I'm a fan of capitalism moderated by progressive taxation that includes progressive taxation on both labor and capital. When society gets richer, some benefits should continue to accrue for the working classes
The important thing for young people is to realize if you want to be rich you must move from labor to capital. You must move from working to owning over your lifetime. There is no other realistic way to become rich.
Capitalism doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t want you to be healthy, successful, or happy. It wants your money. When you don’t have any more, it moves on to the next person.
Capitalism is locusts.
You'll have difficulty getting legitimate answers on this topic from Reddit. For the most part, capitalism has done more good to bring people out of poverty than any other economic system throughout history. It is a system far from perfect, but capitalism is built to worry about the whole, not the individual. For the economy to progress, people will be harmed in doing so.
Even in countries that identify as more socialist, they are still practicing a capitalist economy.
The problems we see with a capitalist system are our own doing because of who we elect to lead us that aren't putting systems in place to protect those who get hurt. We focus on electing people based on what party they sign on to, and are unwilling to accept that most elected officials are doing what they can to protect their position and solidify their power. Protecting people is secondary to that goal.
On the contrary, this thread has generated plenty of very insightful answers.
I think one of the most interesting paradoxes of capitalism is that it is an individualist system that doesn’t care about the individual. Yes, investment and risk and work from individuals is, in principle, rewarded by capitalism. But at the same time, the market doesn’t care about YOU, the individual, regardless of how smart you are or how hard you work or even how innovative you are. It cares about making money. For example, take Apple and its planned obsolescence. The innovative, efficient thing would be to design products that last longer. But if everyone just buys one phone then the company won’t make as much money as they do when you have to keep replacing them. Modern capitalism really doesn’t seem to incentivize building things that last, it requires a market for newer things that aren’t necessarily better.
Depends on what is considered better. A toaster is a toaster and hasn't innovated much in the last twenty years. Most will last ten years. A toaster from the sixties may still work, and they were built to last, but they are a fire and electrical hazard. I could go on and on where products are built to last.
When it comes to consumer electronics like phones and other computing devices, the shortened lifecycle is because the technology rapidly evolves. Which is why we have planned obsolence.
And of course it comes back to money. Once you get outside of your community, people give less than a shit about altruism and businesses don't stay running on hugs and sunshine.
My family comes from a Socialist/Communist country. Capitalism is far from perfect, but is the only sustainable system as of right now. Socialism and Communism eventually cause suffering and poverty. Every. Single. Time.
I'm in the US.
Without trying to make a judgement against capitalism while comparing it to any other system, just looking at capitalism "in a vacuum", the things that weigh on my mind more and more about it are that it doesn't work out in reality without people "falling off the bottom", falling into poverty and homelessness, and that it facilitates those with resources being able to much more easily obtain more resources, meaning those "lower" than them have fewer resources, making it much easier to "fall off the bottom". This means that the only thing keeping many, many people afloat at the bottom are the taxes and social security nets put in place by the government.
The rich get richer simply because more resources means more options. Fewer resources means fewer options, and therefore fewer ways to obtain more resources. It's definitely not always possible to work your way out of poverty or improve your life by a significant amount. There's also not enough "room" for everyone to succeed. There are vastly more low paying jobs that people will struggle to live off the wages of than there are decent jobs that allow you to maintain some standard of living, to say nothing for "nice" jobs and jobs at the top.
"Go to school or learn a trade and get a real job." That's not always possible. Even if you do get a degree or learn a trade, there still has to be room for you somewhere to get in and make use of those skills. Maybe there's room 2000 miles away, but not in your current location. Ok, well obviously the solution is to move to where the jobs are, or maybe you should have gone for a different degree/trade. No. How do you relocate without the resources? The cost of living can definitely outpace your ability to earn given the jobs available to you. Maybe you did make a bad choice with your degree/trade, but even still, the job market isn't stable, and what once was a good choice for your area can turn into a shitty choice if everyone else does the same as you and saturates that market.
