Most people do not even understand what capitalism is thanks to the term becoming conflated with greed. And as the poll shows, not supporting capitalism doesn't mean supporting socialism.
In my experience, people who criticize this article are probably benefiting from "capitalism" (the majority of people on here, I reckon, do), meanwhile those struggling from inequality, not being here, will fail to have their voice heard. And so the echo chamber ensues.
That being said, capitalism and having things like free healthcare and education are hardly mutually exclusive. So I think the article's conclusion, "In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy...", (more the poll) are a bit misleading.
I can tell you that if you asked the poorest in America if they believed private ownership of property should be illegal in the US they would disagree.
Socialism to most Americans is free healthcare and college. Capitalism is lobbying and the abuse of government sponsored monopolies.
Unless you mean before written history then no. Governments have been mediating property disputes at least as far as the written word and likely though the last 100,000+ years.
Do you believe that when we all lived in huts that the feudal lord would send out knights to defend you if your neighbor decided to take your property?
Under a medieval feudal system, most people did not own property the way we think of it today; the feudal lord did. If the lord wanted to take all your clothes and throw you off their land, they could, with impunity.
That said, yes, the feudal lord's band of merry thugs would keep the peace, because peasants can work harder if they're not squabbling with each other.
It's not that clear cut. If a poor person gets robbed today the cops will do basically nothing. Feudal lords will defend vs Viking raids. So, they both sit betweeen 0 and 100% on this.
Upholding the rule of law (punishing fraud, theft, murder, and other infringements of the rights of others) is the job of the government in a free market system. Protecting consumers from themselves and picking businesses to subsidize/grant privileges to is not.
The gray area, which I consider to fall in the 'upholding the rule of law' category, are consumption-based regulations or incentives, where a practical piece of society (like burning fuel) infringes on the rights of many others to a small degree, and this is where a carbon tax could easily fit in a free market system. In fact, it could be argued that the system is freer than if there were no pollution taxes at all, because then people would be allowed to infringe on the property rights of others (via shared atmosphere, oceans, climate) unhindered.
alright. I'll bite. I have made almost no money in the past year, and my bank account is nearly zero. I had a relatively middle class upbringing (but for reasons I'd rather not go into) my family is currently bankrupt.
Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of money are stolen from poor people like me by the government through various processes, the biggest of which is inflation. This money is largely redistributed to cronies - the easiest of which to see are the big contractors. Less obvious are the banks and directly profit off of low-interest loans by flipping them to higher-interest borrowers, and even less obvious is wall street (whose coffers are filled by middle class people pushed into protecting their assets from inflation).
This is Capital-ism (in the marxian sense) -- the philosophy deciding that the pursuit of capital is a good unto itself. Unfortunately, the state has decided to attempt to 'harness' capitalism for its own idea of 'social good' which of course basically taints the non-zero-sum nature of free exchange with the zero-sum game of political hierarchy. The more this happens, the greater there will be inequality. It's a direct consequence of the first principles, and is unavoidable.
If you have a bank account of almost zero, inflation can't possibly be stealing money from you (unless you also have gobs of cash under a mattress somewhere).
Blaming wage stickiness relative to prices is different than blaming inflation. And, outside unions and jobs with competitive labor markets, the best advocate for wage un-stickiness many workers have is government involvement via the minimum wage.
96% of hourly workers already earn more than minimum wage, so it shouldn't be the first place to look at improving wage stickiness. Start with the cost of employment, primarily health care, which has sucked up a lot of money that should have gone to wage increases.
Let me try a different tack. Wages used to go up without relying on minimum wage. Wages have flattened, so there are a bunch of other issues that should be looked at before just forcing wages up, which can have all sorts of unintended consequences, especially if the real reasons wages are flat aren't addressed first.
You're right. Raising or lowering minimum wage purchasing power is worthy of caution, but having minimum wage track inflation is an economic no-op, not a shift in policy.
it's not an economic no-op, because then the fight begins over who gets to measure inflation. Moreover, if the tracking isn't continuous (which it can't possibly be), during the 'between periods' there's wage devaluation which disproportionately affect the poor.
The WHOLE POINT of inflation is that it screws over wageearners:
"even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis."
True, some prices have risen. But, if I may, here are some fun equations to ponder.
1996 (Florida)
Minimum wage $4.25
Gallon of milk $2.73
Gallon of gas $1.26
Dozen eggs $1.31
2017
Minimum wage $8.10
Gallon of milk $3.31
Gallon of gas $2.41(was almost $4.00, if I remember correctly a few years ago?)
Dozen eggs $1.59
1996
Electronics (to do work, using one's natural talents, for example) Expensive.
2017
Electronics: Much cheaper. Adjusting for inflation: much, much cheaper.
Of course, with electronics, there are too many intricacies to list, but here's a specific one. I bought a 512MB compact flash card in 2001, which set me back $249. I think the last one I bought was 2 years ago, or so. It was $60 for 16 GB. I make my living taking pictures. What would 16 GB worth of pictures have cost me in 2001?
I'm happy with these numbers. Simply put, let's think very carefully before using absolutes.
There is acknowledgement of inflation in every one of my examples, save certain electronics. I have no idea how to answer this question as I didn't deny prices increased.
> Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of money are stolen from poor people like me by the government
How much can the government be stealing from you if you have no money? The government is in a position to help you, by providing you with social services, with financial benefits, by providing police to protect you, not to mention debt forgiveness (you mentioned your family is in bankruptcy). None of these things come from free market capitalism; they come from socialist policies intended to help those at a disadvantage. And there should be more of that -- health care, education, etc. Of course, corruption and inefficiency in government exists and is a problem, but the ones stealing money from you are those at the top who are constantly seeking to pay less in taxes, do less to protect to the environment, lobby or contribute (aka bribe) to profit at the expense of public good, outsource or automate away their labor, etc. You mentioned the negative impact of common practices of bankers and Wall Street -- those kinds of things are natural consequence of free market activity.
The family isn't literally in bankruptcy, and you have your history wrong. Bankruptcy reform is largely a consequence of mid 19th century classical liberal intellectual thought which shifted the onus of counterparty risk to the lender. One of the biggest proponents was Bentham, who could hardly be considered a socialist. Benjamin Tucker (whom it appears libertarians and socialists fight over intellectual ownership) was also a major proponent, but it's worth mentioning he was vehemently opposed to state involvement in socialism.
Inflation is useful and is not stealing if the rate of inflation is communicated and stable. If the government decided to suddenly devalue it's currency for the sole purpose of reducing it's debt burden then it could be construed as stealing. If the government communicated that it will devalue its currency at a fixed 2% every year it's not stealing because individuals are able to account for it.
Why is inflation useful as opposed to deflation? If money were to be gaining in value rather than losing value people would be incentivized to do a few things
1. Hold on to money because it would increase in value over time
2. Not make purchases because the object being purchased will require fewer units of money over time.
3. Not invest in starting new businesses because the investor would be losing out on the guaranteed income from holding onto the money along with the fact that whatever the business sells will be worth fewer units of money over time
4. Disincentivize individuals to take out loans to start businesses because the value of the loan will increase in price over time.
However when money loses value over time there are a few nice properties
1. The burden of debt decreases over time
2. People are incentivized to invest their money into business
You seem to believe that secondary markets (namely wall street) are bad things. The secondary market is a good thing because it gives individuals that initially put up capital for new businesses to be created a way to realize the return on their investment without having to wait for dividends. This is good because people that are successful in choosing which businesses should have capital (because their product is valuable) and which businesses don't deserve that capital will be able to take their money and invest it into other businesses which would presumably create products that add value to the world.
Of course there are bad things such as advisors charging excessive fees to ignorant people, corporate raiders, fraudsters, etc.
> 1. Hold on to money because it would increase in value over time
"disincentivize poor people from saving"
> 2. Not make purchases because the object being purchased will require fewer units of money over time.
"push poor people into consuming"
> 3. Not invest in starting new businesses because the investor would be losing out on the guaranteed income from holding onto the money along with the fact that whatever the business sells will be worth fewer units of money over time
"Benefit rich people who seek to invest in venture capital"
> 4. Disincentivize individuals to take out loans to start businesses because the value of the loan will increase in price over time.
