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Who benefits from US-style 'capitalism'?
Re De-regulation
Spot on. Capitalism is just the tyranny of the rich. It means they control the media, they control the politicians, and the legal system, etc. It's not freedom. I can't own a newspaper publisher or a TV network, because I'm not a billionaire like Murdoch. Here in the UK, we are becoming more and more market-orientated,
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The gap between rich and poor has grown bigger each year, and our unions are a pale shadow of their former selves.
Who benefits? Not me.
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with business making inroads even into our socialized healthcare system... and all under a so-called "Labour government". The gap between rich and poor has grown bigger each year, and our unions are a pale shadow of their former selves. Who benefits? Not me, I'm a nurse, and my pay is squeezed as prices get higher and wage increases tinier.
At least we haven't got Limbaugh, though. That guy is covering up a lot of inadequacies.
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Who benefits? you ask, but we both know the answer: People who "matter", people who are connected and already ahead in the game. People nothing much like you or I.
I'm actually a fan of capitalism, but that's not the system we're living under. When corporations are commingled with government and laws are written primarily to keep business concerns happy, that ain't capitalism, it's just fascism. And lordy, the economics of the UK you describe sounds a lot like America, but I sure do envy your health care system.
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I would describe your version of capitalism as welfare state capitalism, where the money is accumulated through enterprise and then people are taxed appropriate to their means, to provide health and welfare for all who need it.
My main problems with capitalism are 1) the grossly uneven opportunities, and unfair outcomes it produces, i.e. a person can work eighty hours a week in India and never have enough money to feed self and children, while Paris Hilton spends more on her make up than the Indian factory worker makes in a year... 2) the fact that there is a market for everything from child porn to human organs (it produces those sharks who know no bounds in a desire for profit)... 3) that democracy is for sale, and the Murdochs of the world can pump out lies and distortion to their hearts content... There are more reasons but that's my starters.
As for socialism, the forms called socialist i.e. USSR, China etc were disastrous, though there have been good aspects to some of the Latin American countries in terms of health care, education, etc, and Hungary wasn't a complete disaster either. None of them are/were really socialist in a Marxist sense however. Stalin (a shit of epic proportions) went on a very unMarxist path in his desire to create socialism too quickly and in one country... and the other Bolsheviks weren't that great either, though they were viciously opposed by the best socialists, who led the Kronstadt rebellion against them.
I reckon that you might say that well-regulated capitalism would be the best of all possible worlds, and certainly welfare state Sweden seems like the country that has the best outcomes of fairness, freedom etc of any that has existed in the modern age. I can live with that sort of capitalism, though it seems that power in a capitalist society always seems to accumulate in the hands of the few eventually.
I'll get behind whatever's the most progressive, fairest option generally though, don't know if I could vote Labour in the UK or Democrat in the US these days though... they seem to have lost their balls.
Great site by the way... and big hugs from Great Britain too old beans. Not that anyone says that in Britain, except in Huge Grant films...
| | As I read your first few paragraphs I thought I might have to write a lengthy response, but really, I can't add much to your fourth paragraph. Utopia is not an option. We'll never be rid of the robber-barons and assorted bastards, so I don't spend much time plotting the perfect economic system, but if I did it would indeed look a lot like Sweden.
As for the Democrats' and Labour's balls, I'd just say it's to be expected. We live in a thoroughly corrupt system, and until it's fixed it will attract only corrupt players. I can count America's principled politicians on the fingers of one hand with a few fingers to spare. Principles don't seem to get anyone elected, unless it's the principle of getting a good price for selling out.
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