Is Capitalism the Root of Inequality?

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In summary, the conversation discusses the issue of income inequality and its impact on the poor. The question is raised of how much inequality is acceptable if it benefits the poor. The conversation also touches on other factors that contribute to inequality, such as globalization and the dysfunction of the political system. One viewpoint argues that inequality is not the main issue and instead, we should focus on addressing underlying problems such as education and taxation. However, others argue that poverty and inequality are closely linked and that the concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy is a major issue. The conversation also raises the issue of economic mobility and its role in addressing inequality. Ultimately, the conversation highlights the complexity of the issue and the need for a comprehensive approach to addressing inequality and improving
  • #1
Czcibor
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Vanadium 50 said:
Czcibor brings up an interesting point. If reducing inequality is a virtue in and of itself, how much worse off are we willing to make the poor in order to reduce inequality. If we could make the Walton family millionaires instead of billionaires at a cost of $10 for every poor person, should we? $100? $1000? Reducing their quality of life to that of poor Londoners in the 19th century? Poor Calcuttans in the 18th century? Poor Judeans in the 1st century?

This is the other side of the question "how much inequality are we willing to generate if it helps the poor?"

I think that we're discussing wrong subject: "inequality" instead "why the hell the USA experienced quite nice GDP growth but the median income stagnate and whether something can be done about it".
For sure there are:
-some problems with measuring it (smaller households, treating as personal income that what earlier would be classified as corporate income);
-cost of cool electronic toys accessible for masses vs. cost healthcare and education; (cherry pick the one that you prefer and get the answer that you want ;) )
-some dysfunction of US political system where too much money influence system;
-short term calculation (even if everyone would get a few times in his life a huge bonus then the inequality of annual income would go up);
-globalization which makes only some people to face very fierce competition (textile workers hit but not lawyers).

I personally also suspect that inequality to big extend is not the problem to be tackled, but a symptom of underlying problems (like low quality of education for some social groups; or problems with taxing the top incomes).

Maybe we should rather start discussing the other problem? Not as moral issue but as efficiency issue? (Because of my research subject I can say quite a lot about international taxation)
 
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  • #2
Russ_watters says:
"3. We need to stop accepting being lied to about inequality. Inequality isn't poverty. If I give you $1,000 and give the person next to you $2,000, you just got richer, not poorer. If people start recognizing that a rich person getting richer does not mean they are going to have more trouble making ends meet.

Sorta similar to (but backwards from) the politicians who are selling these lies, I think these issues are among the most important issues facing us right now. Much of the reason why our economic mobility isn't as good as it should be and we have perpetually under-achieving classes is that people are belieiving these lies. They believe that no matter how hard they try, they can't get ahead, so they don't try. If, instead, we convince them that they can get ahead (because it is true), more people will try and will succeed."

Poverty has everything to do with inequality. To take an extreme example - a poor person today may have a say live with 2-3 people in a 2-3 room house or flat, have heating, enough food (even too much, they might be fat), entertainment (some sort of TV) etc. This could well more physical comforts than say a nobleman of 1000 years ago but clearly a nobleman would be "rich" and the person of today is still poor. With poorness comes a low status in the social pecking order, a "cant do" mindset, discrimination etc. These all relate to relative wealth not and social discrimination rather than the amount of stuff we own.

Even if the economy grows more than equality it is possible that we are all poorer because relative wealth matters more than actual wealth above a certain level of material welfare.

It is true that being unable to physically survive is fairly rare but this would be a good definition of true extreme poverty. This would in fact be quite common in our society if we did not have social services for the sick, mentally ill and mentally retarded and protections against extreme exploitation, say for illegal immigration without civil rights and protections.

Obviously "poorness" is to do with material assets at a very basic level. Usually we are talking about this level of material deprivation in the advanced world. In this area and poverty and poverty are much more political and social problems.

When people use emotive terms like "the politicians who are selling these lies" one should suspect that the aim is promote a political agenda rather than give an unbiased analysis.
 
