/talents to help people trying to spread a message contrary to their own. That doesn't mean they wouldn't help those same people if they were just plain down and out. If you've been offended by somebody then I'm sorry about that. Christians are no better people than anybody else. The mean ones are worse than the people they deride. In fact, we're all part of it because we know we've done some stupid in the past and we're trying to be better people and come to grips with human potential presently.
I meant to say that we've all done stupid shit in the past. Sometimes we still do.
From the depression, world wars, etc - previous generations have paid their dues. Stop blaming the generation before you for your issues, shit happends every generation, just get on with fixing your own life.
Please copy and paste this In 30 years.
Equality, healthcare, other people paying for your stuff. You can have it now! The best thing is, you can choose/experience it in YOUR life now, without destroying societies wealth and happiness around you!
The decline of the west marked with Genova bridge collapse?
Money follows the Pareto principle, always has. Actually, excellence in any field follows the pareto principle.
Welcome to life. You may not get what you want in life if you've chosen art-history degree (thus useless debt) and/or are lazy.
Sometimes you can do everything right and still fail, that's not fatal, that's life. You just keep trying till you're moving into the pareto % you want in whatever field.
I'm a developer based in the U.K. In 2012 I had a breakdown. I moved to a new job with a boss who was a crook and, at that point in my career, I wasn't equipped to deal with it (Nowadays I'd tell the bloke to get bent, report him to the tax authorities and trust in my portfolio, but my portfolio's a lot stronger now.) I got a new job straight away, but lost it after two weeks because, in the words of the H.R person: 'You are obviously not healthy enough to work. Go and get help.'. I spent the rest of that year on benefits, getting NHS treatment. After that, I got back to work.
Rough cost to state of keeping me well/alive for a year:
~ £10,000
Tax paid since I got back to work:
£26588
I paid in, I had the support I needed when I needed it, and it allowed me to become a productive taxpayer again. If the word 'socialism' scares you, just think of it as investment capitalism.
Capitalism is like Monopoly(tm). Starts well for everyone and things get better during the way: buying properties, building houses, paying taxes BUT, in the end, only one can win and everybody else goes bankrupt. Right now, in capitalism, we passed half way of the game.
You might have just been "a die hard at 20", but not really a conservative.
2. And you are a communist. (which are worse than the national-sotzialists, btw)
Maybe if they didn't ask things with inappropriate terminology they'd get better answers.
Capitalism is seen as bad everywhere in the world (I'm surprised 45% of the US actually likes it) because of its association with capital accumulation and the classification of people as either wealthy capital owners or poor wage slaves.
Call it free market economy, and suddenly everyone likes it.
Venezuela, here we come!
As they get older and are forced to pay ever increasing amounts of tax to support a socialist ponzi scheme, their views will change. Enough of them will see the error of their childish snowflake viewpoint, and life will carry on.
Gay youth make up something like 40% of the homeless children.
Actually, estimates are 20 to 40 percent. Probably difficult to get them to answer surveys, on account of the being homeless thing.
We only get the adult-type bums in my neck of the woods, and they certainly don't seem to be friends of Mary.
and hasn't been for most of it's history, it is cronyist/crony capitalism which may look like capitalism in some ways but really ends up losing most of the supposed benefits of capitalism
looked at another way, the USA is already socialist, it's just a type of socialism geared at protecting those that already have wealth and power
I could launch and promote my Kickstarter campaign for my solar-powered, blockchain enabled, 3D printed drone. I'm sure it would be a hit.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Do you think people are not dying in Communist China for the same reasons?
China is not communist. They were earlier when Mao led the country, but these days it's more of a dictatorship (communist in name only) with state owned enterprises and private enterprise both operating in a capitalistic economy.
well the jail / prison can cover that at 30k-50K+ year per inmate. OR you can just use the ER to get your insulin and you don't have to pay and they can't cut you as well.
Americans have this liberal vs conservative outlook, which as an Australian seems to be the same thing economically. Liberals believe the market (and me) should be free from govt intervention, and conservatives believe govt shouldn't interfere. America's rich have constructed this tricky social dialog (about morals) that prevent discussion about the fair distribution of wealth. Both ideologies assume a free-market solution to distribution where those with wealth morally deserve it, and those without wealth deserve poverty because they don't work hard or smart enough.
America is built on the lie that it is the land of opportunity and if you work hard no one will stop you getting ahead. This may have been true in frontier times when land and resources were unlimited, but now everything is owned and protected, and the rich dictate what you'll get in return for a days labour. In America I met so many hardworking people who blamed themselves for their poverty, yet were so thankful for their terrible opportunities.
