Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[georgephillip]

Where is Democracy to be found in a world where the three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined GDP of 47 countries?

A world where the richest 2% of global citizens "own" more than 51% of global assets?

Ready for the best part?

Capitalism ensures an already bad problem will only get worse.

"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states that income inequality 'first started to rise in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in America and Britain (and also in Israel)'.

"The ratio between the average incomes of the top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent in the world increased from 78:1 in 1988, to 114:1 in 1993..."

"Stiglitz relays that from 1988 to 2008 people in the world’s top 1 per cent saw their incomes increase by 60 per cent, while those in the bottom 5 per cent had no change in their income.

"In America, home to the 2008 recession, from 2009 to 2012, incomes of the top 1 per cent in America, many of which no doubt had a greedy hand in the causes of the meltdown, increased more than 31 per cent, while the incomes of the 99 per cent grew 0.4 per cent less than half a percentage point."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

There are alternatives that don't require infinite "growth."

 

[Godboy]

No one has benefitted more from capitalism more than poor people. Their quality of life is a million times better than it used to be.

 

[georgephillip]

No one has benefitted more from capitalism more than poor people. Their quality of life is a million times better than it used to be.

Do you have any proof of that statement?

"In a world of plenty why are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people vulnerable at all? The vulnerable and exploited exist because of an inherently unjust social-economic system, which has caused extreme global inequality and built a divided and fractured world society."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

 

[Spiderman]

No one has benefitted more from capitalism more than poor people. Their quality of life is a million times better than it used to be.

Do you have any proof of that statement?

"In a world of plenty why are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people vulnerable at all? The vulnerable and exploited exist because of an inherently unjust social-economic system, which has caused extreme global inequality and built a divided and fractured world society."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

I don't really care about other countries.

Just compare the "poor" in the US to the rest of the world and you have to come to the conclusion that our system is better for poor people.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Seeing how much of modern technology wouldn't exist if not for capitalism and freedom of thought. I'll just have to say that life would be utter hell without capitalism.

When has pure socialism been successful? The human economy works like a engine...You need input and out put. Socialism is only good at output....

 

[Mac1958]

There are alternatives that don't require infinite "growth."

Great, so what would you like to see?

Specifically?

.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Increasing growth = growth of hope and living standards.

What could be better for the poor?

 

[BobPlumb]

Want income equality, move to Haiti!

 

[Seawytch]

No one has benefitted more from capitalism more than poor people. Their quality of life is a million times better than it used to be.

Do you have any proof of that statement?

"In a world of plenty why are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people vulnerable at all? The vulnerable and exploited exist because of an inherently unjust social-economic system, which has caused extreme global inequality and built a divided and fractured world society."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

I don't really care about other countries.

Just compare the "poor" in the US to the rest of the world and you have to come to the conclusion that our system is better for poor people.

Right...fuck income inequality because our poor have microwaves! We win!

 

[midcan5]

Read this book or even just the chapters on Capitalism. It is twenty years old and reads like it was written this past year.

"The idea of Capitalism as a venture within society or between societies based upon cooperation and mutual profit is thus absent from the multinational model, and increasingly it is absent from the smaller managed corporations. Precisely that cooperation has made Japan's success possible. All the Japanese particular peculiarities, which we are now attempting to imitate, are merely consequences of that cooperation. That is why our efforts to imitate them resemble parody more than they do reorganization. You cannot have a Friedmanite view of market forces or a business school idea of business as structure and then expect to benefit from the cooperative methods proper to the Japanese or to the Swedes or even to the Koreans, to take three very different examples. The market approach and the cooperative approach are mutually destructive." p390 John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'


"The effect of this tandem is to put downward competitive pressures on the northern United States; on Canada, now linked southward by a continental economic integration pact; and on other countries who wish to compete in these markets, or to compete with their exports. The Maquiladora experiment has been so successful that corporations have pushed the American and Mexican governments towards a full-scale economic pact. The Mexicans hope that this will lead to an influx of capital, new jobs and an improved economy. But the interest of the investors is primarily in cheap, unsecured labour and unregulated industrial production standards.