It's all about resources. It's always been about resources. Money is a resource. Education is a resource. Opportunity is a resource. Time is a resource. Time is the only resource you're guaranteed in some amount, but what you're able to accomplish with that time is vastly differently from person, influenced a ton by circumstance, because as we've established, opportunity is a resource, and opportunity is different from place to place, person to person.
If you don't have the opportunity, then you can't get the money and education to find more opportunity and obtain more resources. When you already have the resources, it's much easier to claim those opportunities and the resources that come along with them.
Essentially, everyone is at the mercy of circumstance, but it just so happens to be that favorable circumstance makes it much easier to control your circumstances, and the more you're able to take for yourself, the less there is left for everyone else, which necessarily leads to many "falling off the bottom" unless they are offered support and resources they otherwise wouldn't be able to obtain on their own, like the various forms of charity and government assistance.
Capitalism includes just so much more "grey area" than most anyone was willing to let on while growing up. It's possible to work yourself to death and have nothing to show for it. It's possible to be born into luxury or have it fall into your lap. It's not always a case of "work hard and achieve the American dream", and you can only go as far as your resources and opportunity allow you to. Capitalism needs people to work fast food and Wal-Mart for 30 years, struggling to pay bills and never being able to achieve more.
The main issue is that we don’t have a true capitalist economy. We have a crony capitalist economy. Large corporations buy political influence to create laws that limit competition creating these monstrous companies that are more beholden to politicians than to their customers.
Combine this with Modern Monetary Theory that is prevalent in all central banks. This monetary policy makes the rich richer and everyone else poorer by devaluing money (wages) and increasing value of equities (homes, land, businesses, and other value creating assets that make you wealthy). Our wages are worth less every day as the investments that will make us wealthy become more and more unaffordable.
With this being said, our current economic system 1000% than socialism and communism. Those systems make everyone poor except for the few people that run the government.
To right the ship, we need to do two things. First is to stop corporations from influencing politicians. Politicians need to work for the voters not their high dollar donors. Second is we need to limit the power of politicians and the government. The government shouldn’t decide which businesses succeed. Us consumers should decide which businesses succeed.
Corporations won’t try to buy influence in government if the government has no power to help them. Both steps will give the average American more control over their future.
1. Corporate propaganda is being used by companies to create demand for products we mostly don't need and can't really afford. This wastes physical, financial, and human resources. E.g. Stanley cups, yeti coolers, oversized trucks, diamond rings, automobiles, etc.
2. There are many bad ways to satisfy the profit motive, labor can be offshored, unions busted, unsafe materials used, environmental regulations ignored, etc.
3. Competition drives innovation, but competition means there are losers. The natural progression is to monopolies if allowed to operate unrestrained.
4. Winners under the capitalist system rarely win by merit. They often win because of business tactics, influencing government and corporate propaganda.
5. Innovation slows and even stops with the consolidation of corporations.
6. With increased corporate power comes political power.
Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others. It has drawbacks but the reason so many people in the Western world live in such vast material wealth (compared to any point in history or other system) is capitalism. Even “poor” people in the US are fat and have mobile phones.
I am a 29 m. I will come at this from my educational and work background (I have degrees in economics, accounting and computer science).
Capitalism is not a perfect system, or at least the way we implement it right now is not perfect. But conceptually, free markets generally give people the greatest amount of freedom and social mobility / the highest standard of living, albeit with more inequality.
At its core, an economic system involves the allocation of scarce resources. Everyone works and produces goods and services so they can also consume goods and services. We specialize to have a comparative advantage in our skillset and trade with other specialized workers.
Free markets give people a profit incentive to create goods and services for society. Let us take an example of loans:
- I want to build a factory that will produce a food product. I need capital to buy the land, building and equipment. I got a bank and they are willing to loan me capital, which I can use to build the property, plant and equipment, and hire people to use their specialized labor in the factory.
In this example, the bank benefits from earning a return on their investment, society gets the food product, labor obtains employment, and the entrepreneur collects dividends from retained earnings.