And American's base much of their economic debate upon ideology or abstract theory. But there are plenty of real-world examples of social democracies that have a lower GDP than America yet have happier, healthier populations. And social democracies dominate the top economies by GDP and aren't going backward. I've travelled through 50+ countries and America has shocked me most with its grotesque poverty and inequality.
This is mostly because these countries is rather homogeneous, no diversity at all. Not any true American wants.
and only 3 marked "Funny". What's wrong with you people?
"-- but the other side of the coin is that many more have fallen deeper into poverty and debt, stuck in a cycle that is nearly impossible to break without help from others."
this is False.
Proof? My entire country since we abandoned multilateral socialism. Nobody is worse than before. QED.
We know, and it's tragic.
By "capitalists" you mean politicians. The free market doesn't guarantee you solid politicians son. That's up to the Volk to elect.
And it's all the fault of the white male patriarchy. Oh, wait, the bourgeoise. No, wait, the intellectual classes, No, no, it's the Jews and their Zionist Conspiracy.
Yeah, I Godwined myself, but we've seen this song play out before. I remember it from the 1960's when it was "The Man", and when local Communist parties were actually a thing on many college campuses. It was amazing how none of their members actually worked for a living.
You can't have socialism without MAO. You can't raise huge taxes without strongarming. And if you believe the allmighty state will restrain itself to only 1-2 fields of activity.....
"TL;DR; You're misrepresenting socialism, either intentionally or by mistake. Please stop it." :)
You stop misrepresenting it first
Exactly, leftists have a severe lack of investitional imagination.
Else they would have some bucks too.
Capitalism works when Government doesn't create or enforce monopolies. We need to end the patent system and bust up companies like Google. Companies can be too large. This is what drives people to socialism, they have no other choice. Socialism is as awful as it gets. No where does it work. "Oh but it does in the Scandinavian Countries. " No, it doesn't. Have you been there lately? Try getting a flu shot. LMAO.
Source please, because I think I can count on one hand the number of christian charities I've encountered that require you to be christian before they'll help you. In fact off hand, the only ones I can think of are those weird pseudo-medical insurance groups that sprung up after the ACA was passed. OTOH, most of the ones I encounter are like Habitat for Humanity, which provide regardless.
So it's just a coincidence that 30 singlerule parties called themselves socialist....
How many totalitarian parties have called themselves capitalists ??? Yeah i thought so...
Drop them off in North Korea for a while so they learn a lesson.
Same as saying "children regurgitate what they are taught".
What's funny is they now get most of their anti-"capitalist" messages via giant corps (Google, Facebook, etc.)
I believe what people really resent are the "chartered for greed" corporations. Everything they do is to maximize profit which warps even the things they do that "appear" to be from a good motivation. They try and make their company more appealing by donating to charity, claiming some more environmentally friendly product, or enhancing workplace benefits but that generally doesn't make things great for the employees in the long run. That drive for money taints everything the company does and makes it a "soul crushing" environment. No one, not even the CEO, really feels ownership of the company because the charter removes the possibility of "humanizing" the company's decisions.
The government is the only real protection from getting ground-up and spit-out by corporations. Also, as a previous post pointed out, if becomes very expensive to just ignore the problem of people that are unable to work for whatever reason. We would go broke trying to put everyone in prison that was forced to steal because they couldn't work and had no other source of income. No one is more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose. This is why capitalism vs socialism is a ridiculous argument. We need both of them.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
For anyone still here, Google on the Economists' magazine recent ranking of 'livable' cities in the world. Canada has three of the top 10. Says something for socialized democracy.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Capitalistic systems and free enterprise have been the most successful systems and are responsible for America being such a prosperous country, and "not being positive about capitalism", basically suggests these people are largely ignorant about Economics, Economic history, and Philosophy.
People in the US don't seem to recognize their own privilege --- the poorest of those in the US are better off than the average person in countries that have had other systems.
Every attempt to "centrally plan" an economy ever have resulted in total disaster;
some other systems that have been proven not to work are Socialism and Communism --- look at Venezuela for examples.
Look how China has risen from the ashes after it changed to a more capitalistic system with free-er markets than it had before.
If we are going to think devisive, letâ(TM)s go; what percentage of humans do not wash after using windows?
