Is Capitalism a failure?

It is. Unrestricted Capitalism inevitably leads to an endless boom-bust cycle, creating regular periods of boundless misery. It depletes our resources and poisons and destroys the environment with ever growing speed, concentrates political and economic power in the hands of small economic elite, and forces all others into bondage and poverty.
That is why every prospering nation on the planet, even the most officially vocal capitalist ones, have systems of laws, regulations, workers’ rights, social safety nets and public research and investments in place to keep capitalism in check, though those are under constant attack and derison by right wing demagogues and corrupt lawmakers that are bought by the industry.

It depends.

There is a pendulum, that swings between a more individualistic, capitalistic economy and a more collective economy. Each one gets old and goes to seed as the wealth balance starts collecting in one spot (the 1%, say, or the Party bigwigs), like an off-balance dryer. When that happens, there’s usually some kind of change, the old abusive system gives way, and then the other system is ushered in to balance things out.

So, is capitalism a failure? No, it’s just unbalanced. I’m sure we’ll either embrace austerity and ride it down the rabbit-hole of depression, or have some major changes that spread things more equitably for a while. That will go well, until it all starts piling up on one side again and then we’ll have a turn back to Capitalism to balance it out (Example).

And so on.

Since Capitalism requires constant growth, it is a failure. Constant growth cannot be sustained.

Yes. The market was deregulated so people could use it as their playground. Some of the issues we’re dealing with are related to this.

It did help get us to the point we are at.
Now that we have the technology that can provide for the basic needs of pretty much all human beings, I think that we need to stop being a growth based economy, which promotes greed and selfishness, and start using our technology to promote a rise in our society’s” Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”

@SquirrelEStuff
Government funded research had a lot more to do with it.

YES! It enrichs the rich… and it is based on growth… EPIC FAIL.

@ragingloli Who is the government and where did the majority of the Governments money come from?

@missingbite
Not falling for that.
Had the money from taxation been left in private hands, the private entities would not have made the developments that are vital to today’s world.
No singular private entity would have had the finances or even interest to fund the first forays into space exploration. The first rocket exploding on the launchpad would have meant bankruptcy for any corporation. We would have no satellites, no gps, no orbital cartography.
The Jet engine was a purely governmental development, by Nazi Germany and Great Britain.
The computer also was a public invention, from Charles Babbage’s difference engine that was funded by the British government to help with their bureaucracy, to Colossus, which was created by the British government to crack German military codes.
The Internet is also a governmental development, created to network military computers.
Even when it was done, the private sector was not interested initially because it did not see any use for it.
The WWW was developed at Cern.
The fact that todays Hard Drives have such high capacity is also the result of publicly funded basic research.
Today’s forays into green tech is also heavily reliant on publich funding and subsidies, because the entrenched fossil fuel companies are not really interested.
Even modern research into robotics and AI is the domain of public research and unfortunately the military. (except for Japan, of course, they are obsessed with robots)

Unregulated capitalism with extreme corporate influence in politics is fascism and we are rapidly approaching a fascist state. Electing a corporate fascist like Romney will finish the job, the Speaker of the House might as well appoint him as Chancellor after the“election”. I expect that either the voter I.D, laws or tampering with the electronic voting system will elect Romney, otherwise he will be appointed by the Supreme court, just like Bush.

There is not much of a chance that we will have fair elections again in my lifetime. In fact, I expect that my grandchildren will live under a corporate fascist state. Instead of the state fighting Jews, we sill be fighting Arabs, and Muslims.

No. The failure was in the White House.

Ayn Randism would never work, as we already have tried that in America. I think that capitalism operating in a social market economy can work. In a left leaning aristocracy the government goes out of its way to restrict the freedom of its citizens, and in a right wing corporatist state it is the corporations/banks lobbying and buying the government off to restrict our freedoms for their own profit incentives.

Unfortunately there can never be morality behind profit based incentives, and I believe that eventually capitalism will eventually self-destruct. Will this be a good thing? I don’t know. In the end any type of government or economic system is only as good as the morality of the people behind them, regardless of which system it is.

As others have pointed out above, Capitalism is far from perfect. It creates opportunity for the industrious and incentive to create and invest. That’s good. But the boom and bust cycles and the unrelenting pressure for ever bigger profits are unsustainable, and negative. Keep the good, and innovate around resolving the bad. That’s as capitalist as it gets.