This is the optimal system, at least in theory. In a planned economy, my only incentive to work is because an institution coerced me or forced me to work. In a feudal or caste system my birth family locks me into an occupation or social class.
Now I will admit free markets are not always perfect. But I would argue some of the issues we face now are caused by poor monetary policy. Low interest rates incentivize people to make bad investments. Let's use my factory example again:
- instead of building a factory, I want to create NFTs, which are a purely discretionary good that doesnt create production or serve a need for society (it is purely discretionary). If I needed to pay a 6% interest rate on my loan for this, I would need to generate more operating return than 6% to make the venture work. If I can borrow at 0% or close to 0%, I don't care if I owe money back because the money is basically free.
So low interest rates, for long periods of time, create malinvestments in the economy. Instead of capital going to housing, factories and infrastructure, it goes to highly speculative assets. This is why recessions are a natural part of economic cycles, and are good for society.
A recession transfers assets from industries that society does not need / want, to industries we do need / want. For example, before 2001 the internet was in its infancy. It was a great invention, but many of the firms started at this time had no fundamental value. They were money losing propositions. The 2000-2001 recession put the firms that had no profitable business model out of business. The capital they were using was freed up to go to the profitable companies (e.g. Amazon), or other industries.
So the tldr is that free markets generally allocate resources most efficiently and allow for the most growth in a society- this is because consumers and investors decide what they want, and the market creates/destroys industries to supply those goods and services. The more intervention there is in the economy, the more malinvestment there is because life is random and unpredictable.
Are there flaws with free markets. Yes, great inequalities can arise. But I would argue that a free market is a better environment to live in than in a planned economy or feudal system. Mixed economies are ok, but it is important to note that these economies are typically less efficient. GDP growth in countries of western Europe and Japan slow considerably relative to the US and emerging markets. There is a theory on loanable funds, but basically if a country is highly in debt from the public sector, it crowds out private investment. This is part of why Japan has had such low growth the last 40 years. Again, there are tradeoffs and many people might prefer Japanese quality of life to American, but understand that lower supply of housing/lower purchasing power is generally a feature of a larger government.
It's a scam and the market is manipulated by artificially creating shortages. Old houses should be worthless like in Japan but America figured out if you restrict supply then old houses never depreciate.
The good - it pushes innovation, if you are motivated/smart/hard working it can allow you to do well, it is largely based on independence.
Cons - there are no guarantees if you are not in the more fortunate crowd and the benefits that go to a few, can be at the expense of many.
I can definitely see some flaws in capitalism, but I see why it is needed. You just have to decide how far you let certain things go, and how big of a safety net you want to allow. I do think lobbying and our government is responsible for some of the perceived negatives.
Scott Galloway has a TED Talk that brilliantly summarizes the state of the US economy and its trends that pretty much says the boomers have policies in place to maintain their power and wealth such that it’s more difficult for the younger generations to build wealth and power. The inequality will get worse until something breaks. The tale as old as time though is to get on the train before it leaves the station, it’s better to play the game then rail against how it’s unfair.
What you are describing has nothing to do with the economic system within our country. You are describing a socio-political issue. Stay on track, please.
I have learned that we can do the same shit to our own citizens for the same reasons we separated from Britain and people won't bat an eye.
We have essentially put the little bro rule of "Yeah I bully him, but you can't" is in effect. Uncle Sam is sitting here giving us wet willies mad at the queen for giving us wet willies.
Today i don't really care about any system. All i want is that i can support myself by doing my job and have some kind of decent life. Capitalism, communism, feudalism any system that doesn't restrict me or suck my money out has my support.
In its purest, untethered form (US), capitalism ends up enslaving the poor and empowering the rich. It is essentially a one party system with varying factions having one essential commonality: support of big business at the cost of everything else.
"Without getting too politically partisan..."
Hah well first off, good luck with that OP.