Charities don't give the money out equitably. For the most part they have an agenda and you either have to meet a criteria or do something for the charity. What happens to the people who don't meet the criteria or are incapable of what is asked? Gay youth make up something like 40% of the homeless children. I can guarantee you that most of the Christian charities would ask them to "renounce their wicked ways" before helping them. Since being gay isn't a choice, that would be a little difficult for the kids to do.
FYI, the people you are arguing with see this as a feature not a bug.
I totally agree that we shouldn't trust to private charities to provide for basic needs of our fellow humans, but for what it's worth many religious charities do put the charity side first and the religion a distant second.
I've worked in the charity sector and there are lots of awesome charities out there both secular and and religious, and lots and lots of charities whose primary beneficiaries are the people who run them. Most charities end up spending a huge chunk of donations on soliciting new donations, which is obviously very inefficient but necessary for that charity to survive. The costs of governments administering and distributing taxes are much lower, so ironically the most efficient (in terms of good done for money received) charities I've worked at got a significant part of their funding from taxes. The other option for "efficient" charities is endowments and large donors, which often come with strings attached.
I've worked at several charities, volunteered at a few more. I can't think of anyone who tried to access our services who was "lazy". I can think of several board members getting fat of self-approved expenses claims who who would fit that categorisation though.
When it works for the benefit of the middle class.
When capitalism is used to prop up a ruling elite, then we stop liking it.
Capitalism is a tool, you can use it for the benefit of all, or you can destroy your nation with it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
" there would immediately be people taking advantage of both sides of the system."
Isnt that politics already? Full blown charity isnt the answer, but if your counter argument for why its not a good idea, is that there is less regulation. Then why support the US gov taking over. Already 20 trillion in debt, at least if its privatized, when bad things came up they would face the wrath of social media. The government on the hand, its untouchable, and by all accounts uncontrollable.
Also, I for one have no issue paying taxes, its just not enough. And, there is conditions on any system to act like there isnt...well then Id gather you are not seeing the big picture.
We could overturn the Citizen's United ruling with new legislation that ends corporate personhood.
Doing so would not end capitalism, it would not make us socialism, it would bring about healthier business and healthier government.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Capitalism is dropping and Socialism is holding steady. Fascism must be gaining.
Few people actually know what capitalism is. And what the United States has right now ain't it. Not even close. It's cronyism, it's rampant socialism/fascism (yes we have both, specifically the fascism is ever present when you see private companies profiting off public dollars such as the prison system, defense contractors, and student loan banks to name just a few).
The problem is the public school systems don't properly attribute these items. Public schools are socialist in their very nature and implementation, so why would they ever speak badly of socialism?
All the problems with the economy can be traced directly back to poor government policies. True capitalism is unfettered voluntary trade, and that's never a bad thing. The only thing that ruins capitalism is government.
Nevertheless, the country voted. Trump is president. Deal with it, loser. You pro-America crybabies need to grow up and accept that our voters outnumber you.
No, we'll never run out of other people's money. People see our new tariffs as a drain on the economy, but you forget that it also feeds into the public coffers. Don't misunderestimate what Trump's new, higher tax rates can do. We can live off these revenues at least until 2024. And that's pretty much as long as the country's remaining resources need to last. He's a great man, but not immortal. It tooks hundreds of years to develop America to be able to fulfill its purpose and soon America will discharge its fated duty. We only need this country to live a few more years, and then, finally, its fire can shine on and illustrate his magnificence. He has the button, he has the will, and we will support him to the glorious end.
Did anyone read the article? It was interesting till I watched the 3 videos. Wow what a difference in perspective.
First video, and author talked about her book "Squeezed". All she talked about was how it's not young peoples fault they're having financial issues. Ya, just what people need. Another person pointing the finger at why people can't succeed. Which takes me to the second video.
Some how this guy was able to not get squeezed and figured a way to make it. Wow, if what didn't work the first time didn't work try something else? What a concept. So I guess it is possible.
Third video just makes sense. Buying a house. Helps build equity. Not an investment, but builds equity. Use a 15 years loan, and gee pack your own lunch instead of eating out all the time. This sounds like the polar opposite of the lady in the first video.
Really shows what a different perspective can give. Who do you want to be?
We are not getting it anyhow; it's bottle-necking at the top.
Northern European nations, and even Canada and Japan, seem to have a more stable and robust middle class. They are not "pure" socialism, but rather a more even mix of capitalism and socialism. Canada's mortgage regulations make it harder to get a home, but in exchange they largely avoided the mortgage meltdown because there were fewer "leveraged" loans floating around.