If it weren’t for anti trust, we wouldn’t have cell phones and free long distance or voice-mail.

In the words (word) of the wise Mr Miyagi, “Balance,”
Making capitalism the be all, end all is a sort of idolatry. The same could be said for pure communism. To bad the world doesn’t work in black and white, but to function smoothly a society needs nuance and balance.

@Judi Truer words were never put to print.

@ragingloli That was not my intent. I am fully aware that we need some Government funded projects. When you told @SquirrelEStuff “government funded research had a lot more to do with it” I was simply stating that we are the Government and the Government has little money without capitalism.

For the most part, like it or not, the Government only has money to spend that they take from citizens. Not all but most.

@Judi was correct that we need a balance. Right now with over 50% of households on some kind of social program, you can tax everyone (who actually pay) until the cows come home and we won’t collect enough. Some programs must be cut. IMHO

Yes because a lot of people want it to fail.

@missingbite We all pay. We tax homes. If you aren’t homeless, you pay property tax to the government or to your landlord. Almost all states tax sales. Most people, even the homeless, buy things. We tax gasoline, tobacco, alcohol and a slew of other commodities. Even if you don’t own a car, you pay the gas tax for all the trucks that bring the things you consume to the stores that sell it. We tax income, whether you end up earning more than the bottom 50% or not. We withhold money for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The only taxes the poor do not pay are the Income Tax, the Estate Tax and Capital Gains.

Are you so rich and greedy you want poor people contributing there too, even though they currently don’t make enough to put food on the table and pay rent? Or are you poor too, and just a dupe of the rich people who wrote the current rules and need your vote so they can rape and pillage you one more time?

@ETpro, once again, GA. Would you get out of my head? :o)

@ETpro Please get off your liberal high horse. Your response is a joke.

@missingbite , are you kidding me? His response is spot on.

“I was simply stating that we are the Government and the Government has little money without capitalism.”
That must be why the soviets were kicking the colonials’ arses in space flight until they lost interest in going to the moon. And they ditched the german scientists they abducted after testing the captured V2 rockets, while the Colonies had to put the Head Nazi von Braun in charge of the entire programme to stand a chance.

@ETpro “Are you so rich and greedy you want poor people contributing there too” GA, go get them!

@GracieT You can’t be cruel enough to kick me out! I like it so much in “here”—(or should I say “her”)—.

@missingbite Thanks for confirming you aren’t a 1%er.

@Judi I am pretty certain @missingbite isn’t kidding.

@Ron_C Thanks.

@Judi No, I’m wasn’t kidding. I agreed with you that we need balance and @ETpro agreed as well. Then he decided I needed a high school civics lesson and went on to insult me. So yes, while his response was technically correct, so was my answer that seemed to set him off.

Like it or not, almost if not half of the US population is on some sort of social program wether it be food stamps or section 8 housing or whatever. Liberals seem to think that all we need to do is keep spending and tax the rich. It won’t work.

My problem with @ETpro‘s response was not his facts, but his delivery. I’ve seen it a thousand times.

@ETpro No, I am not a rich greedy 1%er that wants the poor to pay more in taxes. I am also not a poor dupe. I make a great living and donate about 30% of my income to charities including sponsoring a little girl whose parents can’t afford her. Just because I don’t agree with what seems to be your “tax the rich, they are evil” mantra does not make me greedy or stupid. For someone that seems intelligent you also seem to have a huge chip on your shoulder.

@missingbite, that balance includes tax increases when there are extraordinary expenses. To inact tax cuts while at the same time starting 2 wars was, to put it kindly, irresponsible. The proof is the fact that it threw us into a huge recession. (We only call it a recession because people are afraid of the word depression.)
It’s time to make the correction. If I ruled the world, the Bush tax cuts would completely expire until we got these wars paid off. Since few would agree with me, I would accept only raising them for the most wealthy.

@Judi I really didn’t mean for this to get off on a tax rant as that wasn’t the question. However since it is part of capitalism I’ll continue with my line of thinking.

I can agree that we need to pay off wars and that they were a huge burden on our economy. The problem with raising taxes in this economy is that it won’t help. We do need a total revamp of our tax system as well as getting entitlement spending under control.

Like I stated earlier before being called a greedy 1%er or stupid, we could tax all billionaires at 100% and it won’t pay off our debt. A large chunk of that debt is social programs. Look at Greece. They don’t have wars to pay for and they are BROKE.