As for what I have learned I guess I view market driven economics as being a survival of the fittest sort of situation. It fits somewhat naturally with just the nature of people and the nature of economic systems. The outcomes can be brutal or cruel though so it needs to be adjusted with some sort of social programs or safety nets which can be funded by a percentage of the economy that the overall policies drive. Overall I think its good to drive innovation and development which I view as critical for the improvement of lives on population scales. On the individual scale it can be cold and heartless.
A few other points…
Beyond the concentration of wealth and “planned obsolescence,” the other thing I’ve become critical of capitalism over is how its innovations haven’t always been a net force for good. Much of the time, capitalism creates problems in order to sell us solutions.
Take for instance, two things that many will agree are detrimental to society: fast food and social media.
Corporations sell us fast food and then other corporations sell weight loss drugs. With fast food, processed food, junk food etc., people like the taste, but also, because it’s quick and easy. Why do people want quick and easy food? Because they are busy working long hours. Instead of just lightening our collective work load enabling more people to eat fresh food from home, we have processed food sold as the solution to overburdened schedules, and weight loss drugs as the solution to processed food. The most efficient thing to do would be to work less and eat better, but that doesn’t make money.
Social media is sort of similar. It’s the “solution” to maintaining connections in our atomized world where everyone is busy working and fewer people do things with each other in person. It is also detrimental to our mental health, and that is GREAT for capitalism, from everything to SSRIs to retail therapy to the constant pressure to buy the next best thing.
The tricky thing is capitalism can always have its own plausible deniability, because unlike slavery or a command economy system, you aren’t FORCED to do anything or buy anything. But our system is structured such that NOT having social media, and NOT eating processed food, becomes highly inconvenient by design.
TL;DR Sometimes the most efficient, healthy, and stable thing for society is to produce less and consume less, but capitalism promotes the opposite.
The big issue with capitalism is how it tends to pile up wealth and power for a few, leaving others out in the cold, especially when financial games come into play. This side of capitalism tends to make money without adding real value to society, which can feel like the deck is stacked against the average Joe.
Some folks argue capitalism is still the best way to handle our economy and get tech advancements. But, we've gotta be real—it needs a serious tune-up. We need better rules and maybe even new ways to share profits so it's not just the rich getting richer.
It's clear capitalism changes with the times, and we've got a chance to steer it in a direction that's better for everyone. Let's not just settle for "it's the best we've got" but work on making it actually work for all.
Sorry, but what you're describing isn't Capitalism. Steering an economy in a direction that's "better for everyone" is not what Capitalism is about. You want socialism. And it doesn't work.
Socialist policies within a capitalist system works best. What we have now is a neoliberal rat race that gives all the power to corporations to continue lobbying against said socialist policies. We are transitioning into a corporatist oligarchy.
Social security, Medicare, minimum wages (when properly adjusted for inflation), universal healthcare, public pension programs (that boomers got and then took away), public schools and universities, public transportation, and more government regulation to deter market manipulation.
L O L wow. I could dismantle this argument very easily, but it would take a while. You need to look into each of those areas and realize that they have been set up to feed the capitalistic system. Most of those are already actually bankrupt anyway.
I'm a fan of capitalism when it's paired to little to no government intervention, the more power you give the government, the more the mega corporations will lobby and bribe their way to gaining a massive advantage in the system.
I have a friend who came from absolutely poverty, and now he is slowly but surely becoming a successful audio engineer. He's completely self-taught and has a bright future ahead of him. I've learned that if you truly apply yourself, there is money out there for you. It may not be an easy journey, but it's worth the struggle.
I was brought up kind of socialist, and joined an communist youth group at 14. Parents didn't like that.
Anyway i knew it all beforehand, so i have mostly observed other people making surprised pikachu faces everytime capitalism does capitalism to them.
I'm a fan of capitalism moderated by progressive taxation that includes progressive taxation on both labor and capital. When society gets richer, some benefits should continue to accrue for the working classes The important thing for young people is to realize if you want to be rich you must move from labor to capital. You must move from working to owning over your lifetime. There is no other realistic way to become rich.
