Capitalism works if we save it from true believers
Unprecedented stock market volatility. Poorer-than-expected jobs reports. Layoffs. Businesses still sending jobs out of country, working people still struggling to get by, an extra ten bucks a week notwithstanding. The only difference between Trumps and Bushs tax cuts, and the other Bushs, and Reagans, is that its economic shortcomings are becoming evident sooner than usual. Maybe because the others figured on two terms.
Readers seem to like calling me a communist when I point out the obvious about whats needed to make capitalism work. In addition to showing how unaware they are of the meaning of the term, they refuse to provide examples of my alleged affinity. Which is understandable: There arent any. Capitalism has been good to me. In turn, unlike Trump, Ive been good to capitalism: Pay my taxes, follow the law, dont cheat people or go bankrupt. Invest in good companies. Recycle. Minimize polluting.
Communism and unfettered capitalism do have something in common, though: They both assume a level of goodness inherent in humankind that doesnt exist. Self-designations to the contrary, theres never been a communist country. Purely socialist, yes; and theyve failed. Other than a few collective farms, the USSR was never communist. It wasnt even in its name. Same with China. Its an unworkable, borscht-in-the-sky system.
Over here, a few hippies and transcendentalists tried to live from each according to ability, to each according to need, (communisms essential definition) but they dispersed after acrimonious collapse. As a whole, notwithstanding examples of individual selflessness, humanity simply isnt good enough to manage it.
Since the point is philosophical rather than economical, this isnt the place to discuss how upside-down and ill-timed Trumps tax cuts were, other than to point out that with a humming economy after President Obama rescued it from Bush, with corporate profits at record highs, with crumbling infrastructure and escalating economic inequality, money extracted from revenues and handed to corporations and, therefore, to their investors but mostly no one else, while causing untenable increases in budget deficits and national debt, could have been much better spent to guarantee the survival of our system, by creating jobs and raising wages for real rather than a couple of impermanent boni. (There. I devoted only one sentence to it.)
Communism doesnt work because humans are inherently greedy and jealous. Pure socialism doesnt work because most people need incentives to be excellent, and when the government controls all production, there arent any. (That, plus the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, not Reagan, is why the Soviet Union ultimately failed.) Capitalism works, but does so to the extent its mated with regulations providing reasonable restraint on the worst human tendencies.
America has experienced unregulated capitalism. It led to abuse of workers (including children), disregard for the environment, the Great Depression, and, as is happening yet again, sequestration of too much money in the hands of too few. Its the opposite of what drives successful capitalism: average people having the means to buy stuff, and rules mitigating corporate greed. And its where Trump and his invertebrate Congress are taking us, yet again.
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http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-capitalism-works-if-we-save-it-from-true-believers/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=ee231a0494-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-ee231a0494-228635337
pansypoo53219
(21,009 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,317 posts)Shorter, and to the point.
elleng
(131,370 posts)providing reasonable restraint on the worst human tendencies.
America has experienced unregulated capitalism. It led to abuse of workers (including children), disregard for the environment, the Great Depression, and, as is happening yet again, sequestration of too much money in the hands of too few. Its the opposite of what drives successful capitalism: average people having the means to buy stuff, and rules mitigating corporate greed. And its where Trump and his invertebrate Congress are taking us, yet again.'
JI7
(89,287 posts)those are the things which makes capitalism strong.
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)I suspect it's about time for Google, et al, to be broken up.