No it is not immoral. When someone turns a profit it is simply a signal that the person has taken low value inputs and transformed them into high value outputs. It is in this way that the legitimately rich have created wealth in society. Sorry, there is nothing immoral about providing people with goods and services that are purchased voluntarily.
Even if the rich person spends lavishly on, say, a yacht. The people that work for the yacht company do hardcore manual labor. They are not rich, but they get by thanks to yacht purchases.
Even if the rich put money into investments, they are providing funds for companies that need capital to expand and serve consumers better through increased services or efficiencies.
Even if the rich hold cash in a bank account, they are providing funds to capitalize the bank, which employs people and directs loanable funds.
Even if the rich put it under the mattress, it harms nobody. Prices are not bid up to the extent they would be if the funds entered the economy.
So no. Making money is not immoral. Spending money is not immoral. Investing money is not immoral. Sleeping on money is not immoral.
The idea that wealth is immoral is a religious one that was thankfully fought off long enough for capitalism to thrive. It is coming back again in the form of the Democratic Party it seems.
Yes, propaganda and disinformation play a role in the move toward socialism. The campaign has been successful in other countries.
Capitalism vanquished slavery. Slavery was a fact of life for thousands of years. Mercantilism brought a new form of slavery to the New World. Capitalism fought back mercantilism, but it still persisted in the form of the American System of Hamilton, Clay and Lincoln and his successors who gave away land to railroad companies. The government exterminated the Plains Indians, I don’t know why capitalism would be blamed for that.
And again we see this peculiar claim. Is there any validity to this whatsoever?
Almost 45 million Americans are aged 65 and older and this number continues to grow. Thus spending on pensions obviously must grow but that would be the case whether the pensions were administrated by a private or government agency. Health-care spending has skyrocketed but, in the absence of reducing costs via socialization at one extreme, or sending Granny to the death-damp at the other extreme, these costs would, again, be high whether afforded by private insurance or public. Obligatory interest on public debt is a mounting share of federal spending, but it is a little disingenuous to focus on this.
Setting aside simple transfers (including Medicare) to retired people and debt interest, government spending as a portion of GDP is down, not up. And government regulations have all-too-often been weakened over the past two decades, not strengthened.
@ WillFarnaby — With these corrections now in view, kindly retract your claim, or attempt to substantiate it.
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This is chock full of fantastic gibberish, which I won’t dignify with a response, but you misunderstand: Silver Lining claimed that the USA was built on capitalism, and I was mocking that claim by pointing out how profoundly you’d need to redefine “capitalism” to include the historical forces upon which our country was REALLY built.
1
: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2
a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3
: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
There is a very good chance these polled Democratic voters are just undereducated. But the majority them have favorable views toward socialism according to the poll.
Asking how it is defined in the voter’s mind is a very difficult question to answer, and worthy of further exploration.
It’s logical to assume many Democrats in the millions actually know what socialism is by definition and are for it. A scary thought. I know some myself. It’s also logical to assume many don’t have a clue what the word is but associate it with free governmental giveaways to them.
It’s logical that many Democrats have looked at socialist governments in Western Europe–like the United Kingdom, like Denmark, like Finland–and said, “that looks better than the shitshow we’ve got going on.” It’s logical that many Democrats have listened to Republicans branding any sort of social safety net as “socialism,” and said, “Maybe they’re right, but that just means that socialism is pretty good.”
“Undereducated” is a weird word to use in this context, because words change in both denotation and connotation. It’s incredibly unlikely that a significant number of Democrats are talking about a Soviet-style socialism; almost certainly we’re talking about universal healthcare and other such terrifying crimes against humanity.
If most Republican voters are overwhelming for capitalism, and most Democratic voters are close 50/50 on the preference between socialism and capitalism, which platform overall do you think has more support?
OK, so that can be taken as evidence that at least 19% of Americans prefer capitalism to socialism. I’m not sure how to get from there to “a vast majority”.
Or, even making the most conservative assumptions, if Democrats are half of the country, and the majority of Democrats prefer socialism, then that means that less than 75% prefer capitalism. I’m not sure how to get from less than 75% to “a vast majority”, either.
In the US at least, there are homogeneous and non-homogeneous places and I don’t know if it affects their propensity for social solutions.
Large cities are very diverse and they are also pretty left leaning. Meanwhile Vermont is not diverse and it is also left leaning.
Mississippi is diverse and is very right leaning, and Idaho is not diverse but is also right leaning.
You need social cohesion for a progressive society to function I tend to believe. However I do not know if racial or ethnic uniformity is necessary for social cohesion.
Look, I get that a lot of European parties actually were socialist right after the war, and that the welfare states are the legacy that survived, whereas everything else socialist either never happened or was tried and abandoned. But it’s stupid to call welfare states alone “socialist”. There are only two possibilities with people who say they favor socialism: ignorance or they actually do favor a tried and failed approach to governance.
The country was not built on slavery. It faultered terribly and growth was retarded by slavery. If slavery was the key to building prosperity, Brazil would be killing it. It isn’t.
This is true of any system. Capitalism thrives on social trust, but it also engenders social trust. Socialism does ok in a society with social trust, but it erodes social trust.
:dubious: I did reread it. First, you went from “most” to “the vast majority,” which is a little stretch. But more importantly, the link draws a completely innumerate conclusion, as Chronos points out.
The survey didn’t ask which system anyone prefers. Although 56% approve of capitalism, it’s theoretically possible that 100% of Americans prefer Capitalism to Socialism (I, for example, don’t approve of either turd sandwiches or boiled eggplant, but I prefer the latter to the former). On the other hand, it’s theoretically possible that of the 56% of Americans who approve of capitalism, 66% of them (37% of the total population) actually prefer socialism (I, for example, approve of both vanilla and caramel ice cream, but I prefer the latter to the former). Further, of the 44% who don’t approve of capitalism, 100% of them may prefer socialism, meaning that maybe 81% of the population prefers socialism to capitalism.
None of these figures are likely to be true–BUT THE ARTICLE DOESN’T TELL US. It doesn’t ask responders to prefer, it asks them to approve.