Capitalism Crashing?

Remember that the 2007-2008 crash happened at the end of the reign of King George W. - not at the beginning of Obama's administration. The crash was preceded by the biggest disparity in wealth between the haves and have-nots since the Great Depression of 1929. The gap grew under Bush and is now embarrassingly worse than some third world countries. We have to end the tax gifts for the super-rich to prevent an even more devastating crash - followed by a possible revolution. Do the corporations think the US is immune to a peoples' coups? I hope we don't ever find out. It could get ugly.

American Capitalism giving way to Corporatism - not Socialism.

Real-World American Economics

Some choose a candidate based on economics. This is the one issue that propels the GOP to obscene heights of campaign donations. What the corporations see as a friendly face determines their donations, and they generally throw enough money at a candidate to make it worth their while to elect a certain party. What voters perceive as the best plan for their money determines their vote. What could a corporation possibly do for you personally by gaining the right to hide money off-shore, out-source jobs, pay less of your health insurance, ignore your pension, or relax safety laws? Nothing. Yes, but, Gayle, what's good for the job-creators, is good for the little people. If that is true, where have they been for the past four years? They have had their super tax breaks. Have they been holding back the recovery of an economy ruined by big corporations and financial institutions in order to make our President look bad during his first four years? Or are they just improving the employment rate overseas and not here? If there are jobs, they say they did it, if there are no jobs, they say the Democrats did it. When they start a war, it is necessary; if the President continues our presence in those countries, he is wasting our defense budget. The facts are twisted so badly that even the intelligent voter has trouble sorting through it.

Just accept it, even your favorite candidate (or mine) is likely to lie to the voter about what he will accomplish just to be elected. No president can turn his policies into law if his party does not hold a super-majority in congress. No president can truly promise to balance the budget or never to raise taxes - even the "read my lips" campaign could not be sustained once George Bush, Sr. became President. Taxes are necessary to maintain what we have set up as a system of government. It is not supposed to be a government of the corporation, but of the people. The wealthy (or nearly-wealthy) should be careful not to buy into the notion that everyone with money will receive the same perks as the super-rich. I am amazed at how many of my Republican friends believe that they know someone in the 1%. They have no idea how far above them these people live. So many middle-class Republicans are actually 1% wanna-be's who believe that if the system favoring that level of income stays in place long enough, they will be among them. It's like the kid on the playground assuming he will play in the NBA, so he wears the shirt and buys the posters. 99% of us will never reach that status, but your support for a system that protects their interests, and elevates them politically, will make the gap between us even greater.

There is a class system in this country. We all know it. This year's Presidential campaigns are based on that knowledge. It is and will be a matter of which side of the fence you believe you are on. If you are disillusioned enough to believe that (even though you are still on the playground) you will be playing for the NBA within the next four years, then vote with the GOP. If you understand that corporation money is buying our government and benefiting only the super-rich, vote Democratic. Eventually, everyone's interests will be served better by a government for the people.

Capitalism?

According to Wikipedia, "Capitalism is the system of raising, conserving, and spending a set monetary value in a specified market. There are three main markets in a basic capitalistic economy: labor, goods and services, and financial. Labor markets (people) make products and get paid for work by the goods and services market (companies, firms, or corporations, etc.) which then sells the products back to the laborers. However, both of the first two markets pay into and receive benefits from the financial market (banks, credit-unions, brokerage houses, etc.), which handles and regulates the actual money in the economic system."

This sounds good in theory, but this system depends on the mutual goals of all three markets to be in agreement for all three to succeed in driving a healthy economy. This system only works when the goods and services and financial markets police themselves toward the betterment of the overall economy - not to the betterment of the personal bank accounts of the few in charge. As people began to see safety regulations, child labor laws, worker's compensation plans, etc. as necessary for the well being of workers, and as incentives for working in certain industries, legislation was enacted to regulate industry. Over the course of our economic history, our capitalist origins have developed into the system we have today.
 
In reality, for well over a century, the American economic system has been closer to a "Social Market Economy" system which combines private enterprise with government regulation to (ideally) establish fair competition - maintaining a balance between a high rate of economic growth, low inflation, low levels of unemployment, good working conditions, social welfare, and public services - by using legislative intervention. Notice the word "social" and not "socialist" is used. A Socialist System has a state-directed economic activity and/or a state-owned means of production. No presidential administration has suggested that American industry be owned and operated by the government. The failure of banks and industries "too big to fail" created an unprecedented problem for the government. The measures taken to keep our economy afloat are not "administration policy."

Entitlement

The word "Entitlement" can refer to the rights, money, or privileges that one should be allowed by law, or heredity, or work performed, etc.); but it can also refer to the expectation of one's rights to those privileges.  The word "entitlement" is used (as are the terms, "liberal," "open-minded," and "intellectual") as a derogatory term in regards to: welfare payments; fair wages; equal wages; social security payments; disability payments; student loans; and any other social program, or equalizing factor, aimed at the general well being of Americans. It helps the cause of the GOP to refer to recipients of those social services as "freeloaders" and "deadbeats" (and Reagan's imaginary "welfare queen") even when they are aware that the majority of government benefits recipients are children and the elderly.

"Entitlement" is a favorite word among those opposed to the Social Market Economy this country has exercised for over a century. Most people believe that the US has a Capitalist Economy, but this interpretation is only correct in that it is the "speech of the day" and has less to do with the actual definition of capitalism than with the strained fear of using the word "social" in a description of our actual working economic system. They frighten the uninformed with the word "socialism" as if the US does not already have social programs entrenched in its culture.

Most of the political world's super-rich are very careful not to use the "entitlement" word when referring to their presumed entitlement to extra tax breaks, exemption from government regulations, and their use of America's vast infrastructure - without paying their fair share in income tax. They believe that, because they have more money than nearly everyone else in America, they should be allowed to hide it from the tax system to which the rest of the country is forced to adhere. They feel entitled to these special privileges by virtue of their great wealth - whether that wealth came from  hard work, heredity, luck, privilege, or corporate theft. What that wealth does afford the super-rich is access to, and control of, America's lawmakers, through corporate-funded lobbying. This greed-driven policy-making has increased the disparity of wealth in the US to that equaling a third-world dictatorship. This is (or should be) embarrassing to a democratic society. 
  
(More on real capitalism and the causes and possible solutions to an embarrassing disparity of wealth, later.)

Church and State

Personal opinion as to who God is, what He wants, and which prophets’ accounts He personally approved have no place in the governance of a free people in a free country. The laws of a Democratic government should be the means by which we permit the freedoms of each individual insofar as they do not infringe on the rights of others. My personal beliefs should have no bearing on your rights as a citizen; neither should yours determine which rights you will allow any other citizen. Our prejudices must be put aside to allow for the freedoms that this nation’s founders hoped to achieve for its people.

Prejudice

The ridiculousness of prejudice is perfectly illustrated by the human fetus - so fiercely protected by the religious right political movement. That fetus – that potential person - already has the genetic make-up that will determine it’s skin color, it’s gender, it’s sexual orientation; and the body in which it grows has determined which country the child will be born into, which religion it will be expected to follow, and which prejudices it will be expected to embrace. None of these is the choice of a child. At what point in its development is it no longer precious?

Why would you decide that it should not share the rights of the fetus born with a different arrangement of chromosomes? If you believe that God made your child, what gives you the right to decide which of his children are not worthy of your protection?