"make it easier for people to sell themselves into debt slavery"
> 1. The burden of debt decreases over time
"make it cheaper for leveraged investments, de facto restricted to a small class of investors, to exist"
> 2. People are incentivized to invest their money into business
"push middle class people into subsidizing risky behavior by capitalists"
The reason why I am reframing your statements in this way is because a general policy of inflation affects everyone, and by and large the rich (good for them!) already have ways to escape, if not profit from, the generalized effects. The rest of us do not.
There are additional problems to the "perpetual growth mentality", that I don't want to bring up too heavily, like incentivising continued erosion of the environment, natural resource depletion and less conservation.
> You seem to believe that secondary markets (namely wall street) are bad things.
No. Secondary markets are great. What is not great is forcing people to participate, as in, socializing risk while while allowing the rich and politically connected to enjoy the fruits of the casino capitalism with golden parachutes and fail-upwards scenarios. The traditional left/liberal argument is that we need to add regulation to fix that and protect the investment of general public, which, being anti-state-socialist, I am vehemently against (besides which the long history of added regulations seems to only have the effect of ensnaring more of the middle class into the system of socializing risk and paying off the privileged). The only solution is to not have these insidious little pushes that force the general public into these dangerous activities.
Inflation is like proto-matter from star trek II. You think you know what you're doing, harnessing this praeternatural force that can bend and shape society to what you think are "good things", but the cost is you're really making things unstable because of the fallacy of the unseen.
You can save by investing in the stock market or bonds which is what everyone should be doing
>"push poor people into consuming"
You can save (investing is saving)
>"Benefit rich people who seek to invest in venture capital"
The majority of people starting businesses aren't rich venture capitalists and more venture capitalists fail more often than succeed.
>"make it easier for people to sell themselves into debt slavery"
Getting into debt is definitely slavery, I'm sure the millions of people that have used debt to their benefit agree with you.
I'm done reading your comment, it's filled with unreasoned hyperbolic language that doesn't reflect the truth. Look inward and realize that at some point in your life you became radicalized to the point where you can't even think rationally
That doesn't make any sense. If the rich hoard money the velocity of money goes down, and that causes the value to go down too.
As "mechanism to prevent hoarding" by the rich it's pretty shitty. The rich know how to protect their net worth from devaluating currency (e.g. real estate), and can more easily partake in leveraged investment vehicles which would not be possible with higher interest rates and non-inflationary base currency. You don't see the guy on the tenderloin buying leveraged etfs. For that matter neither does the middle class, who mostly are locked into managed find situations which provide low yield (if you look through to trough, the real value of the stock market has been static for 25 years)
Taking money out of circulation (by saving it/not spending it) reduces supply, practically speaking, raising its value, causing deflation (price levels drop, cash becomes more valuable). This isn't controversial, it can be seen in recent history. Expansionary monetary policy (increasing the supply of money) = inflation, deflationary policy (reducing money supply) = deflation.
> That doesn't make any sense. If the rich hoard money the velocity of money goes down, and that causes the value to go down too.
'Velocity' of money is a shitty concept, but regardless what it means is that with higher velocity, goods and services are in higher demand relative to cash (more transactions over time). This increases price levels but reduces the value of cash.
So velocity going down decreases demand for and the value of goods and services (price levels), increasing the relative value of cash.
This is a sentiment I hear often; "I'm a hard worker, I used to have a job that paid my bills and left a bit over for vacations but now I'm out of work and broke and everyone wants a piece of me and I have nothing left to give."
And it is a puzzling thing. Where did those jobs go? How is personal income so stagnant? And one of the things I note that is different now than was different before, was that by accumulating capital, large companies remove from circulation large chunks of money. It gets trapped by companies demanding it be 'cash or cash equivalents' so you aren't seeing it invested in long term projects. What you see are lots and lots of T-bills and other dollar denominated investments which can be liquidated on short notice. In January of last year the New York Times reported at $1.9T![1] and that has only gotten worse over the last 12 months. Nearly a $1.4T of this held by 50 US companies[2]. It is hard to get a handle on a trillion dollars, but if you take $60,000 a year as a "nice" middle income job in most of the country, half that $1.4T or $700B dollars circulating around in the economy is nearly 12 MILLION jobs!
I assert that because those trillions are sitting there in T-bills they have taken all of the oxygen out of the middle class. Many people when they have a bit more money in their pocket month to month spend at least some of that on things they wouldn't have spent on otherwise. Whether its a new car, or eating out, or vacations, or new furniture, or repainting the house. All of that spending then is going to companies that are hiring people to paint or sell you stuff or serve you stuff or make stuff for you to buy. And those people who doing all this stuff are also spending money and buying stuff etc.
I believe it is entirely possible that this has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism and everything to do with economic capital becoming trapped and stripped of its agency by companies who hoard it for no reason.
Your first paragraph manages to sort of dismiss both sides without really engaging with them. No one wants to be typecasted, even if they have legitimate biases. There's plenty more nuance to contribute to the discussion than simply characterizing most of the participants the same way Upton Sinclair would: by their salaries.
I think you do raise a legitimate point about echo chambers, but how does that observation on its own help us? It's pessimistic. In my opinion, you've not really contributed to a resolution here except to be cynical.
I support capitalism, and I admit it has done very well by me. I don't come from a privileged upbringing whatsoever, but it's now likely my children will. But your binary characterization of the inevitable functions as sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy here - will my opinions on capitalism be viewed as coming from someone who benefits from it because that's the way you framed it? By starting the conversation off in the way you did, I believe your framing antagonizes it prematurely. Why not decry an echo chamber when it actually emerges?
Hmm, you make some good points. I accept that I may have not contributed to the conversation as much as I would like (though "contribution" wasn't really my intention, but your point stands).
However, I will say that the latter part of your post is the kind of comment that I was expecting, for better or worse.
Yes but you see this is my point entirely. Instead of engaging with the discussion you have this aloof cynicism. I didn't even say anything particularly in support of capitalism, yet you dismissed by point as "what you expected." How do you persuade others to see an alternative perspective if you don't first validate their opinions?
For example, I'm willing to engage in dialectics about the advantages and disadvantages of a capitalist system (for example, see my other comment about this article), but you didn't really say anything other than "you make some good points, but this is what I expected."
Take a position. You don't diminish an echo chamber just by observing that it exists, you have to engage with it and attempt to improve the discussion. I called out my potential bias and took a stance. You've not really done either here, which ultimately diminishes the impact of calling out the difficulty in the first place. What was the point?
I see no point in an engagement where two people who are both benefiting from capitalism discuss its merits. My greater point could be that it is our benefiting from this capitalism that we have such privilege to be wasting time on such discussions to begin with. What would be gained from such a conversation, anyway? Even if one of us manages to convince us that capitalism isn't the way to go, or make us think less of it, it's not like we're going to significantly change our lifestyle as a result.
There's a great saying actually that's relevant, but for the life of me I can't remember.
It is specifically those who are benefiting from capitalism who need to be convinced that it is not great, since they are the ones who are propping it up.
I find myself between the two ecosystems quite often and I have to admit I find it hard to know how to represent both sides fairly in discussions. It is definitely not a bipartisan issue. There is no us vs them, it is simply one big group of people where those on the bottom of the system are struggling to affect the smaller changes needed to make life more sustainable for them.
They aren't big changes either, small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals. Those individuals just don't have the capacity after work, or the connections, to advocate effectively for themselves.
> Those individuals just don't have the capacity after work, or the connections, to advocate effectively for themselves.
It's not just that, but it's the fact that it takes a huge amount study to even understand how things like the national economy work. Business people and the upper class already have a huge leg up in this because it's their bread and butter. Poor people and shift workers really need to go out of their way to learn the ins and outs.
And what ruins the whole endeavor is the fact that it is much easier to cherry-pick statistics and spin any given policy decision to adhere to a certain message and populist ideology. Republicans have mastered the art of spinning every talking point to appeal to rural and working class voters while maintaining a firm agenda benefitting the special interests they claim to be against. Not that Democrats are objectively any better—the two party system ensures that anyone with deep enough pockets can just donate to both sides and not worry too much about anyone with real principles standing in their way. But considering that Trump has managed to paint himself as somehow being of and for The People despite the most elite and privileged trust-fund roots imaginable really goes to show what an uphill battle it will be to make real progress.
