Capitalism is killing our morals, our future

[ErikJ]

Capitalism is killing our morals, our future
Commentary: In a Market Society, everything is for sale

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, capitalism is working ... for the Forbes 1,000 Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,426 recently. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, while the income of American workers stagnated. For the rest of the world, capitalism is not working: A billion live on less than two dollars a day. With global population exploding to 10 billion by 2050, that inequality gap will grow, fueling revolutions, wars, adding more billionaires and more folks surviving on two bucks a day.
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Sandel should be required reading for all Wall Street insiders as well as America’s 95 million Main Street investors. Here’s a condensed version:

In one generation, market ideology consumed America’s collective spirit

“The years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 were a heady time of market faith and deregulation — an era of market triumphalism,” says Sandel. “The era began in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher proclaimed their conviction that markets, not government, held the key to prosperity and freedom.”

And in the 1990s with the “market-friendly liberalism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who moderated but consolidated the faith that markets are the primary means for achieving the public good.”

Today “almost everything can be bought and sold.” Today “markets, and market values, have come to govern our lives as never before. We did not arrive at this condition through any deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us,” says Sandel.


Why should you worry? Capitalism breeds corruption and inequality...............................more>


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalism-is-killing-our-morals-our-future-2013-04-27?link=MW_popular

[Jamaal510]

1. I would argue

that capitalism is OK, as long as it is well-regulated. A winning formula, in my opinion, would be a capitalist system with socialism playing a more prominent role than how it is now, and the government stepping in to prevent large corporations from essentially buying the country. What I wouldn't mind seeing is not only free health care and free college tuition, but also publicly-financed elections, i.e. millionaire donors can't just dump a ton of money into ads for one candidate or proposition compared to the other side.

The type of capitalism that is unhealthy for America is what the GOP and the libertarian-fringe (aka. the Regressives) have been fighting for, which is a trip back in time to the fiscal Wild West. Things such as cutting top taxes as low as possible in addition to cutting government programs, and eliminating food and environmental safety standards.

[defacto7]

2. This is a good reply

I agree with the OP as things stand. But there is much to say about the benefits of a capitalist socialism. I do see a long, long road getting there considering the undermining of America that began mostly with the Reagan years and the slow demise journalism.

[hrmjustin]

7. Welcome to DU my friend!

[Coyotl]

10. Social democracy may be a forthcoming trend

but that does not preclude capitalism. The problem is not capitalism, it is capitalist control of political systems.

[tiny elvis]

4. in simple terms

the nature of capitalism is to seek supremacy over other systems
mechanized and dehumanized in corporations, it can never stop working for that goal
it is more efficient than socialism, smarter and more patient than fascism
with every historical reinvention of capitalism its users instantly value property and resources
higher than persons
regulated capitalism is a caged tiger that weakens its cage a little more each night
when noone is looking

[raouldukelives]

8. I agree 100%. We only need to properly regulate and to enforce Fair Trade.

Sadly I don't think the GOP or the libertarian fringe are alone in pushing for this. As much as I wished otherwise, my own party has demonstrated itself to be more about money than morality.

[HiPointDem]

5. kr

[YOHABLO]

6. We have to get this idea that gov't is bad out of the mind-set of people.

We are the government and the governed. At least that is the way the founders in writing the Constitution, foresaw it to be. The Constitution has been ripped to shreds, particularly by the most recent ruling by the right wing Supremes, of Citizens United. If we can get the money out of political campaigns we might have a shot a restoring our nation.

[LanternWaste]

9. How people conclude that anything...

How people conclude that anything (anything) which bases its primary and core principle on greed can be justified as the best in show is beyond me.

on second thought, it's not beyond me... people will rationalize to themselves anything which secures their comfort zones.