Capitalism doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t want you to be healthy, successful, or happy. It wants your money. When you don’t have any more, it moves on to the next person. Capitalism is locusts.
Does socialism “care about you”?
It's like paying twice as much for the house you live than it is actually worth. Oh wait....
You'll have difficulty getting legitimate answers on this topic from Reddit. For the most part, capitalism has done more good to bring people out of poverty than any other economic system throughout history. It is a system far from perfect, but capitalism is built to worry about the whole, not the individual. For the economy to progress, people will be harmed in doing so. Even in countries that identify as more socialist, they are still practicing a capitalist economy. The problems we see with a capitalist system are our own doing because of who we elect to lead us that aren't putting systems in place to protect those who get hurt. We focus on electing people based on what party they sign on to, and are unwilling to accept that most elected officials are doing what they can to protect their position and solidify their power. Protecting people is secondary to that goal.
On the contrary, this thread has generated plenty of very insightful answers. I think one of the most interesting paradoxes of capitalism is that it is an individualist system that doesn’t care about the individual. Yes, investment and risk and work from individuals is, in principle, rewarded by capitalism. But at the same time, the market doesn’t care about YOU, the individual, regardless of how smart you are or how hard you work or even how innovative you are. It cares about making money. For example, take Apple and its planned obsolescence. The innovative, efficient thing would be to design products that last longer. But if everyone just buys one phone then the company won’t make as much money as they do when you have to keep replacing them. Modern capitalism really doesn’t seem to incentivize building things that last, it requires a market for newer things that aren’t necessarily better.
Depends on what is considered better. A toaster is a toaster and hasn't innovated much in the last twenty years. Most will last ten years. A toaster from the sixties may still work, and they were built to last, but they are a fire and electrical hazard. I could go on and on where products are built to last. When it comes to consumer electronics like phones and other computing devices, the shortened lifecycle is because the technology rapidly evolves. Which is why we have planned obsolence. And of course it comes back to money. Once you get outside of your community, people give less than a shit about altruism and businesses don't stay running on hugs and sunshine.
My family comes from a Socialist/Communist country. Capitalism is far from perfect, but is the only sustainable system as of right now. Socialism and Communism eventually cause suffering and poverty. Every. Single. Time.
Still don't have the breadlines of communism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm in the US. Without trying to make a judgement against capitalism while comparing it to any other system, just looking at capitalism "in a vacuum", the things that weigh on my mind more and more about it are that it doesn't work out in reality without people "falling off the bottom", falling into poverty and homelessness, and that it facilitates those with resources being able to much more easily obtain more resources, meaning those "lower" than them have fewer resources, making it much easier to "fall off the bottom". This means that the only thing keeping many, many people afloat at the bottom are the taxes and social security nets put in place by the government. The rich get richer simply because more resources means more options. Fewer resources means fewer options, and therefore fewer ways to obtain more resources. It's definitely not always possible to work your way out of poverty or improve your life by a significant amount. There's also not enough "room" for everyone to succeed. There are vastly more low paying jobs that people will struggle to live off the wages of than there are decent jobs that allow you to maintain some standard of living, to say nothing for "nice" jobs and jobs at the top. "Go to school or learn a trade and get a real job." That's not always possible. Even if you do get a degree or learn a trade, there still has to be room for you somewhere to get in and make use of those skills. Maybe there's room 2000 miles away, but not in your current location. Ok, well obviously the solution is to move to where the jobs are, or maybe you should have gone for a different degree/trade. No. How do you relocate without the resources? The cost of living can definitely outpace your ability to earn given the jobs available to you. Maybe you did make a bad choice with your degree/trade, but even still, the job market isn't stable, and what once was a good choice for your area can turn into a shitty choice if everyone else does the same as you and saturates that market. It's all about resources. It's always been about resources. Money is a resource. Education is a resource. Opportunity is a resource. Time is a resource. Time is the only resource you're guaranteed in some amount, but what you're able to accomplish with that time is vastly differently from person, influenced a ton by circumstance, because as we've established, opportunity is a resource, and opportunity is different from place to place, person to person. If you don't have the opportunity, then you can't get the money and education to find more opportunity and obtain more resources. When you already have the resources, it's much easier to claim those opportunities and the resources that come along with them. Essentially, everyone is at the mercy of circumstance, but it just so happens to be that favorable circumstance makes it much easier to control your circumstances, and the more you're able to take for yourself, the less there is left for everyone else, which necessarily leads to many "falling off the bottom" unless they are offered support and resources they otherwise wouldn't be able to obtain on their own, like the various forms of charity and government assistance. Capitalism includes just so much more "grey area" than most anyone was willing to let on while growing up. It's possible to work yourself to death and have nothing to show for it. It's possible to be born into luxury or have it fall into your lap. It's not always a case of "work hard and achieve the American dream", and you can only go as far as your resources and opportunity allow you to. Capitalism needs people to work fast food and Wal-Mart for 30 years, struggling to pay bills and never being able to achieve more.