It is sometimes said that truth is powerful, but in an increasingly complex world with cheaper and cheaper information production and distribution, propaganda is gaining power much faster than the populace's capacity to understand it.
Well most recently where I live, they changed the "non-business hours" penalty rates for workers. Basically if you make most of your money by working a night or weekend job, you can have your pay cut by half of what it currently is.
A win for corporates, and even a win for small businesses who were struggling to afford it.
But ultimately taking the money from the lower end workers and passing it up the chain instead.
Who do you think made that policy change? Who do you think would have fought against it if they both knew about it and had the means to advocate against it?
Those who couldn't fight for themselves were trodden on in that particular small policy change.
I guess I don't see this as a "huge" difference in the grand scheme of things (one locality, largely only impacts non-tip minimum wage workers outside of business hours), though the impacted individuals will certainly disagree.
I guess it seems like there are small changes that have large impacts on specific people, but that's true of all change at the margins.
That was my argument though, small changes in policy help particular groups in huge ways, but those same groups have difficulty making changes or avoiding negative ones because of their position in the system.
To put it into perspective though, that particular law affects hospitality workers the most. More than 60% of women and minorities are employed by that industry here, and so the change directly affects already marginalized individuals.
Their pay is essentially bikeshed by people way above their pay grade and stature in society, who unsurprisingly decided it wasn't that important.
> meanwhile those struggling from inequality, not being here, will fail to have their voice heard. And so the echo chamber ensues.
Those struggling from from inequality are struggling from relative deprivation, not absolute deprivation, while the latter is the only thing that rationally matters. I don't give a damn that Bill Gates is a ridiculous amount richer than me, in fact I admire him and want to be rich too someday. I have enough to survive and buy books, why should I worry about my relative wealth? People on the poverty line in the US ($20k) actually make 2x as much as the global mean wage ($10k). I doubt the people that currently complain about inequality today would be willing to give up >50% of their wage to alleviate it on the global scale, rather they will make arguments about "standard of living" as if they have some fundamental right to live better than those in Africa, poor India, ect... meanwhile I would rather be lower middle class now in US than Rockefeller 100 years ago.
I'm taking a pretty hard stance on this because I feel pretty strongly about it.
Society has to decide what "right" people have to a certain minimum quality of life and access to services. It turns out the level can actually be quite high, one only need look to the highly successful Nordic states.
The argument in america seems to be that if you work hard, you can have a decent life and a house in the suburbs. There are already problems here, what of the people born with disabilities?
But assuming everyone is capable of work, there is still the assumption that adequately rewarding work exists for everybody. Perhaps this assumption can be summarised as the american dream that people need to wake from. Conservatives argue that bringing back well paying, low skilled jobs can restore this dream time. Perhaps if they also rolled back 50 years of legislation and restored the unions this would be true, but times have changed.
The reality is that access to rewarding work almost requires a privileged upbringing. It is completely unfair to assume that if poor people worked harder they would make it. I personally have a friend who grew up in a trailer park. After slogging it out through multiple entrepreneurial ventures, in his 30's he used his life savings to relocate his mother to find better medical care. Imagine at 30, a time when by your argument one should be buying and reading books, the burden of caring for you parents fell solely on your shoulders. Even in your 30's you are at a disadvantage due to your family's wealth.
I personally believe that I should not have such an automatic advantage (for what its worth I do). I would be much happier in a world where I was taxed 50% but lived in a world where I knew the person serving me at a restaurant wasn't potentially a desperate single mother trying to hold down a job to care for her child. A person who probably doesn't have time for books.
Before we get to charity, long story short I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole, and I believe people should be represented in that decision equally. Therefore I don't donate to charity.
> "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them."
You're still making the "standard of living" argument that is essentially hypocritical when you think about it globally. You are extremely privileged to be born in the USA, rich or poor.
Also, you would realistically need to be taxed more like 80-95% to get to the global mean.
In any case their wealth shouldn't be redistributed to the American middle class, rather the global poor, as should the wealth of the American middle class and poor.
I think there needs to be a greater global redistribution effort, but we should start with a more politically tenable one based on nation states.
Also, I have a hunch (but no data) to suggest that a national one may be more economically viable since you redistribute money inside your own economy which boosts demand and increases your tax base.
You say "deserve" as if there is some God or universal parent dictating people's fortune like they are handing out cookies for being a good boy. You might say someone you really like deserves much better fortune then they have realized, but that's something that's completely subjective to you - it's because you yourself like them. You might say that someone who is very fortunate deserves less because you don't like them, that is also very subjective. Since wealth makes you intrinsically less likable, it's pretty natural people would think that the wealthy deserve less. But does that have any objective significance? No.
> shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.
No, you did not take it from them. They willingly gave it to you. You are free to give it to them, but you choose not to.
> I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole
Please do not equate any body of government to "society as a whole."
Even in a true democracy where everyone votes, the majority will never have an adequate enough perspective to ensure funds are correctly distributed.
I don't know your friend. How can I know what he needs? How do you expect the real specific cases to be solved without direct assistance from someone (an individual, a charity) who knows how to help?
Relative and absolute deprivation have absolutely little to do with how the poor feel in the US. Further, your argument basically boils down to "people used to be in concentration camps and you're not, you don't get to be upset."
Being content and happy in life has a LOT to do with expectations and we've done a great job of promoting huge expectations for Americans ala "The American Dream!" Poor people don't care that Bill Gates and Elon Musk have near unfathomable wealth. They care that a lifetime of hard work doesn't guarantee a decent home, access to affordable healthcare, or the security to live without constant threat of basic necessities being out of reach.
Further, the poor should demand more! All we hear from the upper class/business owners is more, more, more! Get leaner, cheaper, and make more money! The poor are only following the examples set by the "titans of industry." And if they didn't constantly ask for more, they would be in even worse shape than they are now.
And finally, if you ever want to convince others of your viewpoint, comparing America to third world countries is not the way to go. You've got to put on your oxygen mask before you help those around you. Otherwise you all end up screwed.
Except global mean wage hardly means anything. There is a difference between income and wealth. The amount of income fails to differentiate between purchasing power at different locations. $20000 dollars in America means poverty whereas in South Sudan it means vast wealth. I bet that those complaining are in the lower bracket of purchasing power parity in their respective country.
The survey you linked to is from 2011, and it was mentioned in the article as a precursor to the April 2016 Harvard survey that the article was written about.
This article is a lot of fluff. It opens with a survey that finds a majority of millenials do not agree with capitalism.
Then it tempers that with the acknowledgement that "capitalism means different things to different people" and that it's unclear if respondents favor another system more, or just don't support anything.
Finally, it sort of meanders around with different people weighing in on what this might mean or what the cause could be.
Nothing really...happened here. It would be nice to see an article (or survey) that does a few things better than this:
1. Engages with both the material and millenials in an intellectually satisfying and nuanced way. Millenials are spoken about here not as members of the conversation, but as specimens. Furthermore, there's frankly not a lot of rigor in figuring out why millenials might not approve of capitalism other than the garden variety "first-pass" analyses you can read elsewhere.
2. Establishes greater rigor in both terminology and discovery. Maybe "capitalism" should have been defined more rigorously in the study. Maybe questions should have been less leading and asked about alternatives if capitalism is not satisfactory to the respondents.
3. Attempts to develop real conclusions instead of polarizing ones. Maybe the survey shouldn't have asked about "capitalism" at all, but instead asked about specific policies in a bipartisan manner. Avoiding the difficulties that make mistakes in my #2 point would be a significant improvement.
In fact, at this point I'm not sure if the goal was to honestly engage with the material or millenials at all at this point, or if there is an agenda for pushing out articles that paint huge demographics with such a broad brush. I don't like feeling that way or questioning this, but it doesn't feel like a real attempt was made here. I honestly left this piece without being able to make any real conclusions. I'm a millenial myself, so take that for what it's worth.
So, what they really mean is that they want less globalization... rather then less capitalism... and we know many older voters also voted for less globalization... so it's like both young and old, stung by globalization and financial crises want to retrench?
The opposing forces are not globalism vs. capitalism, but rather globalism vs. sovereign statism. It's more about the form of government than the mode of the economy.
That doesn't follow from the article. What it said, explicitly, was they want less crony capitalism.
Globalization itself isn't bad. Globalization where the playing field is rigged so that you need to be a billion-dollar corporation to participate in the spoils is.