Purer capitalism hasn't been working so well of late for regular folks. Bubbles and inequality are still unsolved. I'm just the messenger. If proponents of the purer form don't fix it, people will look around for other systems that are working better. Observation 101.
It appears being on either extreme of the spectrum is a recipe for problems. "Goldilocks" economies are in.
Table-ized A.I.
While the society was distracted by the talk of imaginary "nazis", Communists — adherents of the far deadlier, indeed the deadliest, school of thought known to humanity — have crept in on us, and are even fielding national politicians already...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Has that "fewer than half" of young Americans actually spent any amount of time experiencing any of the alternatives to capitalism, or is this simply a case of the grass being greener elsewhere...?
Young Americans' frame of reference is eight years of Obamanomics. They believe that that's what capitalism looks like. It's not.
Also, the size of the state is an important consideration. What works for a small European country will not necessarily work for the US, which is a hugely heterogeneous country that is better compared to the European Union than an individual European country. Further, there are models other than capitalism and socialism, e.g., a free market that avoids capital by using a different form of investment, whereby co-ops partner to do larger things. In a co-op, everyone is an owner - there is no separation between the owner and the worker. That can be achieved through a legal construct that replaces the corporation construct.
properly implemented socialist system:
The people collectively own and run the business.
There are plenty of 'socialist' cooperative businesses in the world, even right now. Many of them are successful with only a few levels of income disparity between the executives and the bottom rung personnel. Most of them ensure there is a path to advancement for anyone who stays with the company long term.
Modern capitalist companies, with a short list of exceptions, have ignored this concept and that is what is driving capitalist ideals into the ground. Not altogether different from oligarchic communism turning off huge numbers of eastern bloc people to communism/socialism and convincing them to move to Capitalist Europe/America 20 to 60 years ago.
Neither system has worked as advertised and both have failed the common people. The rest is just dogma of your slanted and ideological side.
yet every single one of them benefits from it.
Funny how that works.
Wonder what their little socialistic heads think about paying for all their socialistic concepts.
We used to have a much more socially responsible form of capitalism in America - the top tax rate of 91.5% insured that income disparity was closer to 30x than the current 350x. The tax base supported nearly free public higher education. There was funding for infrastructure projects (which almost exclusively benefit the wealthy - roads to get their workers to them and their consumers to them vs. a road you take to/from work - should you be paying the same?) Industries that could be converted to wartime manufacturing were protected sensibly (auto industry steel work, manufacturing, agriculture, etc.)... the boomers and generations after them saw what was built and decided to monetize it into the ground. They began demonizing "Socialism" (progressive-ism, etc.) without naming their own philosophy: Elitism (or Greed-ism). The goal of Greed-ism is to systematically shut down any part of government that benefits society as a whole; slash the wealthy's contribution to common good (taxes, regulations) while taking full advantage of the current generation of educated public - use the infrastructure built up over decades for short-term profit while letting that infrastructure crumble due to lack of funds. Steer any remaining government welfare towards agribusiness vs. family farms, dedicated military-industrial vs. general manufacturing. Gut social protections for the bottom 90% (union busting, social safety nets, nearly free state higher education, etc.). Private schools. Private prisons. Legislate massive protections against lawsuits aimed at the rich; virtually eliminate those same protections for the bottom 90% (IE: you cannot get rid of your student loans by declaring bankruptcy; most situations in which you could try and recoup justice through civil suits are now steered into arbitration, etc.). Elitism is what Bernie Sanders should be talking about - compare and contrast *that* against his Socially Responsible Capitalism policy suggestions. Promote a government and policies that protet the common good against the Greedy Elite - recognizing that they have the resources to protect themselves and require a strong check/balance in a progressive government. Government did a much better job in Eisenhower's time than it does in ours (with obvious black marks in minority/womens/LGBT rights).
imagine a soft, buttery paw gently pressing down onto a sleeping soldier's face. forever.
The Gallup survey simply asks for an up-down view on the word capitalism. A necessary and much more informative question would have probed what the viewed denotation and connotations of that word are in the minds of the surveyed people. My guess is that most young adults (and even old adults) do not know what capitalism is. However, they know what the US system is "capitalism". Thus, the question is likely mostly useless as a comment on the virtues of theoretical capitalism. Rather, the question effectively asks for a comment on the respondent's view of the current US economy, and it is wholly unsurprising that many young people who are struggling financially would have a negative view of a term that describes the economic system that currently afflicts them.