  • #3
sgall said:
We need to stop accepting being lied to about inequality. Inequality isn't poverty. If I give you $1,000 and give the person next to you $2,000, you just got richer, not poorer. If people start recognizing that a rich person getting richer does not mean they are going to have more trouble making ends meet.
For me it's all about power. Money is power. That is the inequality. People with money have the means to influence decisions that effect those on the other end of the spectrum disproportionately. A poor family vs a billionaire radical ideologist is not healthy contest.
 
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  • #4
A large income inequality could be more palatable if there were tremendous economic mobility. Alas, economic mobility is not all that it could be here in the USA.
 
  • #5
Greg Bernhardt said:
For me it's all about power. Money is power. That is the inequality. People with money have the means to influence decisions that effect those on the other end of the spectrum disproportionately. A poor family vs a billionaire radical ideologist is not healthy contest.
I've got a question to you:
a) is the aim rant against rich, with narrowly selected target with ignoring all other destructive interest groups?
b) is it intended to change a subject concerning political power in democracy and how well organized interest group can hijack it?

Because in case "B" you can select plenty of well organized interest groups that are able to hijack it. Rich in general would be among them, but in the USA you would have to add farmers, elderly (very disciplined voters), Jewish lobby, organized labour groups which power is no longer based on trade unions but on gov granted certification giving them monopoly, moral panic groups which aims are mostly intended to shift gov policy and getting money is a secondary aim (religious groups, ecological groups, pro-gun groups), etc.

Plus in case "b" you risk that I would start to draw cases from Poland where "rich" is smaller problem than "trade unions and similar groups". Where there were cases of big business was even once trying to shield public interest against interest groups. (yes, crazy, but it happened)
 
  • #6
I know I am coming in very late into the discussion ...

In developing countries which are "globalised" - the inequality has risen tremendously.
And that's resulted in a whole host of problems, especially crime ...

The "trickle down" theory doesn't work too well, and the gap only widens.
 
  • #7
Greg Bernhardt said:
For me it's all about power. Money is power. That is the inequality. People with money have the means to influence decisions that effect those on the other end of the spectrum disproportionately. A poor family vs a billionaire radical ideologist is not healthy contest.
That sounds like a campaign finance law issue to me. In any case, I agree with Czcibor that there are a lot of powerful special interest groups that probably should be reigned-in. I'd be very much in favor of limiting the influence of the very rich (or, perhaps more specifically, financial institutions?: rich people are not a unified group and have different special interests) if it also meant limiting the influence of labor unions. Both create big problems. Ultimately though, I think the most destructive group is the collective "old people" of the last 80 years.

But political influence is only one - and, IMO, a minor of the impacts of wealth/poverty.
 
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  • #8
AlephNumbers said:
A large income inequality could be more palatable if there were tremendous economic mobility. Alas, economic mobility is not all that it could be here in the USA.
While I'm aware that that's true, I'd really like to see research (I've looked but haven't had much luck) discussing whether mobility isn't great because of some external barrier or whether it is mostly a matter of personal choice.
 
  • #10
russ_watters said:
This implies to me that for China, at least, that isn't true: http://www.economist.com/news/china...s-murder-rate-are-misleading-murder-mysteries
I don't quite understand. Are you saying that China's crime rate is not really going down because its not globalised ?

I was talking especially of India (obviously :smile: ).
Here, globalisation has resulted in much more rampant corruption, the scale of which has increased ten fold, and the rising inequality has resulted in a lot of social malcontent and crime.

I am not a big fan of capitalism and globalisation - as you probably know already :wink:

Human nature being what it is, its wrong to encourage some of its bad aspects with the so-called free market. And the profit motive as a prime motivator can be downright harmful to the human species in so many ways. Corporations run the world today. They own the media and shape public attitudes and policy.
 
  • #11
russ_watters said:
I'd really like to see research (I've looked but haven't had much luck) discussing whether mobility isn't great because of some external barrier or whether it is mostly a matter of personal choice.
Considering that citizens of the US have a stronger belief in meritocracy and their own relative economic mobility, I would argue that it is probably more because of external barriers than personal choice. Check out the Pew Economic Mobility Project for a good, unbiased analysis of the issue.
 