On the one hand globalization is good --despite cries of "imperialism" globalization has done more to deliver people from abject poverty than anything else --I'd argue much better than if native socialism had taken place and disallowed "imperialistic" global companies from setting foot. Even the Doles and Chiquitas, much maligned for making banana republics out of countries, had a positive impact on those countries... See the alternatives, Bolivia, Paraguay, Myanmar, Nepal, etc. countries where these imperialistic global companies did not set foot and "exploit" the locals.
On the other hand, it does take away from the poor people in developed countries like the US, Japan, the UK, Australia, South Korea, etc. when their economies seek out cheaper labor to make their economies work. If we didn't have imported labor for farm workers for example, we might pay more for grocery goods, etc but we'd have people who are currently out of a job making some money working on farms --working on farms _isn't that much worse_ than working at a McD or Walmart. It's be kind of like grocery goods are in Japan --good quality, but expensive picked by their own farm workers -with the aid of automation.
In addition to that, Globalization has not only enabled seeking cheap labor but also seeking "cheap" regulation and government through globalization. And these kids of things either enable or exacerbate things like the financial crises.
Term limits to check-and-balance power is a pretty good solution. The trick is to make them long enough so good people can do good things, but short enough so that bad people can't do permanent damage.
Part 1: Caps on Exec pay - 25x avg salary for first x # of employees, as you add more employees over your baseline that multiplier goes up for example every 1000 employees = 1x so hire 10k and now you're able to earn 35x median wage -- i.e. more employees = more money for execs, as wages increase that also = more money for execs. That handles the corporate side of the corruption.
Part 2: Enact the Anti-corruption act in every governmental capacity from mayorships to congress to ban all money in politics.
Part 3: Members of congress can earn no more than the average salary of an American Citizen, and their healthcare plan is--the same as the average American w/ no perks above what American's get.
Part 4: Term limits for congress, not life-time bans, but you can only server in congress non-congruent terms, meaning you can't serve back to back, someone else has to take your place for a term. More lifeblood bled into congress can't be a bad thing.
There's a major problem with term limits. Let's say we fix the House of Representatives so that instead of constantly having to run for (re)election with two year terms, we change them to 4 year terms but limit them to 2. Ignoring the major changes that the committee chair/assignment system would require, no longer having a wide range of seniority, the entire body would suffer because the most experienced any legislator could be would be those elected to their second term, i.e. years 5-8 of their House career.
Why is this not good? Who also resides in Washington DC and interacts with legislators, with virtually no limits on their length of involvement in this game? Lobbyists. You set up a system where the Legislators are effectively perpetual newbies with an extremely broad scope of issues they must interact with and influence for the best. Lobbyists with just a decade of experience will know far more than any legislator. There's already a lot of legislation is introduced that's provided verbatim from lobbyists... expect that to get worse, not better, with an even more inexperienced elected officials.
We already have a system of term limits, it's called electing someone else. Don't make it impossible to keep an excellent legislator who has the broad support of their constituents; make it easier to elect someone new to replace a bad one. With the insane costs of campaigning and getting elected, we'd all be better served by simply reducing that barrier to a minimum. Publicly funded campaigns also remove the influence of financial contributions.
Did we not learn that Capitalism failed a long time ago? Why else will we have an Insurance system that is deeply incentivized to not cover your conditions? Why else will we have an Education system that is deeply incentivized to profit off your education and put you in debt for your life?
You may not like capitalism, but it is an indisputable fact that capitalist societies have higher standards of living, including for the poor, than societies that use any other economic system. By that standard, it's more successful than any other system, and hardly a failure, despite what other problems is has.
By the way, the problems you describe about insurance (I assume you mean health insurance) and the high cost of education are not characteristics of most capitalist economies. The United States is an outlier in those areas. Plenty of other capitalist countries have universal health care and free education. Plenty of others have universal health care and non-free education. Only the US has the double-whammy of expensive health care and expensive education.
Not every industry has to be capitalist to have a capitalist economy, just like having a pure democracy isn't the only way to have a democratic political system. The trick is finding the bugs and fixing them.
This is like those surveys that show a majority of Americans oppose Obamacare, but a majority favor almost all of the individual policies that comprise Obamacare when the word "Obamacare" does not appear in the survey.
What I would like to see is a survey that asks people their opinions on certain characteristics of capitalism, without mentioning the word "capitalism." I think the results would be very different.
But it's interesting to see that "capitalism" is becoming a dirty word, when in the cold-war era it was the opposite of "communism" which was a synonym for "evil".
Yet "socialism" is an even dirtier word according to the survey results. What we really have here are young people who are fed up with the low level of economic opportunity available to them, relative to the level of opportunity they expected to have.
During the Cold War, Americans opposing communism believed they were standing up for "freedom" and "democracy"--not capitalism.
People today get so caught up in economic arguments that they overlook the fact that communism was a system of government during the Cold War... a system that required censorship and oppression to maintain power.
The word "capitalist" has never been embraced broadly as a social movement in the U.S. Its earliest usages in the U.S. were largely pejorative, by socialists and communists attempting to highlight differences.
Even today, people who create and accumulate capital in the U.S. rarely refer to themselves as "capitalists." They call themselves entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, executives, businesspeople, investors, etc.
The cold war branding of anything communism/socialism as evil is being seen through as rhetoric, and more people are seeing merit of using blends of governance than pure free market. People 50 years ago had to support one system of face real consequences.
We can now debate the merit of concepts like "privatise luxury, socialise necessity" without being a 'commie bastard'. With the irony being socialist policy was far more in place and accepted 60 years ago when people were so anti-Russia and communism/socialism.
I really hope nations leaders can hear this because if they keep pushing people down with income disparity, access to a reasonable living and opportunity the pressure will build up for a bigger push-back, and potentially something dangerous if driven by anger/desperation rather than a common will to succeed.
I feel this is one of many strengths of democracy where it should allow pressure values to pop safely and society realign much earlier and easily than other government styles.
"The cold war branding of anything communism/socialism as evil is being seen through as rhetoric"
I can hardly believe that anyone who was alive during the 'cold war' would ever say that.
I grew up in an immigrant community in Canada, and most of my friends fled those disastrous, oppressive and totalitarian 'communist paradises' all over E. Europe, China, Vietnam, Cuba - and also - Sweden, by the way. Nordic countries were extremely socialist during the 1950's to mid 1980's.
If you were to try to say this in front of my friend's parents, they'd 'trigger', and kick you right out of the house in anger.
My uncle escaped Communist Hungary as a boy, literally, at night, running through the forest with soldiers chasing he and his mother.
I also remember the very real threat of a nuclear holocaust, in the 1970's to late 1980's it was a very, very real and tangible things.
You can try to 'debate', that's all fine, but communist utopian (read: dystopian) ideals seemed pushed by young naive people in every generation. It's almost as though they don't grasp the lessons of history.
There'll always be need for 'constant vigilance' against oppression by capital, fleeced consumers etc. - but socialism and especially communism are unmitigated disasters.
Communists are definitely 'dirty'. They represent, in reality - the world's greatest movement of mass murder and oppression. The paradox of the constant attraction to communism lies in their apparent goodwill: hey, who wouldn't want 'equality' and 'food for everyone' , yada, yada? Sounds great! Reality is a little harder and sometimes takes time to grasp.
"privatise luxury, socialise necessity". Defining 'luxury and necessity' is the root of that statement.
In Poland, just before the fall of communism, they had only Vanilla, Chocolate and 'Pink' ice-cream, because anything else was bourgeois (i.e. a luxury), and banned. In Bulgaria, there was no ice-cream. :)
Food is definitely on some level a 'necessity' and we definitely have not socialized that. Maybe we can make sure everyone gets healthcare without socializing too hard as well.
The problem with the theory of communism economics is we've only seen it implemented a few times, and they've all been terrible.
Communism, I believe, was to be implemented in a post industrial country. When Russia implemented it, they were pre-industrial, and during a massive war.
As an aside, Germany actually shipped, by train, an exiled Lenin to Russia to destabilize it during WWI.
The problem with communism is the same problem with unregulated capitalism: when you give extraordinary power to a small minority, everyone else suffers.
There's also the problem that violent revolutions are extremely risky, and are unlikely to result in anything but a dictatorship, exacerbating the previous point.
