this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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America: 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅
America doesn't have a pure capitalist economy.
A pure capitalist economy would have a free market system with no government intervention.
Almost every country has a mix between capitalism and socialism for their economies.
A pure capitalist economy is terrible just as much as a pure socialist economy would be terrible.
The trick is finding the right balance between the two.
Government doing things ≠ socialism.
Government regulating things ≠ socialism
Roads and parks ≠ socialism
Socialism is based in the collective ownership of companies by the workers who make everything happen, rather than execs and managers. Socialism isn't when government does stuff or when healthcare.
I'm just going off of the definition here:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism
We definitely don't have a pure capitalist economy since that would mean that there is no government intervention in the market.
And we do have parts of the economy that are owned/run by the government as socialism would suggest.
What would you call it, if not a mix of capitalism and socialism? Maybe a mix of Capitalism and Communism would be more accurate?
This article would seem to suggest that: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economy.asp
I like how enraged you were that your comment just abruptly ends. It comes off like you were ranting in front of a microphone and got so worked up you walked away mid-rant. Just ranting down the hallway, and down the street.....but we don't hear it, because you're away from the microphone.
It's supposed to be in the style of those "socialism is when government does stuff" memes. That's pretty much how all of them end
Never seen one.
Maybe get out from under the rock more often
Youre thinking of laissez-faire capitalism, maybe even libertarian capitalism?
America is absolutely capitalist in every sense of the term. The entire nation is corporatized and the government has no particularly influential anti-capitalist entities. Both competing parties are capitalist. The social framework by which we raise children is structured to indoctrinate them into the ideologies of neoliberalism and American economic exceptionalism. The propaganda that American society is meritocratic is enforced throughout our entire lives, all with the aim of suppressing the class consciousness of the working class.
People are responding to you with derision because what you're saying doesn't make any sense. Capitalism and socialism are not based entirely on hard rules. They're both economic ideologies and social philosophies packaged into cultural frameworks. America is actively anti socialist. They have a very long history of anti communism and anti workers' rights. America is the holotype of post-Reagan neoliberal capitalism. It is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of wealth disparity and income inequality. It is one of the least regulated economic powers in history, with it being open knowledge that billionaires rule the country and can essentially do anything they want without facing any kind of material consequences.
When I say pure capitalism, yes, I'm referring to laissez faire capitalism.
I can't think of any countries that currently have that, and I don't think we should want that.
Socialism is likely not the best term here, but when I'm referring to it economically I mean in the sense that the government has ownership of some businesses and is regulating other businesses as opposed to what would happen with laissez-faire capitalism.
Perhaps it is better to say that the U.S. is a mix between Capitalism (a market economy) and Communism (a command-based economy) as this article explains? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economy.asp
That has not been my experience when visiting/living in other countries, but I am curious if you have some data to back this statement up?
Although I do agree that we have a problem with wealth disparity and income inequality.
I think we should look to other countries that have much higher levels of happiness (Such as Sweden) compared to the U.S. and try to imitate what they are doing.
Even in the case of looking to economies like what Sweden has, it is still a mixed economy. So completely doing away with capitalism is not something we should be striving for.
There is no aspect of the US that is in any sense communist. Communism refers very specifically to a style of government which directly owns and controls the means of production across all forms of industry. This style of government is controlled by the proletariat. That is not the case for any industry in the US. The link you provided is propaganda not based on any actual communist beliefs. Communism is not a "command based" anything, it is a philosophy with regards to the distribution of the means of production and how the fruits of the working class's labor should be shared.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country
The US gini coefficient is 39.8 as of 2021. Making it one of the worst countries in the world for income inequality. There are plenty of areas in the southern states especially where entire towns are below the poverty line, some very significantly below it.
Well the U.S. isn't entirely capitalist either.
On one extreme you have a completely free market economy. On the other extreme you have an economy that's completely controlled by the government (such as Communism).
