LogFAQs > #962906492

adjl posted...

So... Capitalism, with socialist policies applied as needed to prevent that capitalism from reducing people's quality of life? What a novel concept that I'm sure nobody has suggested before as being a way to improve countries that are taking capitalism too far.

I wouldn't call it that. It's more of capitalism with a government in place that has placed a higher value on the quality of life for it's citizens than other endeavors. The high taxes simply add more fuel for them to burn in the fire to keep the engine going. For better or worse a lot of America's wealth goes into things like the military which a lot of these other nations simply don't do. It's made America arguably the strongest military in the world, but it's also COSTLY! I'm not going to debate if America should or shouldn't be doing that, just accepting that it is. I'm certain that if America adjusted it's budget percentages (within reason) to mirror many of these nations we'd see a drastic QoL improvement for all of America's citizens but it wouldn't be without sacrifices.

I also feel like a lot of Americans have come out against capitalism because, for all intents and purposes, capitalism has failed and collapsed into what is effectively an oligarchal corporatism (not sure if that's the right word). Jobs get exported overseas while wages get kept low for the average citizen in an increasingly starved job market. Prices go up through inflation while incomes remain stagnant or even go down. Many people need multiple jobs just to be able to be classified as 'poor'. Meanwhile the heads of major companies horde wealth to the point where they could probably use $100 bills as fireplace logs and not even notice. They seem to dictate policies and hold sway in government equal to, if not superior to, people. Many go to college for degrees and get into massive debt only to find a job market that puts them on-par with the people who never went to college if not worse off due to 'lack of experience' and so-forth. When presented with that it's easy to believe that capitalism has unconditionally failed due to the personal misery many live in. I suspect a lot of people don't so much 'support communism' as they are 'sick of capitalism and want it gone' and they're willing to take ANYTHING to replace it and Communism has that nice promise of helping the worker out...