Most failed communist communist governments have these problems, as do most failed capitalist governments. Until you have a peaceful transition into a communist system properly hardened against corruption, you'll have little real reason to believe it is any more flawed than capitalist economies.
You've misunderstood my statement. I understand living behind the iron curtain was horrible for many. Like you I know people that fled this situation. And I am absolutely not advocating/romanticizing communism/socialism.
My point is ANYTHING communism/socialism became a negative point. Kinda how you jumped on my comment without as though I was being a communist/socialist avocate when I was saying elements of have potential. Healthcare in USA is a good real world example. Most developed nations do universal healthcare and its the preferred way for the majority in these countries with clearly better outcomes for the mass. Many Americans still seem emotionally charged against 'socialising healthcare', argueing this is not a viable alternative despite significant empirical examples proving this works well. And also allows for integration with private alternatives for those that want service options.
I just feel the world is getting more ration in its discussion on this point. Plenty if irrationality remaining elsewhere :)
>Communists are definitely 'dirty'. They represent, in reality - the world's greatest movement of mass murder and oppression
The second greatest is capitalism throughout the period of colonialism, and who knows which would win given an equal population at the time. Very few of the things you list have even tangential links to an economic system, and the few that do are confirmation of a central tenet of Communism, the need of a worldwide revolution.
People aren't ignoring the lessons history with their continued support of Communism/Socialism, they're looking past the surface commonly brought up. One of the first acts of the Bolsheviks was the elimination of any Soviet that had been formed. They went for a totalitarian approach from the start, and any small hope of that succeeding died when basically every nation in WWI declared war on them. This is very similar to what happened in the French revolution, and the results are very similar.
Economic theory isn't to blame for the atrocities committed during revolution and by tyrants. There are a host of reasons those events happened, and capitalism isn't some magic shield stopping them from happening again.
Oh, and food definitely has been socialized. The combination of farm subsidies, insurance programs, and welfare programs work to ensure everyone has access to it.
Arise ye prisoners of starvation! Arise ye wretched of the Earth. For justice thunders condemnation, a better world in birth.
I mean, sure, most Millenials probably equate capitalism with neoliberalism and socialism with social-democracy, but hey, given that interpretation, yeah, neoliberalism has ruined quite a lot of our lives.
Like most arguments about "isms" that do not have a single, rigorous definition accepted by everybody, debates about "capitalism" are pretty useless.
Karl Marx means one thing by the word, Ayn Rand means another, most other people in between have other ideas (or vague fuzzy feelings) about it, and yet everybody talks as if their own idea matches someone else's.
I think the rub is that the public debate confuses the triumph of the old British system of aristocracy and privilege with "capitalism". Just as they had the "corn laws" in the early 19th century, we have pharmaceutical import bans, region coding, the "dutch sandwich" and many many other privileges to keep the winners winning with a minimum of effort.
If that's what passes for capitalism, who wouldn't reject it?
People spend too much time debating economic systems when the fundamental problem is a public neglect of equal justice under the law.
If a small bank got into the insurance business prior to financial services dereg of 1999, it would have been crucified by the feds. Citibank and Travelers did exactly that, but since our justice and regulatory structures are pay-for-play, and their market capitalizations were high enough, they were able to proceed without controversy.
On an individual level, our prison population is disproportionately black, and disproportionately locked up on minor charges with an inadequate defense. A prison stay has far-reaching consequences on wealth, employment, and social status.
As a small business person, if I were to copy an idea from Apple (like, say rounded corners), they would sue me into the ground (I think their suit with Samsung is already over $1B). If they were to steal my idea, I would go broke on attorneys fees long before I ever got to a courtroom.
Equal opportunity isn't worth much without equal justice under the law. You'd have a good run, only to have the house take back all the winnings in the end.
Capitalism per se isn't wrong, but becomes extremely dangerous if left uncontrolled as it is today. What is very wrong and dangerous with capitalism is the lack of a line dictating when an entity should stop amassing power and wealth, especially when limited resources are involved. You can print infinite money but you can't create infinite land as the planet surface isn't infinite, which one day will lead us to the point when a few extremely rich people will own the entire Earth surface.
Issues it would be helpful to unbundle when talking about capitalism:
Contract law. "Capitalism" here usually means private voluntary agreements are very sacred or absolutely sacred.
Property law. "Capitalism" here usually means a rule of first possession.
Tax law. "Capitalism" here usually means a presumption against taxation, especially if redistributive in purpose.
Limited liability. "Capitalism" here usually means possibility of absentee investors.
Fiduciary duties. "Capitalism" here usually means duty to maximize shareholders' economic value.
Antitrust law. "Capitalism" here, as term is used by self-perceived opponents, usually refers to corporate bigness.
Etc.
Was Thomas Jefferson capitalist? He hated bigness in all forms.
Was Thomas Paine capitalist? He thought rule of first possession was useful because easy to administer but proposed something akin to universal basic income.
Important to be clear, as many others have noted in the comments.
Yes, because a society based on Marxism will be so much better. Because that is the big idea right? Marxism?
But these millenials who seem to think they are all smarter than everybody else forget one thing: of all the things we tried capitalism and democracy are the least destructive forms of governing society.
Or as Jordan Peterson, a tenured psychologist, has stated several times already: "Those who claim 'With us this time it (Marxism) will become so much better' have no idea what they are talking about"
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadUnregulated supply side economics appears to lead to massive exploitation and monopolies.
That being said socialism and capitalism work together everyday in America. See highways, education, plumbing, etc.
It has been argued that Socialism/government regulation is needed for Capitalism to work optimally.
That being said, capitalism and having things like free healthcare and education are hardly mutually exclusive. So I think the article's conclusion, "In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy...", (more the poll) are a bit misleading.
Here's the actual poll, by the way:
http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publ...
Thanks to twblalock for including the recent poll:
http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-spring-2016-po....
Socialism to most Americans is free healthcare and college. Capitalism is lobbying and the abuse of government sponsored monopolies.
That said, yes, the feudal lord's band of merry thugs would keep the peace, because peasants can work harder if they're not squabbling with each other.
You don't have to go that far back in time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patroon
The gray area, which I consider to fall in the 'upholding the rule of law' category, are consumption-based regulations or incentives, where a practical piece of society (like burning fuel) infringes on the rights of many others to a small degree, and this is where a carbon tax could easily fit in a free market system. In fact, it could be argued that the system is freer than if there were no pollution taxes at all, because then people would be allowed to infringe on the property rights of others (via shared atmosphere, oceans, climate) unhindered.
It's also important to note that the semantics on capitalism is almost always misleading in discussions:
https://chomsky.info/20130305/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9XFBN5X1JU
Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of money are stolen from poor people like me by the government through various processes, the biggest of which is inflation. This money is largely redistributed to cronies - the easiest of which to see are the big contractors. Less obvious are the banks and directly profit off of low-interest loans by flipping them to higher-interest borrowers, and even less obvious is wall street (whose coffers are filled by middle class people pushed into protecting their assets from inflation).
This is Capital-ism (in the marxian sense) -- the philosophy deciding that the pursuit of capital is a good unto itself. Unfortunately, the state has decided to attempt to 'harness' capitalism for its own idea of 'social good' which of course basically taints the non-zero-sum nature of free exchange with the zero-sum game of political hierarchy. The more this happens, the greater there will be inequality. It's a direct consequence of the first principles, and is unavoidable.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2015/home.htm
The WHOLE POINT of inflation is that it screws over wageearners:
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi...
"even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis."
http://wiki.c2.com/?FalseDichotomy
True, some prices have risen. But, if I may, here are some fun equations to ponder.
1996 (Florida)
Minimum wage $4.25 Gallon of milk $2.73 Gallon of gas $1.26 Dozen eggs $1.31
2017 Minimum wage $8.10 Gallon of milk $3.31 Gallon of gas $2.41(was almost $4.00, if I remember correctly a few years ago?) Dozen eggs $1.59
1996
Electronics (to do work, using one's natural talents, for example) Expensive.
2017 Electronics: Much cheaper. Adjusting for inflation: much, much cheaper.
Of course, with electronics, there are too many intricacies to list, but here's a specific one. I bought a 512MB compact flash card in 2001, which set me back $249. I think the last one I bought was 2 years ago, or so. It was $60 for 16 GB. I make my living taking pictures. What would 16 GB worth of pictures have cost me in 2001?