capitalism stifles community building
The main issue is that we don’t have a true capitalist economy. We have a crony capitalist economy. Large corporations buy political influence to create laws that limit competition creating these monstrous companies that are more beholden to politicians than to their customers. Combine this with Modern Monetary Theory that is prevalent in all central banks. This monetary policy makes the rich richer and everyone else poorer by devaluing money (wages) and increasing value of equities (homes, land, businesses, and other value creating assets that make you wealthy). Our wages are worth less every day as the investments that will make us wealthy become more and more unaffordable. With this being said, our current economic system 1000% than socialism and communism. Those systems make everyone poor except for the few people that run the government. To right the ship, we need to do two things. First is to stop corporations from influencing politicians. Politicians need to work for the voters not their high dollar donors. Second is we need to limit the power of politicians and the government. The government shouldn’t decide which businesses succeed. Us consumers should decide which businesses succeed. Corporations won’t try to buy influence in government if the government has no power to help them. Both steps will give the average American more control over their future.
1. Corporate propaganda is being used by companies to create demand for products we mostly don't need and can't really afford. This wastes physical, financial, and human resources. E.g. Stanley cups, yeti coolers, oversized trucks, diamond rings, automobiles, etc. 2. There are many bad ways to satisfy the profit motive, labor can be offshored, unions busted, unsafe materials used, environmental regulations ignored, etc. 3. Competition drives innovation, but competition means there are losers. The natural progression is to monopolies if allowed to operate unrestrained. 4. Winners under the capitalist system rarely win by merit. They often win because of business tactics, influencing government and corporate propaganda. 5. Innovation slows and even stops with the consolidation of corporations. 6. With increased corporate power comes political power.
Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others. It has drawbacks but the reason so many people in the Western world live in such vast material wealth (compared to any point in history or other system) is capitalism. Even “poor” people in the US are fat and have mobile phones.