A pure free market economy doesn't really exist anywhere among all the countries, what we have instead are a lot of countries that try to find the right balance between letting the market control itself and having the government control the market.
So call it whatever you want, but the US does have a mixed economy when placed on that scale.
I don't know how you can say it's one of the worst when it's not even in the bottom third in that list of 162 countries.
According to that source, the worst country is South Africa with a Gini coefficient of 63.0.
The best country is Norway with a Gini Coefficient of 22.7.
The US. Ranks 57th with a Gini coefficient of 39.8.
If anything that places it in the middle rather than "one of the worst".
Considering all the other listed countries are classified as developing nations, no yeah it's one of the worst in the world lol. It's worth it for you to read up on how the gini coefficient is calculated.
Also, it is ranked 57th when sorted worst to best. It is sorted at 120th from best to worst. Worse than 119 other nations.
And no, you're again misusing the term communism. Communism isn't a scale it refers specifically to a state in which the means of production are shared collectively amongst the working class. You've invented a thing and then are using your own invention to sort terms that have actual meanings not related to your invented scale
America is also not a mixed economy, what are you on about? What industry is public in the US? Most of the states don't even have public power services. Essentially, none have public medical services.
There are many sources online that can explain the distinction for you. Check what you're reading and from where, as America is incredibly biased against socialism and there are entire corporations dedicated to spreading anti-socialist propaganda.
Yes, 57th when sorted from worst to best, I never said otherwise. And your numbers are a little off when sorting the other way around. There are only 162 countries with rankings in that list, so flipping it around puts the U.S. at 105th (behind 104 other nations).
Besides, we're looking at the Gini Coefficient which (with the countries on this list) has a range of ~23 to ~63, and a score of ~40 is right in the middle of that. In no way is the U.S. at the top of that list, but I still don't see how you can consider it to be "one of the worst countries in the world for income inequality".
I mean, I'm trying to explain in other terms so that we can understand each other better?
And if I understand this right, you're saying that it doesn't make sense to create a scale where:
I never said it was a scale. I just placed it at one end of the scale. The scale being "how much control a government has over the market."
On that scale, the U.S. is mostly capitalist, I have never said otherwise.
You're downvoted, maybe because people think you promoted the current system (I don't see that), but what you wrote is technical correct.
The US has less regulations than it used to have, but there are still rules (e.g. laws against insider trading and stock manipulation, labour laws, consumer and environmental protection etc.).
Unfortunately the existing rule are being gamed into oblivion and I'm not saying they are sufficient nor do I deny their decline. I'm just saying it could (and maybe will) be worse than now.
In America, the government intervention is whatever corporations pay politicians to say and do... it's actually worse than pure Capitalism and they managed, through regulatory capture, to turn the government against the people or competition for their paymasters
Regulated capitalism is still capitalism. There's no such thing as "pure" or "impure" capitalism, the social relationships to capital are the same. Lassiez-faire capitalism is just a flavour of it.
It's like ice-cream: you may prefer chocolate ice-cream over vanilla ice-cream, but they are both flavours of ice-cream and you wouldn't say "yea, that's not pure ice-cream". Some people may even dislike ice-cream altogether and prefer cheesecake.
Imagine a scale, on one end is a market economy where the government does not regulate it in any way, and does not own any part of it in any way. This is pure capitalism/laissez fair capitalism, whatever you want to call it. And you are correct, it does not exist today in any country (and that's a good thing in my opinion).
On the other end of that scale would be an economy that is completely controlled/owned/regulated by the government (for example, communism).
In economic terms, every country falls on that scale with some balance between a completely free market economy and how much regulation they impose as well as what kind of industries they control/own.
If someone is going to blame capitalism for "ruining everything" they are basically asking for a market system where everything is controlled/owned by the government. Where monopolies are rampant, and the citizens have no choice except for what the government or dictatorship has decided. In my opinion, this is also a bad choice.
If I am wrong about what they are asking for, feel free to point out the economy of a country that they are saying we should follow. In other words, if not capitalism, what are you asking for?