I'm happy with these numbers. Simply put, let's think very carefully before using absolutes.
How much can the government be stealing from you if you have no money? The government is in a position to help you, by providing you with social services, with financial benefits, by providing police to protect you, not to mention debt forgiveness (you mentioned your family is in bankruptcy). None of these things come from free market capitalism; they come from socialist policies intended to help those at a disadvantage. And there should be more of that -- health care, education, etc. Of course, corruption and inefficiency in government exists and is a problem, but the ones stealing money from you are those at the top who are constantly seeking to pay less in taxes, do less to protect to the environment, lobby or contribute (aka bribe) to profit at the expense of public good, outsource or automate away their labor, etc. You mentioned the negative impact of common practices of bankers and Wall Street -- those kinds of things are natural consequence of free market activity.
John Oliver did a good breakdown of how municipalities do pretty nasty things when you can't pay your tickets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto
http://www.academia.edu/6681088/Washing_Away_the_Sins_of_Deb...
Why is inflation useful as opposed to deflation? If money were to be gaining in value rather than losing value people would be incentivized to do a few things
1. Hold on to money because it would increase in value over time
2. Not make purchases because the object being purchased will require fewer units of money over time.
3. Not invest in starting new businesses because the investor would be losing out on the guaranteed income from holding onto the money along with the fact that whatever the business sells will be worth fewer units of money over time
4. Disincentivize individuals to take out loans to start businesses because the value of the loan will increase in price over time.
However when money loses value over time there are a few nice properties
1. The burden of debt decreases over time
2. People are incentivized to invest their money into business
You seem to believe that secondary markets (namely wall street) are bad things. The secondary market is a good thing because it gives individuals that initially put up capital for new businesses to be created a way to realize the return on their investment without having to wait for dividends. This is good because people that are successful in choosing which businesses should have capital (because their product is valuable) and which businesses don't deserve that capital will be able to take their money and invest it into other businesses which would presumably create products that add value to the world.
Of course there are bad things such as advisors charging excessive fees to ignorant people, corporate raiders, fraudsters, etc.
> 1. Hold on to money because it would increase in value over time
"disincentivize poor people from saving"
> 2. Not make purchases because the object being purchased will require fewer units of money over time.
"push poor people into consuming"
> 3. Not invest in starting new businesses because the investor would be losing out on the guaranteed income from holding onto the money along with the fact that whatever the business sells will be worth fewer units of money over time
"Benefit rich people who seek to invest in venture capital"
> 4. Disincentivize individuals to take out loans to start businesses because the value of the loan will increase in price over time.
"make it easier for people to sell themselves into debt slavery"
> 1. The burden of debt decreases over time
"make it cheaper for leveraged investments, de facto restricted to a small class of investors, to exist"
> 2. People are incentivized to invest their money into business
"push middle class people into subsidizing risky behavior by capitalists"
The reason why I am reframing your statements in this way is because a general policy of inflation affects everyone, and by and large the rich (good for them!) already have ways to escape, if not profit from, the generalized effects. The rest of us do not.
There are additional problems to the "perpetual growth mentality", that I don't want to bring up too heavily, like incentivising continued erosion of the environment, natural resource depletion and less conservation.
> You seem to believe that secondary markets (namely wall street) are bad things.
No. Secondary markets are great. What is not great is forcing people to participate, as in, socializing risk while while allowing the rich and politically connected to enjoy the fruits of the casino capitalism with golden parachutes and fail-upwards scenarios. The traditional left/liberal argument is that we need to add regulation to fix that and protect the investment of general public, which, being anti-state-socialist, I am vehemently against (besides which the long history of added regulations seems to only have the effect of ensnaring more of the middle class into the system of socializing risk and paying off the privileged). The only solution is to not have these insidious little pushes that force the general public into these dangerous activities.
Inflation is like proto-matter from star trek II. You think you know what you're doing, harnessing this praeternatural force that can bend and shape society to what you think are "good things", but the cost is you're really making things unstable because of the fallacy of the unseen.
You can save by investing in the stock market or bonds which is what everyone should be doing
>"push poor people into consuming"
You can save (investing is saving)
>"Benefit rich people who seek to invest in venture capital"
The majority of people starting businesses aren't rich venture capitalists and more venture capitalists fail more often than succeed.
>"make it easier for people to sell themselves into debt slavery"
Getting into debt is definitely slavery, I'm sure the millions of people that have used debt to their benefit agree with you.
I'm done reading your comment, it's filled with unreasoned hyperbolic language that doesn't reflect the truth. Look inward and realize that at some point in your life you became radicalized to the point where you can't even think rationally
Inflation is a mechanism to prevent the rich from hoarding cash. The flipside is that people who aren't putting their money to use lose value.
Without inflation, the rich would hoard with impunity.
As "mechanism to prevent hoarding" by the rich it's pretty shitty. The rich know how to protect their net worth from devaluating currency (e.g. real estate), and can more easily partake in leveraged investment vehicles which would not be possible with higher interest rates and non-inflationary base currency. You don't see the guy on the tenderloin buying leveraged etfs. For that matter neither does the middle class, who mostly are locked into managed find situations which provide low yield (if you look through to trough, the real value of the stock market has been static for 25 years)
> That doesn't make any sense. If the rich hoard money the velocity of money goes down, and that causes the value to go down too.
'Velocity' of money is a shitty concept, but regardless what it means is that with higher velocity, goods and services are in higher demand relative to cash (more transactions over time). This increases price levels but reduces the value of cash.
So velocity going down decreases demand for and the value of goods and services (price levels), increasing the relative value of cash.
And it is a puzzling thing. Where did those jobs go? How is personal income so stagnant? And one of the things I note that is different now than was different before, was that by accumulating capital, large companies remove from circulation large chunks of money. It gets trapped by companies demanding it be 'cash or cash equivalents' so you aren't seeing it invested in long term projects. What you see are lots and lots of T-bills and other dollar denominated investments which can be liquidated on short notice. In January of last year the New York Times reported at $1.9T![1] and that has only gotten worse over the last 12 months. Nearly a $1.4T of this held by 50 US companies[2]. It is hard to get a handle on a trillion dollars, but if you take $60,000 a year as a "nice" middle income job in most of the country, half that $1.4T or $700B dollars circulating around in the economy is nearly 12 MILLION jobs!
I assert that because those trillions are sitting there in T-bills they have taken all of the oxygen out of the middle class. Many people when they have a bit more money in their pocket month to month spend at least some of that on things they wouldn't have spent on otherwise. Whether its a new car, or eating out, or vacations, or new furniture, or repainting the house. All of that spending then is going to companies that are hiring people to paint or sell you stuff or serve you stuff or make stuff for you to buy. And those people who doing all this stuff are also spending money and buying stuff etc.
I believe it is entirely possible that this has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism and everything to do with economic capital becoming trapped and stripped of its agency by companies who hoard it for no reason.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporat...
[2] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/14/news/tax-us-companies-offsho...
If so, we simply need to increase the rate of inflation and the cash will start flowing.
I think you do raise a legitimate point about echo chambers, but how does that observation on its own help us? It's pessimistic. In my opinion, you've not really contributed to a resolution here except to be cynical.
I support capitalism, and I admit it has done very well by me. I don't come from a privileged upbringing whatsoever, but it's now likely my children will. But your binary characterization of the inevitable functions as sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy here - will my opinions on capitalism be viewed as coming from someone who benefits from it because that's the way you framed it? By starting the conversation off in the way you did, I believe your framing antagonizes it prematurely. Why not decry an echo chamber when it actually emerges?
However, I will say that the latter part of your post is the kind of comment that I was expecting, for better or worse.
For example, I'm willing to engage in dialectics about the advantages and disadvantages of a capitalist system (for example, see my other comment about this article), but you didn't really say anything other than "you make some good points, but this is what I expected."
Take a position. You don't diminish an echo chamber just by observing that it exists, you have to engage with it and attempt to improve the discussion. I called out my potential bias and took a stance. You've not really done either here, which ultimately diminishes the impact of calling out the difficulty in the first place. What was the point?
There's a great saying actually that's relevant, but for the life of me I can't remember.
They aren't big changes either, small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals. Those individuals just don't have the capacity after work, or the connections, to advocate effectively for themselves.