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  • #12
Vanadium 50 said:
Suppose I could wave a magic wand, and double the income of everyone in the bottom half, and triple it for everyone in the top half. This would benefit everybody, at the cost of increasing inequality. Would this not be a good thing?

I think that this could very well not be a good thing. The United States, for example, is a society in which one's ability to affect political and social change increases with one's wealth. Those in the bottom half have disproportionately less political and social power. What you suggest would make it even more unfair for those in the bottom half. However, I think that the root of the problem is that money equates to power.

Vanadium 50 said:
I don't think opening this discussion to the entire field of socio-economics is likely to be helpful.

Unfortunately, I think that this issue is too complicated not to be opened to the entire field of socio-economics. If that means that we should leave some parts of the discussion to those with greater knowledge of socio-economics (definitely not me), then so be it.
 
  • #13
Siv said:
I don't quite understand. Are you saying that China's crime rate is not really going down because its not globalised ?

I was talking especially of India (obviously :smile: ).
Here, globalisation has resulted in much more rampant corruption, the scale of which has increased ten fold, and the rising inequality has resulted in a lot of social malcontent and crime.

I am not a big fan of capitalism and globalisation - as you probably know already :wink:

Human nature being what it is, its wrong to encourage some of its bad aspects with the so-called free market. And the profit motive as a prime motivator can be downright harmful to the human species in so many ways. Corporations run the world today. They own the media and shape public attitudes and policy.
How are you showing the increase of corruption and blaming it on globalisation? No, seriously I mean no mythical "good old days", but some measurable statistics. As fair as I know India has long, outstanding history of bureaucracy and corruption at least for many decades (I'd guess earlier, but that what I've read did not bother with analysing further). With protection against globalisation - gov intervention, protectionism and gov micromanagement being at that period additional source of corruption.

I'm curious about you having any hard data. (or at least good anecdotes :D )EDIT: Concerning crime (like not gov sanctioned murder), I thought that the general idea was the following:
1) totalitarian/authoritarian (yes, Polish Peoples Republic was by this metric better than Republic of Poland)
2) stable democracies
3) countries in transition
4) failed states
(plus there is a necessary adjustment for development level, which often moves some more developed democracies to top rankings)
 
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  • #14
AlephNumbers said:
Alas, economic mobility is not all that it could be here in the USA.

What measure of mobility are you using, where is the US on this metric, and where do you think it should be?

I think "mobility" as an overall good suffers from the same issue as "inequality" - if it is a good in and of itself, how does this balance against other goods: in short, how much are you willing to hurt the poor in order to achieve it? With mobility, we have an example - there was a huge, and probably unprecedented, increase in social mobility in modern times: Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. I would argue that this is a counter-example to any claim that mobility in and of itself should be a goal.
 
  • #15
Siv said:
I don't quite understand. Are you saying that China's crime rate is not really going down because its not globalised ?
The article may have been critical on stats that China's crime rate is going down, but what it isn't doing is going up. And China is the biggest (literally and figuratively) example of a developing country developing and globalizing. So it directly contradicts your thesis.

Do you have any examples with data you can point to?
I was talking especially of India (obviously :smile: ).

Here, globalisation has resulted in much more rampant corruption, the scale of which has increased ten fold, and the rising inequality has resulted in a lot of social malcontent and crime.
It wasn't obvious to me, but in any case, do you have any data on increasing crime rates in India?

This says that over the past few decades, some crimes have risen and others have fallen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_India
I am not a big fan of capitalism and globalisation - as you probably know already :wink:
Well, this thread isn't about globalizationa and crime, per se, it is more about equality and therefore poverty. India's poverty rate is dropping -- so you have to weigh the good effects against the bad.
Human nature being what it is, its wrong to encourage some of its bad aspects with the so-called free market. And the profit motive as a prime motivator can be downright harmful to the human species in so many ways.
The profit motive in and of itself should not be a harmful thing. Profit is making money to support yourself. It's self-reliance. Crime and corruption can exist on all levels, so people can commit crimes in search of profit whether they are rich or poor.
 
  • #16
AlephNumbers said:
Considering that citizens of the US have a stronger belief in meritocracy and their own relative economic mobility...
Do they? I'm not sure that's true. I've known poor families who actively crushed the dreams of their children. And I know people on the other side: poor families who outright demanded their children succeed and they did (stories of immigrants' children being typical).

