Capitalism worked pretty well until the greed is good 1980's

I think somehow America's collective soul went horridly wayward at that point. The middle class was doing ok, a college education was affordable, home prices were reasonable and a person could easily expect that they would probably do alright. Even healthcare was affordable, relatively speaking.

And, then, as now, the corruption seems to have filtered outward from Wall Street, coincidently enough the title of the movie that introduced to us the Gordon Gekko Greed is Good mentality that dismantled American industry because the whole was less than the sum of the parts, celebrated excess, and stopped caring about the poorer among us. Also laid out was the contempt for the American worker and the throwing out of any social contract that the corporate world might have felt it owed just to be a good corporate American citizen. It's just been a freight train since then.

As soon as the ruling class saw fit to eliminate the middle class, that's what undermined the capitalist system.

He re-introduced laissez faire capitalism, which is what we have today. This system is historically known not to work, so why people keep trying to do it is beyond me?

to still reign. If Repubs are voted out it just means time to regroup - for them.

a left handed monkey wrench... Ronnie could read a script and make a speech that'd polish any ReThug turd.. W is just a F'n Moran, total Loser, which was good in exposing the real people behind it all.

bargaining with Cheney, not George. It's the same for McCain. Except Palin is not Cheney. If they win, they will probably introduce an office of Prime Minister.

to be president.. not to actually do the job.. he has pre dementia, some pills he'll d what he's told, or lose his dream and destiny in shame

It was July 5, 1979, and Jimmy Carter had canceled a speech scheduled for national television that evening. During the day, as the press pondered his infirmity, the president was at Camp David, consulting his staff about a broad "crisis of confidence" that his young pollster, Patrick Caddell, had diagnosed


What Carter really did in the speech was profound. He warned Americans that the 1979 energy crisis—both a shortage of gas and higher prices—stemmed from the country's way of life. "Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns," the president said. Consumerism provided people with false happiness, he suggested, but it also prevented Americans from re-examining their lives in order to confront the profound challenge the energy crisis elicited.

"We've always believed in something called progress," Carter explained. The simple version of this big idea was the faith that "piling up of material" goods would ensure a better life. Carter condemned the idea's naiveté and warned his fellow Americans that they could not live in a world without limits. Selfish individualism (what he once called "me-ism") wouldn't pull us through the crisis.

As Americans, Carter explained, we had to stop daydreaming and realize that our reliance on foreign oil made us vulnerable. Here he used a war analogy for his solution—though sometimes a faltering metaphor, it made sense. Our country had been founded by a revolution against foreign dependence, and now the country needed to throw off reliance on the Middle East's "black gold." So Carter proposed an Energy Mobilization Board modeled after the sort of government agency that got the country through World War II.

Some of the other policies Carter offered in the speech still get recycled today. He wanted a "windfall profits tax" to hit the oil corporations. The money garnered would help fund the search for alternative sources of energy. Short-term pain would be inevitable, Carter warned ("This is not a message of happiness or reassurance," he said, "but it is the truth and it is a warning"). Still, the tax seemed the best compromise between two polarized positions, the open-ended deregulation called for by the right (including Reagan) and a call to nationalize the oil companies from the left. Before Bill Clinton, then a young governor of Arkansas, articulated a "Third Way" philosophy, Carter had discovered the virtues of the middle road and compromise.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/08/13/past-and-present-malaise-and-the-energy-crisis.html

Look up Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" or study the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire for just a couple of examples pre-1980 where capitalism went pear-shaped, to the detriment of the little guy.

Heck, the history of my own state, California, with robber barons like Huntington and others provides vivid illustrations on how unchecked capitalism is a dysfunctional system.



Duke

I am familiar with "the Jungle" which we're revertingback to and I know all about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

But post Depression forward, New Deal, Civil Rights, etc. it seems as though the average American was on an upward track of prosperity, home ownership, increasing college education, etc. that seems to have started derailing in the 80's where we start to see more funneled to fewer.

Sometimes those moderate forces of capitalism are on top, during which times, the gamers still are making obscene money, but they're fairly low key...and these times we're in now, where they control the levers of power through their operatives in government, where they're making INCREDIBLY obscene amounts of lucre, and aren't even putting up the pretense of capitalism being a merit-based system, where those who work and play by the rules get rewarded.

I guess what I'm saying is...same as it ever was, except that now, it's even MORE so.

Duke

of regulation captalism has not worked well. Sure it makes some people really rich but those are usually bubbles.

Capitalism unregulated always tends to end this way.

And there hasn't been a "free market" since barter days. IMO.

It has caused one disaster after another, and generated imperialism on a world scale, a hundred wars, and poverty and destruction for the vast majority of the world.

The only period in which it can be said to have worked well was the 25-year golden age from 1948-1973. And that would be true only for the US, Western Europe and Japan, certainly not Vietnam or Africa.

Please open your eyes to history!

I read a lot of history for pleasure. My post was specifically about what you refer to as the golden period - I referenced post-Depression to 1980 America see post #7

edit for clarification

of socialistic control of the economy.

The truth is that we have struggled to stop/contain capitalism since this nation was founded. Even Adam Smith's model used a socialistic society as a foundation, that every business paid to maintain, upon which to build the market.

it would be a social democracy that favored regulated capitalism.

I would want mass transportation, natural resources, healthcare, social security , utilites, nationalized and I would provide funding for post secondary education whether it was trade training or university.

Aside from, capitalism with reasonable regulation and oversight that had as its goal the safety and security of all americans and to protct them from predatory microbes, employers or lenders.