It's not just that, but it's the fact that it takes a huge amount study to even understand how things like the national economy work. Business people and the upper class already have a huge leg up in this because it's their bread and butter. Poor people and shift workers really need to go out of their way to learn the ins and outs.
And what ruins the whole endeavor is the fact that it is much easier to cherry-pick statistics and spin any given policy decision to adhere to a certain message and populist ideology. Republicans have mastered the art of spinning every talking point to appeal to rural and working class voters while maintaining a firm agenda benefitting the special interests they claim to be against. Not that Democrats are objectively any better—the two party system ensures that anyone with deep enough pockets can just donate to both sides and not worry too much about anyone with real principles standing in their way. But considering that Trump has managed to paint himself as somehow being of and for The People despite the most elite and privileged trust-fund roots imaginable really goes to show what an uphill battle it will be to make real progress.
It is sometimes said that truth is powerful, but in an increasingly complex world with cheaper and cheaper information production and distribution, propaganda is gaining power much faster than the populace's capacity to understand it.
I'm curious to hear what small changes you think will have a huge difference.
A win for corporates, and even a win for small businesses who were struggling to afford it.
But ultimately taking the money from the lower end workers and passing it up the chain instead.
Who do you think made that policy change? Who do you think would have fought against it if they both knew about it and had the means to advocate against it?
Those who couldn't fight for themselves were trodden on in that particular small policy change.
I guess it seems like there are small changes that have large impacts on specific people, but that's true of all change at the margins.
To put it into perspective though, that particular law affects hospitality workers the most. More than 60% of women and minorities are employed by that industry here, and so the change directly affects already marginalized individuals.
Their pay is essentially bikeshed by people way above their pay grade and stature in society, who unsurprisingly decided it wasn't that important.
Those struggling from from inequality are struggling from relative deprivation, not absolute deprivation, while the latter is the only thing that rationally matters. I don't give a damn that Bill Gates is a ridiculous amount richer than me, in fact I admire him and want to be rich too someday. I have enough to survive and buy books, why should I worry about my relative wealth? People on the poverty line in the US ($20k) actually make 2x as much as the global mean wage ($10k). I doubt the people that currently complain about inequality today would be willing to give up >50% of their wage to alleviate it on the global scale, rather they will make arguments about "standard of living" as if they have some fundamental right to live better than those in Africa, poor India, ect... meanwhile I would rather be lower middle class now in US than Rockefeller 100 years ago.
I'm taking a pretty hard stance on this because I feel pretty strongly about it.
The argument in america seems to be that if you work hard, you can have a decent life and a house in the suburbs. There are already problems here, what of the people born with disabilities?
But assuming everyone is capable of work, there is still the assumption that adequately rewarding work exists for everybody. Perhaps this assumption can be summarised as the american dream that people need to wake from. Conservatives argue that bringing back well paying, low skilled jobs can restore this dream time. Perhaps if they also rolled back 50 years of legislation and restored the unions this would be true, but times have changed.
The reality is that access to rewarding work almost requires a privileged upbringing. It is completely unfair to assume that if poor people worked harder they would make it. I personally have a friend who grew up in a trailer park. After slogging it out through multiple entrepreneurial ventures, in his 30's he used his life savings to relocate his mother to find better medical care. Imagine at 30, a time when by your argument one should be buying and reading books, the burden of caring for you parents fell solely on your shoulders. Even in your 30's you are at a disadvantage due to your family's wealth.
I personally believe that I should not have such an automatic advantage (for what its worth I do). I would be much happier in a world where I was taxed 50% but lived in a world where I knew the person serving me at a restaurant wasn't potentially a desperate single mother trying to hold down a job to care for her child. A person who probably doesn't have time for books.
Before we get to charity, long story short I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole, and I believe people should be represented in that decision equally. Therefore I don't donate to charity.
> "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them."
Edward Albert Filene
Also, you would realistically need to be taxed more like 80-95% to get to the global mean.
I think there needs to be a greater global redistribution effort, but we should start with a more politically tenable one based on nation states.
Also, I have a hunch (but no data) to suggest that a national one may be more economically viable since you redistribute money inside your own economy which boosts demand and increases your tax base.
No, you did not take it from them. They willingly gave it to you. You are free to give it to them, but you choose not to.
> I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole
Please do not equate any body of government to "society as a whole."
Even in a true democracy where everyone votes, the majority will never have an adequate enough perspective to ensure funds are correctly distributed.
I don't know your friend. How can I know what he needs? How do you expect the real specific cases to be solved without direct assistance from someone (an individual, a charity) who knows how to help?
Being content and happy in life has a LOT to do with expectations and we've done a great job of promoting huge expectations for Americans ala "The American Dream!" Poor people don't care that Bill Gates and Elon Musk have near unfathomable wealth. They care that a lifetime of hard work doesn't guarantee a decent home, access to affordable healthcare, or the security to live without constant threat of basic necessities being out of reach.
Further, the poor should demand more! All we hear from the upper class/business owners is more, more, more! Get leaner, cheaper, and make more money! The poor are only following the examples set by the "titans of industry." And if they didn't constantly ask for more, they would be in even worse shape than they are now.
And finally, if you ever want to convince others of your viewpoint, comparing America to third world countries is not the way to go. You've got to put on your oxygen mask before you help those around you. Otherwise you all end up screwed.
I think this is the 2016 Harvard poll the article was referring to: http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-spring-2016-po...
Then it tempers that with the acknowledgement that "capitalism means different things to different people" and that it's unclear if respondents favor another system more, or just don't support anything.
Finally, it sort of meanders around with different people weighing in on what this might mean or what the cause could be.
Nothing really...happened here. It would be nice to see an article (or survey) that does a few things better than this:
1. Engages with both the material and millenials in an intellectually satisfying and nuanced way. Millenials are spoken about here not as members of the conversation, but as specimens. Furthermore, there's frankly not a lot of rigor in figuring out why millenials might not approve of capitalism other than the garden variety "first-pass" analyses you can read elsewhere.
2. Establishes greater rigor in both terminology and discovery. Maybe "capitalism" should have been defined more rigorously in the study. Maybe questions should have been less leading and asked about alternatives if capitalism is not satisfactory to the respondents.
3. Attempts to develop real conclusions instead of polarizing ones. Maybe the survey shouldn't have asked about "capitalism" at all, but instead asked about specific policies in a bipartisan manner. Avoiding the difficulties that make mistakes in my #2 point would be a significant improvement.
In fact, at this point I'm not sure if the goal was to honestly engage with the material or millenials at all at this point, or if there is an agenda for pushing out articles that paint huge demographics with such a broad brush. I don't like feeling that way or questioning this, but it doesn't feel like a real attempt was made here. I honestly left this piece without being able to make any real conclusions. I'm a millenial myself, so take that for what it's worth.
Globalization itself isn't bad. Globalization where the playing field is rigged so that you need to be a billion-dollar corporation to participate in the spoils is.
On the other hand, it does take away from the poor people in developed countries like the US, Japan, the UK, Australia, South Korea, etc. when their economies seek out cheaper labor to make their economies work. If we didn't have imported labor for farm workers for example, we might pay more for grocery goods, etc but we'd have people who are currently out of a job making some money working on farms --working on farms _isn't that much worse_ than working at a McD or Walmart. It's be kind of like grocery goods are in Japan --good quality, but expensive picked by their own farm workers -with the aid of automation.
In addition to that, Globalization has not only enabled seeking cheap labor but also seeking "cheap" regulation and government through globalization. And these kids of things either enable or exacerbate things like the financial crises.
if your system can prevent these people from wielding such power, i'd like to hear how!
Part 2: Enact the Anti-corruption act in every governmental capacity from mayorships to congress to ban all money in politics.
Part 3: Members of congress can earn no more than the average salary of an American Citizen, and their healthcare plan is--the same as the average American w/ no perks above what American's get.
Part 4: Term limits for congress, not life-time bans, but you can only server in congress non-congruent terms, meaning you can't serve back to back, someone else has to take your place for a term. More lifeblood bled into congress can't be a bad thing.