[edit]
To me, the saddest aspect of this issue is that the US government provides a relatively sure pathway out of poverty to kids and so many fail to take it. The high school graduation rate is only 81%, which means 19% fail to get a high school diploma: that's higher than the poverty rate. But getting that diploma means a 50% increase (!) in average salary.
 
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  • #17
Vanadium 50 said:
I think "mobility" as an overall good suffers from the same issue as "inequality" - if it is a good in and of itself, how does this balance against other goods: in short, how much are you willing to hurt the poor in order to achieve it? With mobility, we have an example - there was a huge, and probably unprecedented, increase in social mobility in modern times: Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. I would argue that this is a counter-example to any claim that mobility in and of itself should be a goal.
To be Captain Obvious, when people say they want "equality", they mean they want everyone equally rich and when people say they want "mobility", they only want upwards mobility. The reality that both of those could go in either direction tends to be ignored.
 
  • #18
Czcibor said:
How are you showing the increase of corruption and blaming it on globalisation? No, seriously I mean no mythical "good old days", but some measurable statistics. As fair as I know India has long, outstanding history of bureaucracy and corruption at least for many decades (I'd guess earlier, but that what I've read did not bother with analysing further). With protection against globalisation - gov intervention, protectionism and gov micromanagement being at that period additional source of corruption.

I'm curious about you having any hard data. (or at least good anecdotes :D )
The scale of corruption has certainly gone up, and no, it cannot be explained by inflation :smile:
Earlier it used to be a few crores, (A crore is 10000000 Rs.), but now, after all these multinational corporations have come in, a few thousand crores has become kind of the average rate of corruption.

Re: inequality, yes there are some statistics. The wages of skilled labourers are said to have gone up 20-40% in the last several decades, while those of unskilled labourers has remained the same (in some cases, not even adjusting for inflation).
And we're no longer in the "early" stages of globalisation either. Its been several decades.

But more anecdotally ... a lot of the new jobs that have come up, the semi-skilled variety, in the last few decades, are those of the household help. People who are closely associated with those whose lifestyle has gone up, thanks to globalisation - the maids, nannies, nursing attendants, chauffeurs etc.. These people are daily looking at and working for these affluent homes, while not having anywhere near that spending power themselves. These folks are certainly above the poverty line but that's about it. A lot of the recent urban crimes can be directly or indirectly attributed to this. Its extremely unhealthy to have this kind of inequality in society.
 
  • #19
russ_watters said:
The profit motive in and of itself should not be a harmful thing. Profit is making money to support yourself.
Thats a very simplistic way of looking at it, and its also very wrong.

The profit motive totally nullifies any long term progress. Human nature is extremely short sighted. And capitalism glorifies in that.
Getting profits today is far more important than any benefits to humanity several years from now.
And these corporations, who glorify the profit motive, are funding most, if not all, research.
So all research suffers and is never really accurate. The scientific method is used erroneously and imperfectly.
No one cares for how things affect our health, our environment nothing. Today's profit is more important than anything else. Technology is growing by leaps and bounds and corporations are freaking out, everything else be damned !

Any social benefit is a trickle down, incidental sort of thing, and most always a question of too little too late.

I know we are digressing but could not leave that unanswered :wink:
 
  • #20
Siv said:
Thats a very simplistic way of looking at it, and its also very wrong.

The profit motive totally nullifies any long term progress. Human nature is extremely short sighted. And capitalism glorifies in that.
Getting profits today is far more important than any benefits to humanity several years from now. So all research suffers, and corporations, who glorify the profit motive are funding most, if not all, research.
Those last two sentences appear to me to directly contradict each other. If the most profitable and profit-hungry companies (tech companies, pharma companies, oil companies) are also those who spend the most on research, that tells me that the research doesn't suffer because of the profit motive. Indeed: those companies recongize that research creates profit.