People have made, bought, sold, and consume things for money long before capitalism.
Capitalism is ONLY the idea that if you have money you can invest it, so you don't have to work.
The problem is: some people were born into money; some people weren't.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Straw man and what about Ism at its finest folks.
That wasn't the question. The question was how has captialism killed people. And he was answering that question. Do try to keep up and learn to read before you discuss things with grown ups.
But but but what about....
...And, probably 5% of those asked can give a correct definition of "capitalism." So, have we proved that capitalism is dying, or that intelligence is dying?
Capitalism, just like Democracy and even Freedom, sucks......but is still better than anything else or any alternative in the long run.
Capitalism does not simply means that a company can do anything it wants.
Freedom includes protecting and allowing others to do things that offend us.
It's a stretch to say our system is even capitalist, since it has extensive regulation, union protection, and social welfare.
It is more accurate to say that democracy has failed, because whenever you ask the masses what we should do, they run off chasing illusions and then we all go over the cliff.
If anything, we are seeing the demise of the idea of herd behavior being a good thing, and a recognition that the root of herd behavior is individual selfishness.
Blaming capitalism for that is just a last-ditch strategy to avoid seeing the obvious: modern society has failed. We need a new type of social order.
Alternative Right.
In generations past young Americans knew they'd grow up to be wealthier than their parents.
But young Americans today are growing up poorer than their parents, and those young people's kids will grow up poorer than them.
Why in the hell would they be capitalist cheerleaders under such an economic system in a country where the social mobility is even lower than the aristocratic British monarchy?
Meanwhile China, run by a Communist Party, saw the average Chinese wage increase 300% in the past 10 years.
Those young people also probably understand that the German socialist party and their communist allies are responsible for Germany's 35-hour workweeks, Germans' lifetime unemployment benefits, and the fact that all German medium-to-large corporations have by law 1/2 of the seats on their boards of directors occupied not by rich capitalists, but by the workers and labor unions who are the ones responsible for creating the wealth of those corporations.
European socialist parties are responsible for the free national daycare in some countries, month-plus-long paid vacations guaranteed to every worker no matter how often you change jobs, the national health care that means Europeans do not even understand the concept of "medical bankruptcy," and the 6-month to 1+ year long paid maternity leave often for either mother or father.
Meanwhile, here in the "land of the free" the US gov't spies on every single American, records our phone calls and every electronic financial transaction we make -- the Bill of Rights be damned.
Here in the land of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" American capitalism, we have no maternity leave paid or otherwise. American workers work more than 40 hours a week (more than even the Japanese!) and American workers get zero paid vacation. Young people commonly work multiple part-time jobs trying to string together enough of an income to avoid the countless homeless people who litter our country's streets.
By questioning our capitalist values and our exploitive economic system, those young people are just showing they have working, functional brains...
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." -- Famous capitalist economist John Maynard Keynes
Exactly, slaves have a severe lack of investitional imagination.
Else they would have some bucks too.
FTFY.
Yea and rightards have a severe lack of common decency.
And then get back to us.
There's a lot of assumption there on your part. I've dealt with many Christian charities, and none force gay kids to denounce being gay anymore than they beat a drug addict for doing drugs. They're there to help, full stop. Yes, they do often share their own Christian message, unlike what many try to get people to believe, they don;'t withhold help if someone isn't interested. They're simply not given credit where it's due.
Very often they were also the ONLY charities working in certain fields and locales.
well in that case... nobody's died from _socialism_, they've died from _authoritarianism_ masked in socialist memes.
Have a nice day.
First off, no ... my last sentence didn't "betray me" as somehow being for socialized medicine.
I'm saying that I'm for a free market... not the current one that pretends to be free, except for the legal limitations government places on things to benefit big pharma unfairly! (EG. If a company over in Germany or up in Canada starts producing a perfectly good version of one of the drugs under U.S. patent by a pharmaceutical firm based in America, it's illegal to mail order it into the country and issue it to patients, even if it's 1/3rd. of the cost and works as well as or better than the one under the legal patent protection here.) If you want to sell drugs in a Capitalist framework, I think that should mean it's a level playing field for all participants, including foreign manufacturers who want to export drugs to America.