Like it or not the vast majority of our federal budget is not defense, it’s social programs that need to be reformed or we will be broke as well.

In 2011 20% of the budget went to defense and security. Another 13% was spent on infrastructure, education, science and medical research, non security international, and other. That leaves 67% on some sort of social program. Some of it we contribute to not in the form of a tax and some of it we don’t. Like it or not we can’t afford that much longer. IMHO

Have a great conversation because I’m sure someone will come along and say we need to be more like the Soviets.

@missingbite the beauty of those controlling the discussion is their ability get people with the same interests to fight eachother. You have dirt poor tea party people fighting to insure the rich keep their tax breaks and golden parachutes. The government unions versus industrial unions. Ordinary citizens willing to fight their neighbors and family to protect international corporations. This is all a real shame, it seems that we have met the enemy and he is us.

I suggest that we all work to get rid of corporate influence, limit the circular track of executive corporation people then to congress and back again.

We need a legislature dedicated to citizens not to corporate bosses. We need government financed campaigns, we need to insure that international corporations never again get hold of our country.

I’m considering joining the Republican party because we have been going at this all wrong. We need to recognize that both parties are corrupted and the only way to change them is from within.

@missingbite Taxes do come into the discussion of capitalism, because you correctly note they have a role in how well it works. We are really not overtaxing the rich, and nobody in any position to propose serious policy is talking about doing so. The top marginal tax rate on income over $200,000 was 94% for a time during WWII. It stayed between 90 and 70% throughout the Post War Boom, the greatest spurt of industrial growth that America has ever seen. Of course, those high rates only applied on earnings above $200K. The first $200K was taxed at far lower rates. And we created our share of millionaires and billionaires during the post war boom. We also built the world’s strongest middle class—which drove the economy.

We did great under Clinton as well with a top marginal rate of 39.6%. Clinton created more jobs than any president since FDR. Bush cut taxes for millionaires to 35% and had the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. The really rich, the billionaires, are generally taxed at around 15%—the capital gains tax. All the tax cuts for the rich have not worked to create jobs. They have starved government of the money needed to invest in the future, and they are causing the middle class to shrink. No middle class, no consumer engine to drive consumption. Billionaires only create jobs when there is demand. They don’t hire lots of people to make stuff that will sit in warehouses because nobody can buy it.

Romney’s economic plan is to cut taxes further for the rich, and eliminate the capital gains tax. And he wants to raise taxes 50% on the bottom tax bracket. That’s not the way to make capitalism work for any but the wealthiest.

@ETpro If you really believe that people were paying those rates during or after WWII and not dodging their tax payments then there is no use continuing this discussion. Most wealthy Americans used loopholes to avoid the high tax rate.

BTW…Job growth really took off under Clinton during his second term when he LOWERED taxes. Just as he has stated he would NOT follow Obama and let the Bush tax cuts on anyone expire.

@missingbite Americans are taxed less and receive less from their government than any advanced country. What we really need is to restore stability to our government and taxing system. That can be done by eliminating corporate influence in the government by a system of laws fines and jail sentences similar to what existed before the civil war. Eliminate capital gains after the 1st million dollars.

Initiate an executive responsibility law similar to the rules that regulate doctors and lawyers, after-all how can you justify allowing CEO to run a company into the ground then get a golden parachute when he’s fired?

The right is supposed to big on personal responsibility so they should welcome laws like those mentioned, above and the tax for trying to freeload off the medical system.

Nobody creates jobs if there is no demand, nobody!!! To create demand you must build up the middle class, they’re the ones that support markets and spend most of the money they earn. If the private economy doesn’t do it, as demonstrated in the 30 years since Reagan, the government must. We need infrastructure, a nationwide rail system, and many things that the government is tailor made and originally tasked to do. That includes Prisons and the Post office, two things that must strictly be government functions.

@missingbite You can look at the percent of GDP the federal government collected over time to see the truth. I don’t dwell in an information free zone. I call ‘em like I see ‘em—and check the instant replay to see that I got the call right.

We have not trimmed loopholes for the rich. Lobbyist aren’t dropping $3.5 billion in Washington to lobby for punishments on the rich. They are paid by the wealthy, and their job is to get government favors for their employers. We have far more loopholes now than we did in 1945. But that’s just facts, and I understand how they can’t be allowed to interfere with ideology.