I'll certainly grant you that in some cases companies will choose short term profit over long term profit, but both of those are profit motives and you seem to be focusing only on one. Beyond that, every poor person who works a menail job is also doing so for a profit motive. You seem to be thinking "profit" is something only companies or rich people are after. You couln't be more wrong.
No one cares for how things affect health, our environment nothing. Today's profit is more important than anything else.
You couldn't be more wrong here either. The air/environment in the US has gotten cleaner over the past few decades because people do care.
 
  • #21
Vanadium 50 said:
What measure of mobility are you using, where is the US on this metric, and where do you think it should be?

PursuingAmericanDreampdf.pdf

I think that in a country where a CEO is going to make 250 times the wages of the lowest paid worker in their company, I think that, ideally, the lowest paid worker should have a better chance at being able to "pick themselves up by the bootstraps" and get to the top. I am sorry that I cannot specify exactly how much better I think mobility should be. None the less, I find it alarming that the US has one of the largest income gaps and one of the lower job mobilities.
russ_watters said:
Do they? I'm not sure that's true.

200705 (1).pdfI found those papers on the internet. I am assuming since they were uploaded to public domain I can post them here. Obviously, I didn't write them. They seem to support my assertions.

russ_watters said:
To be Captain Obvious, when people say they want "equality", they mean they want everyone equally rich and when people say they want "mobility", they only want upwards mobility. The reality that both of those could go in either direction tends to be ignored.

Forget that I ever mentioned socio-economic mobility. I just meant that if the US is going to allow the CEO's of corporations to donate as much of their money as they want to whichever political candidate will allow them to make more money, then it should at least not be so difficult for people in lower income brackets to get to higher income brackets so that they can actually have some political sway.

I think a good way to combat this would be to have publicly funded elections. Or, at the very least, a significantly lower limit on how much an individual or corporation/organization can donate to a political candidate. If you think that I just want everyone to be equally rich, you either did not read all of my comment, or you did not think about anything I wrote. I will now elaborate upon what I meant by "equality". I think that every individual that is governed by a government should have about the same amount of political influence. I do not think that everyone should have an equal amount of money. I hope that is clear.
 

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  • #22
When I say publicly funded elections, I mean that I think that the government should give each candidate a certain amount of money for the candidate to use to run for office.
 
  • #23
russ_watters said:
when people say they want "mobility", they only want upwards mobility. The reality that both of those could go in either direction tends to be ignored.

Every measure of mobility I have seen has involved percentiles (possibly aggregated into larger units like deciles or quintiles). Such a measure, by construction, has as much downward motion as upward motion - it's not that motion can go in both directions, it's that by definition it must.
 
  • #24
Vanadium 50 said:
Every measure of mobility I have seen has involved percentiles (possibly aggregated into larger units like deciles or quintiles). Such a measure, by construction, has as much downward motion as upward motion - it's not that motion can go in both directions, it's that by definition it must.
I was fully aware of that. Russ, I do not appreciate it when people unwarrantedly assume that I have no knowledge of what I write about. In fact, I find it quite insulting.
 
  • #25
AlephNumbers said:
I find it quite insulting.
Actually, I'm really not insulted at all. I just felt like I had to defend myself against that blanket statement. I want this discussion to continue, with or without me.
 
  • #26
AlephNumbers said:
I was fully aware of that. Russ, I do not appreciate it when people unwarrantedly assume that I have no knowledge of what I write about. In fact, I find it quite insulting.
Check who you were responding to. Also recognize that this is not just a 2 or 3 person conversation: for example, my reply to V50's post was not really meant for him, it was meant for everyone. So to, with his.

And, when in doubt, I think it is better to say the obvious than to assume people know it, particularly in a thread like this, where so many have wrong assumptions. And while not saying the obvious assumes people know, saying the obvious is a matter of protection: don't assume the person is suggesting you don't know.

[Edit] And to be frank, I find your and many others' thought processes here to be underdeveloped/disorganized. People have a lot of gut feelings and perceptions on these issues, many of which are actually wrong or off point. That's part of the reason I state the obvious: because it apparently isn't.
 
