There are all sorts of terms people don’t agree on clear definitions for. Abortion activists on both sides can’t even agree on the definition of “human.” Does that mean we can’t discuss it?
Not at all. It just means we can’t discuss it productively.
I disagree. Just about everyone else does too, I imagine.
OK. I do feel, though, that it opens the door for a hallowed privilege here on the SDMB: reducing any meaningful issue to a meaningless debate over definitions and hypotheticals.
If you can’t even agree on what exactly you’re discussing, don’t expect much meaning from the discussion.
It was free market capitalism which made the USA so rich.
So those same principals should be used again.
You don’t know a principal from a principle.
And I’m not a bit surprised.
It was the complete devastation of every major world economy in WW2 that made the USA so rich, and I don’t think those same principles should be used again.
LOL post of the year…
Why LOL? Why not PWNED?
No. That is false.
In 1913 the United States was the richest in the world per capita. This is before either of the World Wars began.
Per capita income of the powers in 1913:
United States = $377
Britain = $244
Germany = $184
France = $153
Italy = $108
Austria-Hungary = $57
Russia = $41
Japan = $36
SOURCE: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, page 243, table 21
you youngsters and your interweb speak…
The USA has always had high per capita income, doesn’t mean that they had or have free markets. But it would be fair to say that governments were smaller back in 1913.
The Democracy Index also shows a high correlation of democracy with prosperity. How do we know that isn’t the causal factor?
In 1913 in the USA there certainly was free market capitalism. Total government spending only represented 8-10% of national income. Federal government revenue came from small excise taxes and duties on imports. The private sector was left alone. No rules and regulations.
I seem to recall that worked out very well for the people who ran the private sector, but not as well for the people who worked in its lower levels. Do you happen to have median income figures?
Not to mention the question of how high the rate of deaths and injuries were among the workers. And for that matter the consumers, from all those unregulated products.
And we’re a lot richer now, aren’t we?
But he is right. Der Trihs is often right. Hard to deal with, but there it is.
I think there is much validity in OP. (The numbers are not as one-sided as he implies, though. Cuba actually has a slightly higher life expectancy than the U.S.! The contentment enjoyed by much of Europe comes in large measure from their social welfare networks. The great success stories of Asia benefited from economic freedom rather than political freedom. The common denominator in failure stories is not too much government regulation per se, it is too much government corruption.)
And it makes no sense to impose classic left-vs-right debate in a country where the choices are center-right and extreme-right. Most Dopers are very aware of the virtues of capitalism, but we don’t fall for facile arguments. “Chocolate is delicious, so we should eat nothing but chocolate”? No. “Income inequality spurs ambition, so the more inequality the better”? If that were true, why is northern Europe so successful?
Centrists like myself do not oppose capitalism. We oppose the caricature of capitalism that the U.S.A. is turning to. Rich corporations have enormous political power. Monopolies and cartels are permitted to flourish. UHC is turned into a boondoggle to enrich vested interests. Wall Street dominates the economy, and engages in huge “heads we win, tails the taxpayers lose” bets, with no real regulation. (Financial regulation has become so pathetic, America looks back with fondness to the days of Greenspan, an Ayn Rand disciple. :smack: )
If by “capitalism,” OP refers to a balanced system in which regulation plays a role, rather than the Dog-eat-Dog philosophy of Ayn Rand, then I agree with him. To relate the question to contemporary politics, I’d ask OP whether it is the Democrats or the GOP who would tend to move our country toward such a system.