Why would sophisticated, technocratic employees seek aggressively to destabilize the structures of their own countries in order to give comfort to the sort of social systems which their fathers rejected as criminal less than a century ago? And why would they or we entrust any part of our fundamental needs to unstable societies which have not yet gone through the economic and political turbulence which surrounds most industrial revolutions? No doubt the managers in government and industry looked at their flowcharts and thought there was no other way. It apparently did not occur to them to question the effects of this strategy on their own society." John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'

 

[ScienceRocks]

Education and ability to hold onto more wealth is the way to grow the middle class.

infrastructure, science, r@D, education, etc is balanced with a system that allows people to create businesses @ wealth.

 

[Mac1958]

.

I'll try again.

Clearly there are people here who are more than willing to point out what they perceive to be the evils of capitalism.

So, and I'm sure you've thought this through, what precisely would you like to see? Let's get specific here, with ideas and/or examples of the following:

• New regulations you'd like to see on business
• Specific marginal income tax rates
• Macro comparisons with other countries
• Constitutional amendments, if any
• New culturally-oriented laws, if any
• Any other specifics of any kind

Let's take full advantage of this forum, and of the anonymity provided by the internet, and really get into the nuts & bolts of what you'd really like to see. You don't like capitalism, great. Take the reins, what, precisely, is your answer for America?

And by the way, it would be great if you could identify potential problems with each idea, so that we can all understand that you've thought it through and recognize red flags that we would need to consider and address upon implementation.

Thanks.

.

 

[Geaux4it]

Income inequality builds ambition which makes for a strong United States

-Geaux

 

[BobPlumb]

Do you have any proof of that statement?

"In a world of plenty why are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people vulnerable at all? The vulnerable and exploited exist because of an inherently unjust social-economic system, which has caused extreme global inequality and built a divided and fractured world society."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

I don't really care about other countries.

Just compare the "poor" in the US to the rest of the world and you have to come to the conclusion that our system is better for poor people.

Right...fuck income inequality because our poor have microwaves! We win!

And electricity and running water and food to eat........a hell of a lot more food than what is considered poor in third world, non-capitalist countries.

 

[Stephanie]

they want us all "poor" so they can crow we are now all EQUAL

While our masters in government who oversees all the "poor" who are the worker bees they assign jobs in their kingdom are living the lifestyles of the RICH AND SHAMELESS

 

[LordBrownTrout]

Capitalism has done more good for the poor than any other system combined.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

It is always funny (and telling) that all anti-capitalist books are written by people who have never done anything outside of the theoretical world. This professor or that professor, or some political think-tank etc. make up 99% of socialist and anti-capitalism material.
What is also funny, is the people who fall for their ludicrous idealism is people who also have never accomplished anything.

 

[peach174]

http://www.policymic.com/articles/47817/the-one-chart-that-proves-capitalism-works

Capitalism is getting the poor in South Africa out of poverty.

It's big Government control & interference that causes more inequality.

 

[Seawytch]

.

I'll try again.

Clearly there are people here who are more than willing to point out what they perceive to be the evils of capitalism.

So, and I'm sure you've thought this through, what precisely would you like to see? Let's get specific here, with ideas and/or examples of the following:

• New regulations you'd like to see on business
• Specific marginal income tax rates
• Macro comparisons with other countries
• Constitutional amendments, if any
• New culturally-oriented laws, if any
• Any other specifics of any kind

Let's take full advantage of this forum, and of the anonymity provided by the internet, and really get into the nuts & bolts of what you'd really like to see. You don't like capitalism, great. Take the reins, what, precisely, is your answer for America?

And by the way, it would be great if you could identify potential problems with each idea, so that we can all understand that you've thought it through and recognize red flags that we would need to consider and address upon implementation.

Thanks.

.

Well golly batman, you got me. I'm just a poor stupid election worker and not an economist, but even a poor stupid fucking election worker can see that the income inequality in this country is unsustainable. This moron also knows that we've had this kind of inequality before. What did we do then?

 

[occupied]

There used to be an incentive for the wealth to somewhat trickle down as a consumer with disposable income was the goal of capitalism but today the financial markets are so rigged that we are in effect paying tribute to these people and the goal is simply to skim off the top of everything while contributing little to overall prosperity.