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  • #27
russ_watters said:
Those last two sentences appear to me to directly contradict each other. If the most profitable and profit-hungry companies (tech companies, pharma companies, oil companies) are also those who spend the most on research, that tells me that the research doesn't suffer because of the profit motive. Indeed: those companies recongize that research creates profit.
I thought I was being pretty clear ... but maybe not.
Its what they call research. But its not "genuine" research. Its what will support the most expensive concoction and will give them more profit. If there is a cheaper but more effective alternative, they just ignore it. They are not bothered about genuine solutions to the problem but what will give them the most short-term profit !

There are numerous cases of drugs being falsely approved based on made up evidence or ignoring and suppressing evidence that contradicts what the pharma industry want.

And the food industry propaganda is of course, well known and horrendous ...
Using HFCS and all sorts of crap in the processed food, and only bothering about making it more tasty and addictive and totally ignoring any medium or long term effects on the human body. I could go on and on ... people blame science for this, but this is not science, this is capitalism !
 
  • #28
Anyway, some good information and points were posted in the past hour that require some effort to respond to, so I'll get back to this later.
 
  • #29
russ_watters said:
I'll certainly grant you that in some cases companies will choose short term profit over long term profit, but both of those are profit motives and you seem to be focusing only on one. Beyond that, every poor person who works a menail job is also doing so for a profit motive. You seem to be thinking "profit" is something only companies or rich people are after. You couln't be more wrong.

While technically any desire for money could be called a profit motive, common usage often applies to corporations whose mantra is to maximize the wealth of their shareholders. This is hardly the same as going to your job to put food on the table.

Since there has been talk about the profit motive abuses of drug companies in this thread, I asked a physician friend his opinion. He forwarded this abstract of a paper on drug company abuses. Note the use of the term "profit-motive." The authors are not using it to to mean the desire of corporate executives to support their families.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17970244

Profit to me is what is left over after the inputs of production are paid for.

I think that to say that in some cases short term gain trumps long term vision, while again technically true, disregards the collapse of our economy after the crash of the real estate bubble. This involved much of the financial industry, much of the real estate industry from construction to house sales, many personal portfolios, and much more. It had a global effect that is still being felt. A decade of super easy monetary policy is testimony. Many people knew that the bubble would pop. But the short term profits were too great to resist. So how is this national disaster fairly described as ""in some cases"?
 
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  • #30
Siv said:
...
Human nature being what it is, its wrong to encourage some of its bad aspects with the so-called free market. ...
The history of human nature and violence being what it is long before wide spread free markets, I think it unwise to much restrict them and thus encourage more bad aspects of human nature.

For me, any experience with or observation of, say, small business operation indicates this is trivially the case. Human flaws are present there too (exploitation, theft), but overwhelmingly the minimum requirement of those interacting with the public is a polite and fair treatment of the customer, *any* customer, regardless of the tribe of their ancestors. To see the opposite approach visit any division of motor vehicles, loaded with would be Napoleons.
 
  • #31
russ_watters said:
... The air/environment in the US has gotten cleaner over the past few decades because people do care.

Indeed. From EPA emissions trends (http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/trends/trends98/trends98.pdf [Broken], 1900 through 1998:

Particulate matter, down to 23% of its peak in ~1950 (well before the Clean Air Act).
Sulfur dioxide, down to 63% of 1973 peak
Volatile Organic Matter, down to 56% of 1970 peak.
Lead emissions, down to ~4% of 1975 peak.
Nitrogen oxide was harder to bring down in that period, but increases stopped and emissions stabilized by 1980.​

All of these sources have continued to decline since 2000.
 
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  • #32
mheslep said:
The history of human nature and violence being what it is long before wide spread free markets, I think it unwise to much restrict them and thus encourage more bad aspects of human nature.

Even hard line free marketers now agree that the last two decades of deregulated markets have been a disaster. Speculation and lax regulation combined with high levels of leverage have proven to be a recipe for collapse. So why do you think the free market is so good when it has wreaked havoc upon all of us?
 
  • #33
lavinia said:
Even hard line free marketers now agree that the last two decades of deregulated markets have been a disaster.
Then it should be easy to name one, please. While some regulation is prudent, what we have is a nearly monolithic increase in regulation of all kinds and it is this that is hardcore, is the disaster, is wreaking havoc on the those with the least resources.