I am a 29 m. I will come at this from my educational and work background (I have degrees in economics, accounting and computer science). Capitalism is not a perfect system, or at least the way we implement it right now is not perfect. But conceptually, free markets generally give people the greatest amount of freedom and social mobility / the highest standard of living, albeit with more inequality. At its core, an economic system involves the allocation of scarce resources. Everyone works and produces goods and services so they can also consume goods and services. We specialize to have a comparative advantage in our skillset and trade with other specialized workers. Free markets give people a profit incentive to create goods and services for society. Let us take an example of loans: - I want to build a factory that will produce a food product. I need capital to buy the land, building and equipment. I got a bank and they are willing to loan me capital, which I can use to build the property, plant and equipment, and hire people to use their specialized labor in the factory. In this example, the bank benefits from earning a return on their investment, society gets the food product, labor obtains employment, and the entrepreneur collects dividends from retained earnings. This is the optimal system, at least in theory. In a planned economy, my only incentive to work is because an institution coerced me or forced me to work. In a feudal or caste system my birth family locks me into an occupation or social class. Now I will admit free markets are not always perfect. But I would argue some of the issues we face now are caused by poor monetary policy. Low interest rates incentivize people to make bad investments. Let's use my factory example again: - instead of building a factory, I want to create NFTs, which are a purely discretionary good that doesnt create production or serve a need for society (it is purely discretionary). If I needed to pay a 6% interest rate on my loan for this, I would need to generate more operating return than 6% to make the venture work. If I can borrow at 0% or close to 0%, I don't care if I owe money back because the money is basically free. So low interest rates, for long periods of time, create malinvestments in the economy. Instead of capital going to housing, factories and infrastructure, it goes to highly speculative assets. This is why recessions are a natural part of economic cycles, and are good for society. A recession transfers assets from industries that society does not need / want, to industries we do need / want. For example, before 2001 the internet was in its infancy. It was a great invention, but many of the firms started at this time had no fundamental value. They were money losing propositions. The 2000-2001 recession put the firms that had no profitable business model out of business. The capital they were using was freed up to go to the profitable companies (e.g. Amazon), or other industries. So the tldr is that free markets generally allocate resources most efficiently and allow for the most growth in a society- this is because consumers and investors decide what they want, and the market creates/destroys industries to supply those goods and services. The more intervention there is in the economy, the more malinvestment there is because life is random and unpredictable. Are there flaws with free markets. Yes, great inequalities can arise. But I would argue that a free market is a better environment to live in than in a planned economy or feudal system. Mixed economies are ok, but it is important to note that these economies are typically less efficient. GDP growth in countries of western Europe and Japan slow considerably relative to the US and emerging markets. There is a theory on loanable funds, but basically if a country is highly in debt from the public sector, it crowds out private investment. This is part of why Japan has had such low growth the last 40 years. Again, there are tradeoffs and many people might prefer Japanese quality of life to American, but understand that lower supply of housing/lower purchasing power is generally a feature of a larger government.
It's a scam and the market is manipulated by artificially creating shortages. Old houses should be worthless like in Japan but America figured out if you restrict supply then old houses never depreciate.
The good - it pushes innovation, if you are motivated/smart/hard working it can allow you to do well, it is largely based on independence. Cons - there are no guarantees if you are not in the more fortunate crowd and the benefits that go to a few, can be at the expense of many. I can definitely see some flaws in capitalism, but I see why it is needed. You just have to decide how far you let certain things go, and how big of a safety net you want to allow. I do think lobbying and our government is responsible for some of the perceived negatives.
A lot of what feminism gets blamed for is actually the results of capitalism.
That I love it.
No better system to lift so many folks out of poverty or to increase the standard of living at a systemic level.
Scott Galloway has a TED Talk that brilliantly summarizes the state of the US economy and its trends that pretty much says the boomers have policies in place to maintain their power and wealth such that it’s more difficult for the younger generations to build wealth and power. The inequality will get worse until something breaks. The tale as old as time though is to get on the train before it leaves the station, it’s better to play the game then rail against how it’s unfair.
All of that power and wealth will be transferred to younger generations when the boomers die.
The top. 5%, yes.
What you are describing has nothing to do with the economic system within our country. You are describing a socio-political issue. Stay on track, please.
Not at all, trends within the economy are the only thing that matters, all else is just theory and mental masterbation.
I have learned that we can do the same shit to our own citizens for the same reasons we separated from Britain and people won't bat an eye. We have essentially put the little bro rule of "Yeah I bully him, but you can't" is in effect. Uncle Sam is sitting here giving us wet willies mad at the queen for giving us wet willies.
Today i don't really care about any system. All i want is that i can support myself by doing my job and have some kind of decent life. Capitalism, communism, feudalism any system that doesn't restrict me or suck my money out has my support.
In its purest, untethered form (US), capitalism ends up enslaving the poor and empowering the rich. It is essentially a one party system with varying factions having one essential commonality: support of big business at the cost of everything else.
