Is capitalism working?

Hard to follow you argument. Many people in this country have worked very hard; saved for the future; and focused on the education of their children. Indeed this has been a consistently observable characteristic of many members of the successive waves of immigrants who came to theis country - Germans, Scotch Irish, Polish, Irish, Ashkenasi Jews from Central Europe, Iitalians, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and recently central Americans. They settled the frontier and our wealth and to a large extent our wealth and power were built on their sweat and tears.

A cynic once said that the economic engine of this country is fuelled by hard working immigrants, but that it turns them into couch potatos in three generations.

Do you fault the Chinese for their work ethic? If it is as widespread and enduring as you say, how can we possibly compete with them?

History provides many examples of formerly rich and powerful states that fell into into poverty and servitude because the beneficiaries of the achievments of the early generations were squandered by subsequent ones on comfortable lives. Do you believe that we can escape that fate?

I see corporate greed as being a bigger problem than couch potatoes and welfare states...

RexRed wrote:

I see corporate greed as being a bigger problem than couch potatoes and welfare states...

It appears to me that you are merely evading questions relating to contradictions in your earlier statements.

What is "corporate greed" anyway? Corporations exist to make a profit: if they don't they either shut down or are bought in a hostile takeover. That, of course, is merely Adam Smith's "invisible hand" directing the allocation of resources to those most capable of delivering high value for the cost involved. The net result is the benefit of all.

The alternatives of centrally manasged economies have delivered only inefficiency, poverty and the loss of individual freedom wherever they have been tried. China certainly did badly as long as they stuck with a Marxist centrally managed economy. Cuba and Venezuela don't appear to be doing very well economically either (never mind the loss of political freedon for their people).

Jobs will move where people can be exploited... If the "world" minimum wage was set high then all people could afford to live by the same/equal standard.

Every one is pointing fingers and blaming each other for why the job market is not stable.

The root of the problem is something logistical. It has to do with minimum wage. I wonder if you averaged all of the global labor wages and came up with a minimum wage and then set that wage globally. Then the incentive to work would be balanced globally... But when you have pockets of disparity then you have corruption and no standards of labor civility that companies adhere to.

Also top wage earners (60-70% on up) should be taxed enough to at least add another half to what taxes the middle class pay. So the top echelon of society should match what the middle class pay collectively. Seems just... with the enormous wealth that accumulates, this wealth comes at the cost of the nation that "we the people" collectively own. Perhaps then we can address the very serious problems we face with our eroding environment and world hunger.

Jobs will move where people can be exploited... If the "world" minimum wage was set high then all people could afford to live by the same/equal standard. When you work someone for pennies you can work them to death, why is it that when you pay them great salaries they lounge around and hardly seem to ever actually work.

If this trade has created a viable capitalistic market in many global areas the hope would be that this global competition would average out the currencies and labor markets would or will average out evenly. The bottom line is that profits will also level out, once profiteering is no longer a large part of the market design then jobs will return and stabilize. As long as these rich republican supporting companies can exploit these poor foreign labor work forces then profit will reign over social prosperity.

America needs to bite the bullet and put everything we have into self sustaining homegrown renewable energy. We are paying everything out in our energy consumption. We pay everything out and should be paying it in and investing in a strong renewable energy infrastructure.

With these few energy solutions people's houses and even entire farms could become energy self sufficient to the point of actually selling surplus energy back to the electric company...

Is capitalism working anymore?

So those big- business, capitalist, money-grubbing, slave-driving, billionaire, corporation fat-cats are the ones who put the communistic, liberal, income redistributing, Marxist, socialist, Che Guavara-loving Obama into office? Got you.