Why is this not good? Who also resides in Washington DC and interacts with legislators, with virtually no limits on their length of involvement in this game? Lobbyists. You set up a system where the Legislators are effectively perpetual newbies with an extremely broad scope of issues they must interact with and influence for the best. Lobbyists with just a decade of experience will know far more than any legislator. There's already a lot of legislation is introduced that's provided verbatim from lobbyists... expect that to get worse, not better, with an even more inexperienced elected officials.
We already have a system of term limits, it's called electing someone else. Don't make it impossible to keep an excellent legislator who has the broad support of their constituents; make it easier to elect someone new to replace a bad one. With the insane costs of campaigning and getting elected, we'd all be better served by simply reducing that barrier to a minimum. Publicly funded campaigns also remove the influence of financial contributions.
I'm curious what the results would be for "free enterprise", "free markets", or "private property".
By the way, the problems you describe about insurance (I assume you mean health insurance) and the high cost of education are not characteristics of most capitalist economies. The United States is an outlier in those areas. Plenty of other capitalist countries have universal health care and free education. Plenty of others have universal health care and non-free education. Only the US has the double-whammy of expensive health care and expensive education.
What I would like to see is a survey that asks people their opinions on certain characteristics of capitalism, without mentioning the word "capitalism." I think the results would be very different.
People today get so caught up in economic arguments that they overlook the fact that communism was a system of government during the Cold War... a system that required censorship and oppression to maintain power.
The word "capitalist" has never been embraced broadly as a social movement in the U.S. Its earliest usages in the U.S. were largely pejorative, by socialists and communists attempting to highlight differences.
Even today, people who create and accumulate capital in the U.S. rarely refer to themselves as "capitalists." They call themselves entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, executives, businesspeople, investors, etc.
We can now debate the merit of concepts like "privatise luxury, socialise necessity" without being a 'commie bastard'. With the irony being socialist policy was far more in place and accepted 60 years ago when people were so anti-Russia and communism/socialism.
I really hope nations leaders can hear this because if they keep pushing people down with income disparity, access to a reasonable living and opportunity the pressure will build up for a bigger push-back, and potentially something dangerous if driven by anger/desperation rather than a common will to succeed.
I feel this is one of many strengths of democracy where it should allow pressure values to pop safely and society realign much earlier and easily than other government styles.
I can hardly believe that anyone who was alive during the 'cold war' would ever say that.
I grew up in an immigrant community in Canada, and most of my friends fled those disastrous, oppressive and totalitarian 'communist paradises' all over E. Europe, China, Vietnam, Cuba - and also - Sweden, by the way. Nordic countries were extremely socialist during the 1950's to mid 1980's.
If you were to try to say this in front of my friend's parents, they'd 'trigger', and kick you right out of the house in anger.
My uncle escaped Communist Hungary as a boy, literally, at night, running through the forest with soldiers chasing he and his mother.
I also remember the very real threat of a nuclear holocaust, in the 1970's to late 1980's it was a very, very real and tangible things.
You can try to 'debate', that's all fine, but communist utopian (read: dystopian) ideals seemed pushed by young naive people in every generation. It's almost as though they don't grasp the lessons of history.
There'll always be need for 'constant vigilance' against oppression by capital, fleeced consumers etc. - but socialism and especially communism are unmitigated disasters.
Communists are definitely 'dirty'. They represent, in reality - the world's greatest movement of mass murder and oppression. The paradox of the constant attraction to communism lies in their apparent goodwill: hey, who wouldn't want 'equality' and 'food for everyone' , yada, yada? Sounds great! Reality is a little harder and sometimes takes time to grasp.
"privatise luxury, socialise necessity". Defining 'luxury and necessity' is the root of that statement.
In Poland, just before the fall of communism, they had only Vanilla, Chocolate and 'Pink' ice-cream, because anything else was bourgeois (i.e. a luxury), and banned. In Bulgaria, there was no ice-cream. :)
Food is definitely on some level a 'necessity' and we definitely have not socialized that. Maybe we can make sure everyone gets healthcare without socializing too hard as well.
Communism, I believe, was to be implemented in a post industrial country. When Russia implemented it, they were pre-industrial, and during a massive war.
As an aside, Germany actually shipped, by train, an exiled Lenin to Russia to destabilize it during WWI.
There's also the problem that violent revolutions are extremely risky, and are unlikely to result in anything but a dictatorship, exacerbating the previous point.
Most failed communist communist governments have these problems, as do most failed capitalist governments. Until you have a peaceful transition into a communist system properly hardened against corruption, you'll have little real reason to believe it is any more flawed than capitalist economies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company#Confl...
My point is ANYTHING communism/socialism became a negative point. Kinda how you jumped on my comment without as though I was being a communist/socialist avocate when I was saying elements of have potential. Healthcare in USA is a good real world example. Most developed nations do universal healthcare and its the preferred way for the majority in these countries with clearly better outcomes for the mass. Many Americans still seem emotionally charged against 'socialising healthcare', argueing this is not a viable alternative despite significant empirical examples proving this works well. And also allows for integration with private alternatives for those that want service options.
I just feel the world is getting more ration in its discussion on this point. Plenty if irrationality remaining elsewhere :)
The second greatest is capitalism throughout the period of colonialism, and who knows which would win given an equal population at the time. Very few of the things you list have even tangential links to an economic system, and the few that do are confirmation of a central tenet of Communism, the need of a worldwide revolution.
People aren't ignoring the lessons history with their continued support of Communism/Socialism, they're looking past the surface commonly brought up. One of the first acts of the Bolsheviks was the elimination of any Soviet that had been formed. They went for a totalitarian approach from the start, and any small hope of that succeeding died when basically every nation in WWI declared war on them. This is very similar to what happened in the French revolution, and the results are very similar.
Economic theory isn't to blame for the atrocities committed during revolution and by tyrants. There are a host of reasons those events happened, and capitalism isn't some magic shield stopping them from happening again.
Oh, and food definitely has been socialized. The combination of farm subsidies, insurance programs, and welfare programs work to ensure everyone has access to it.
I mean, sure, most Millenials probably equate capitalism with neoliberalism and socialism with social-democracy, but hey, given that interpretation, yeah, neoliberalism has ruined quite a lot of our lives.
Karl Marx means one thing by the word, Ayn Rand means another, most other people in between have other ideas (or vague fuzzy feelings) about it, and yet everybody talks as if their own idea matches someone else's.
If that's what passes for capitalism, who wouldn't reject it?
People spend too much time debating economic systems when the fundamental problem is a public neglect of equal justice under the law.
Edit: who wouldn't reject these things if they weren't benefiting from them (vast majority of people)?
If a small bank got into the insurance business prior to financial services dereg of 1999, it would have been crucified by the feds. Citibank and Travelers did exactly that, but since our justice and regulatory structures are pay-for-play, and their market capitalizations were high enough, they were able to proceed without controversy.
On an individual level, our prison population is disproportionately black, and disproportionately locked up on minor charges with an inadequate defense. A prison stay has far-reaching consequences on wealth, employment, and social status.
As a small business person, if I were to copy an idea from Apple (like, say rounded corners), they would sue me into the ground (I think their suit with Samsung is already over $1B). If they were to steal my idea, I would go broke on attorneys fees long before I ever got to a courtroom.
Equal opportunity isn't worth much without equal justice under the law. You'd have a good run, only to have the house take back all the winnings in the end.
Contract law. "Capitalism" here usually means private voluntary agreements are very sacred or absolutely sacred.
Property law. "Capitalism" here usually means a rule of first possession.
Tax law. "Capitalism" here usually means a presumption against taxation, especially if redistributive in purpose.
Limited liability. "Capitalism" here usually means possibility of absentee investors.
Fiduciary duties. "Capitalism" here usually means duty to maximize shareholders' economic value.
Antitrust law. "Capitalism" here, as term is used by self-perceived opponents, usually refers to corporate bigness.
Etc.
Was Thomas Jefferson capitalist? He hated bigness in all forms.
Was Thomas Paine capitalist? He thought rule of first possession was useful because easy to administer but proposed something akin to universal basic income.
Important to be clear, as many others have noted in the comments.
― G.K. Chesterton
But these millenials who seem to think they are all smarter than everybody else forget one thing: of all the things we tried capitalism and democracy are the least destructive forms of governing society.
Or as Jordan Peterson, a tenured psychologist, has stated several times already: "Those who claim 'With us this time it (Marxism) will become so much better' have no idea what they are talking about"