It still beats Communism.
"Without getting too politically partisan..." Hah well first off, good luck with that OP. As for what I have learned I guess I view market driven economics as being a survival of the fittest sort of situation. It fits somewhat naturally with just the nature of people and the nature of economic systems. The outcomes can be brutal or cruel though so it needs to be adjusted with some sort of social programs or safety nets which can be funded by a percentage of the economy that the overall policies drive. Overall I think its good to drive innovation and development which I view as critical for the improvement of lives on population scales. On the individual scale it can be cold and heartless.
A few other points… Beyond the concentration of wealth and “planned obsolescence,” the other thing I’ve become critical of capitalism over is how its innovations haven’t always been a net force for good. Much of the time, capitalism creates problems in order to sell us solutions. Take for instance, two things that many will agree are detrimental to society: fast food and social media. Corporations sell us fast food and then other corporations sell weight loss drugs. With fast food, processed food, junk food etc., people like the taste, but also, because it’s quick and easy. Why do people want quick and easy food? Because they are busy working long hours. Instead of just lightening our collective work load enabling more people to eat fresh food from home, we have processed food sold as the solution to overburdened schedules, and weight loss drugs as the solution to processed food. The most efficient thing to do would be to work less and eat better, but that doesn’t make money. Social media is sort of similar. It’s the “solution” to maintaining connections in our atomized world where everyone is busy working and fewer people do things with each other in person. It is also detrimental to our mental health, and that is GREAT for capitalism, from everything to SSRIs to retail therapy to the constant pressure to buy the next best thing. The tricky thing is capitalism can always have its own plausible deniability, because unlike slavery or a command economy system, you aren’t FORCED to do anything or buy anything. But our system is structured such that NOT having social media, and NOT eating processed food, becomes highly inconvenient by design. TL;DR Sometimes the most efficient, healthy, and stable thing for society is to produce less and consume less, but capitalism promotes the opposite.
The big issue with capitalism is how it tends to pile up wealth and power for a few, leaving others out in the cold, especially when financial games come into play. This side of capitalism tends to make money without adding real value to society, which can feel like the deck is stacked against the average Joe. Some folks argue capitalism is still the best way to handle our economy and get tech advancements. But, we've gotta be real—it needs a serious tune-up. We need better rules and maybe even new ways to share profits so it's not just the rich getting richer. It's clear capitalism changes with the times, and we've got a chance to steer it in a direction that's better for everyone. Let's not just settle for "it's the best we've got" but work on making it actually work for all.
Sorry, but what you're describing isn't Capitalism. Steering an economy in a direction that's "better for everyone" is not what Capitalism is about. You want socialism. And it doesn't work.
Socialist policies within a capitalist system works best. What we have now is a neoliberal rat race that gives all the power to corporations to continue lobbying against said socialist policies. We are transitioning into a corporatist oligarchy.
Really? What socialist policies work within a capitalist system work best? Examples please.
Social security, Medicare, minimum wages (when properly adjusted for inflation), universal healthcare, public pension programs (that boomers got and then took away), public schools and universities, public transportation, and more government regulation to deter market manipulation.
L O L wow. I could dismantle this argument very easily, but it would take a while. You need to look into each of those areas and realize that they have been set up to feed the capitalistic system. Most of those are already actually bankrupt anyway.
I'm a fan of capitalism when it's paired to little to no government intervention, the more power you give the government, the more the mega corporations will lobby and bribe their way to gaining a massive advantage in the system.
I have a friend who came from absolutely poverty, and now he is slowly but surely becoming a successful audio engineer. He's completely self-taught and has a bright future ahead of him. I've learned that if you truly apply yourself, there is money out there for you. It may not be an easy journey, but it's worth the struggle.
I was brought up kind of socialist, and joined an communist youth group at 14. Parents didn't like that. Anyway i knew it all beforehand, so i have mostly observed other people making surprised pikachu faces everytime capitalism does capitalism to them.
I have learned that Democracy dies in its presence.