Big pharma constantly bellyaches about the huge expenses involved in R&D of a new drug and claims it requires government protection to get exclusive rights to sell it for so many years before generic alternatives are allowed. Yet we can see by the huge profits they consistently make that they're not in any special need of these protections at all! "No risk, no reward" is how the free market is supposed to work. If you dump millions into R&Ding a new medication and then find you can't recoup your investment before everyone else clones your drug and undercuts your price on it? Too bad! Welcome to the reality of pretty much every other business in America! There's usually a lot of short-term profit potential for having a product out first, even without any government protection.... You exploit that "first past the post" momentum with the right marketing push, and you've got brand recognition everyone else has to really fight to compete with. You *should* be able to turn a profit if your product is any good.
But how will all the millennials make money on Instagram when they throw out capitalism? Oh and how will you get your hands on a mobile phone to thumb fuck when no one is incentivized to manufacture them for a profit?
He agrees with you.
"A government owned means of production does not make a system Socialist"
Seems you are the moran ;)
What?
Right. And it just so happens that many of these 'private enterprises' happen to be owned by current or former high-level government officials. Probably not a great idea in their 'capitalist' economy to be a competitor to a company owned by a general.
I know and it lights my fire more than anything else. Why does righteousness lead so easily into self-righteousness? (Of course, the mirror shows my face.)
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
That the government is uncontrollable is kind of our fault. Somebody's sig from ages ago: Ballot, soap, ammo - use the boxes in order.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Socialism is clearly best. As long as it's voluntary.
I notice the word "capitalism" isn't actually defined here, but if we're talking about laissez-faire capitalism, the sole alternative -- the DE FACTO alternative -- is slavery. Just so ya know.
I like, in a sarcastic way, how you skirted the idea that charities would only help those they deemed worthy. I suspect that 'lazy' has a wealth of meanings for you. I am familiar with Charity Navigator. I would point you towards Rotten Tomatoes, which was, more or less, subverted the moment the big movie studios took a hit in profits they could trace back to the site. Do you think that the mega-churches would fail to do the same to Charity Navigator?
I don't like, in a literal way, how you made an allegation against Charity Navigator without doing any basic research. I looked at the top 4 megachurches (based on average attendance):
Life.Church. Charity Navigator has not rated it.
Church of the Highlands. Charity Navigator has not rated it.
Lakewood Church. Charity Navigator has not rated it.
North Point Community Church. Charity Navigator has not rated it.
So yes, I'm confident Charity Navigator won't be subverted by organizations it doesn't rate.
Republicans whine about unfunded liabilities, then spend big.
Yes, I'm very unhappy with Republicans about that. At least they -- unlike the proponents of socialized medicine -- aren't proposing new programs that would cause $218 trillion in additional deficit spending over the next 30 years (to say nothing of what the new programs would do to unfunded liabilities). You complain about hypocrisy on the issue of unfunded liabilities, which is certainly true of some Republicans, but you offer no solutions to that issue yourself.
The only way the system breaks down is if people stop paying taxes
You don't think Social Security will break down if the ratio of retirees to FICA-paying workers grows a lot larger (due to lower birth rate, increasing life expectancy, etc.)? That's what's happening in Japan, and to say fixing that problem is "a major political challenge" might be the understatement of the century. Sorry, rather than trusting your bare assertion, I will trust the official report of the U.S. Social Security Board of Trustees, which back in 2009 had already announced $17.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities. I've never seen a credible definition of "Ponzi scheme" that doesn't describe Social Security to a T.
Again, this comes back to you and those like you. This belief that anything that doesn't directly benefit you is a waste of money, no matter the net benefit to our society as a whole, that people who need assistance are just "lazy." It is short-sighted, narrow-minded, and it is dragging the US down more effectively than any outside agent ever could.
You must live in opposite world, because the facts consistently support the opposite of your assertions.
* I advocate for making the social safety net sustainable, and much more robust. That certainly doesn't benefit me; just the opposite, it requires me to become more charitable.
* I didn't say people who need assistance are lazy. I said they are the opposite of people who are merely lazy, and that they should receive the opposite treatment (more resources directed to them). Does your reading comprehension really suck that much, or do you just
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
it's always been this expensive. We used to heavily subsidize public Universities with federal funds. We stopped doing that in the late 90s (thanks Clinton). I was in school when it started and the school newspapers talked about it. They had the economics department project what the cost of college would be if the cuts continued and it's right about what it is now. Nobody listened to them because their voices were drowned out by right wing think tanks in favor of the cuts (or a variety of unpleasant reasons I'll leave up to your imagination).
So yeah, I won't blame capitalism necessarily, rather I'll blame cronyism. e.g. funding tax cuts for the rich on the backs of our children.
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