Pages in the federal registry.
Number of US small banks
Number of Americans 2015 with no full time job, all ages: 200 million.
Number of Americans 2015 with no full time job, age 15-64: 83 million.
 
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  • #34
lavinia said:
Even hard line free marketers now agree that the last two decades of deregulated markets have been a disaster. Speculation and lax regulation combined with high levels of leverage have proven to be a recipe for collapse. So why do you think the free market is so good when it has wreaked havoc upon all of us?
Because capitalism created essentially all of the economic success the world has ever seen. It is the only system proven to work. Don't make the mistake that all capitalists support a "pure" form of capitalism, just like most modern socialists done actually support zero private ownership. Also, over the long-term, regulation has been increasing not decreasing. This isn't the 1880s or even the 1920s.

Also, you drew your timeframe much too wide: 20 years ago was 1995, and from 1995 to 2000, the economy grew rapidly. Yes, there were the starts of two bubbles happening then, but much of the gains were real. IE, there was a tech bubble, but there also was real growth in the tech sector.
 
  • #35
mheslep said:
The history of human nature and violence being what it is long before wide spread free markets, I think it unwise to much restrict them and thus encourage more bad aspects of human nature.

For me, any experience with or observation of, say, small business operation indicates this is trivially the case. Human flaws are present there too (exploitation, theft), but overwhelmingly the minimum requirement of those interacting with the public is a polite and fair treatment of the customer, *any* customer, regardless of the tribe of their ancestors. To see the opposite approach visit any division of motor vehicles, loaded with would be Napoleons.
Human nature certainly existed from when humans existed ... :biggrin:
But my point was slightly different.

There are several horrible aspects of human nature which should be discouraged and, if possible, eliminated. Especially our tendency to value selfish short term gain over long term benefits/gain to all of humanity or the world. Capitalism does just the opposite. It glorifies this selfish aspect of human nature.

Civilisation is all about curbing the bad aspects of human nature and encouraging its good aspects with rational benchmarks (as opposed to religious ones).
 
<h2>1. Is capitalism the only system that leads to inequality?</h2><p>No, there are other economic systems that can also result in inequality, such as socialism or communism. The degree of inequality may vary depending on how the system is implemented and regulated.</p><h2>2. How does capitalism contribute to inequality?</h2><p>Capitalism is based on the concept of private ownership and the pursuit of profit, which can lead to unequal distribution of wealth and resources. It also allows for the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals or corporations.</p><h2>3. Can capitalism be reformed to reduce inequality?</h2><p>Yes, there are various policies and regulations that can be implemented to address inequality within a capitalist system. These may include progressive taxation, minimum wage laws, and social welfare programs.</p><h2>4. Is inequality necessary for a capitalist economy to function?</h2><p>Some argue that a certain level of inequality is necessary to incentivize individuals to work hard and innovate. However, excessive inequality can also lead to social and economic instability.</p><h2>5. Are there any benefits to inequality in a capitalist system?</h2><p>Proponents of capitalism argue that inequality can lead to economic growth and innovation, as those with more resources are able to invest in new ideas and businesses. However, this benefit may not be equally distributed and can also lead to social and economic disparities.</p>

1. Is capitalism the only system that leads to inequality?

No, there are other economic systems that can also result in inequality, such as socialism or communism. The degree of inequality may vary depending on how the system is implemented and regulated.

2. How does capitalism contribute to inequality?

Capitalism is based on the concept of private ownership and the pursuit of profit, which can lead to unequal distribution of wealth and resources. It also allows for the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals or corporations.

3. Can capitalism be reformed to reduce inequality?

Yes, there are various policies and regulations that can be implemented to address inequality within a capitalist system. These may include progressive taxation, minimum wage laws, and social welfare programs.

4. Is inequality necessary for a capitalist economy to function?

Some argue that a certain level of inequality is necessary to incentivize individuals to work hard and innovate. However, excessive inequality can also lead to social and economic instability.

5. Are there any benefits to inequality in a capitalist system?

Proponents of capitalism argue that inequality can lead to economic growth and innovation, as those with more resources are able to invest in new ideas and businesses. However, this benefit may not be equally distributed and can also lead to social and economic disparities.

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