Only have a graduate degree in Econ and taught a wide range of economics classes at a University for 3 years. You are right. I’ve never thought about any of this before.
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I don’t know enough about Europe to know whether they are more socialist or not and in what degrees but I do know that USA #1 is not a socialist country
Ikes doing the sematIKES game of course. Not falling for it. Everyone here knows what I mean.
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Everybody knows that the "C"s in CCCP stand for capitalism!
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Genuinely shocked to hear that you’ve taken one economics class. Can you tell me where I can learn about the virtues of non capitalist economics? It seems to work well with 1000 person tribes, but everyone dies at 35.
Umm what?
Simp thinks you have to go back to feudal times to find a system devoid of capitalism.
I gathered that, I’m more concerned with him thinking everyone died at 35
I’ve spent the last 10 years working primarily with the underclasses filing bankruptcy cases on their behalf. Those people are wildly unhealthy. Often times I look at their DOB and am like how is this person the same age as me. And I spent most of the last 20 years trying to drink myself to death. If you think unchecked capitalism is so great for the masses go walk through a Wal Mart.
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I agree with you on that. I’m just saying that it is better than it’s ever been. That life is occasionally anything better than nasty, brutish, and short is due to modern capitalism. It may suck, but starvation is worse. It’s only since 1870ish that production has outstripped population growth. Read Slouching Toward Utopia.
Sure! Neither is England, Germany, Switzerland… and on and on.
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It is better here than it has ever been. I agree. Do you think your average working class person is better off here or in Western Europe? I personally think it’s the latter and its the vast differences in social safety nets, incarceration rates, etc that is mostly it.
Call it what you will but here we have for profit prisons. Our health care system is a shitshow. Our public education system is a shitshow. Why do you think that is?
To be clear I don’t think communism is better than capitalism. I want a hybrid system with a wide safety net and public availability of health care and education. I dont want 1 in 40 people or whatever incarcerated. I want checks on corporate greed. Those things are possible but without them capitalistic systems will eventually fail. That’s my thesis. Democracy isn’t what’s causing Trump. It’s unchecked greed by the mega rich.
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Speaking for the moment in my capacity as a professional economist, I will say that I view questions of capitalism versus socialism as perhaps more in the purview of political theory than economics proper. However, the area of economics that I specialize in, namely antitrust, is all about how unchecked profit-maximization on the part of firms can make the owners of the firm better off while making the non-owners of the firm worse off to such an extent that it outweighs the gains to the owners (even if you were to treat them as somehow equivalent).
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I don’t attribute it to capitalism. People are dumb, they believe in sky fairies, and running a country of 350 million and balancing competing interests is very difficult. The US is insane, so are most other places. That Trump can be elected but everyone doesn’t starve is mainly due to the miracle of capitalism.
capitalism provides the incentives for all of those things to be the way they are, it’s exactly why they are that way
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You dont think its because of capitalism? For profit prisons? Even the lack of quality education and health care is because the mega rich dont want to pay for it. What else do you call that?
Certainly this is true in part, but it’s also true to say that it’s partially due to “socialism” in that so many advancements that have been achieved “through” capitalism wouldn’t have happened without government funded education and research and things like publicly funded common defense and legal structures.
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For profit federal prisons or California prisons are illegal. Is that anti-capitalist? Is making anything illegal anti-capitalist?
Like here’s a brand new study showing that collusion in the Canadian grocery industry increased inflation by 50%.
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