Is it still your grandfathers capitalism?

In the 50s and 60s nothing could touch the American brand of capitalism. It produced and ever increasing standard of living, its downsides and possible conclusions existed mostly in the theories of those whom opposed it or seeked to promulgate an alternative to capitalism. If you worked hard you lived well if you worked a little bit harder you lived a little bit better. A summerjob easily bought you a brand new musclecar and spending was expressed in the space race and its technological fallout.

Today you have the working poor on one side, on the other side you have managers whom defend their high salaries when they are not rubbing their wealth in everyones face that is. The spread of capitalism should have been beneficial to the recipient countries in theory, but in practice many of the countries to which it did spread seem to have a hard time going ahead, where they seem to be stuck at a level where a job is long hours, buys them little support in appaling conditions and too often deadly
One could think that all the negativity the opponents of capitalism and the promoters of communism have been realized on a grand scale (of course the downsides of communism materialized a lot earlier).

So do you think todays capitalism is the American capitalism the world was intrigued by all those years ago? If not how and why did it change?
And how do you think Americans in the 50s and 60s would have felt about a manufacturer colluding with repressive regimes, communist countries with the goal to achieve cheap labor? Would they have just ignored it? Would they have been content with a boycott or would they have demanded the withdrawal of his American citizenship for such an unamerican behaviour?

a reply to: Merinda

This should be an interesting thread.
The answer I would give is "No, it is NOT our grandparents capitalism." In those days taxes were very high on the wealthy - Reagan changed all that. And afterward, well - what you see is what you get. Horrible inequality and obscene wealth alongside obscene poverty.

It's sickening. The tax codes need to be overhauled; off-shoring needs to stop (or at least taxed in accordance with the home-country's laws, no matter where the 'outposts' are in the world). Tax evasion - or ESCAPE - is the problem. Hoarding in havens also. I'm for a CAP ON WEALTH. No one needs more than a few million. It's sickening.

(P.S. I was born in the late 50s, and my father was an entrepreneur and very good businessman. We did allright, though lived frugally in a modest, mixed neighborhood, and he was very careful with his spending. We were never "rich", but my mother now is living fine off the estate he built. Thankfully. Things haven't worked out so well for me. )
I'll go make some popcorn.
S/F!

Oh yeah - and LOBBYING needs to stop. But the SCOTUS has now set a precedent that corporations can, indeed, buy politics.
Le sigh.
Le pew.

It is not the same, by design it seems.

As we know, it is our current POTUS who is crippling the US econmy by attacking oil and coal.

The good news is the spirit of the people who make capitalism work is still high. Things will change and we should be at the head of the pack but we need to cut the head of the snake off first!

a reply to: Merinda

Good thread. Then again, what is the same as it was in the 50s and 60s ? Not much.

Education standards, morals, competition from developing nations...all different.

I like to think of it as the two types of capitalism. The kind that garners support is as the posters state. Starting a business, creating a product or service that people needed or wanted, delivering it and, with time and work, hopefully reaping the rewards of that business.

Then there's the big boy crowd. massively powerful. Huge influences with local, state and federal gov'ts. The Nestles and ADMs of the world. To name just a couple.

Now we have that Pan Pacific Trade Agreement. If that is to be believed as accurate, then 600 corporations from 12 different nations have reached an agreement that trumps all national laws of any country, cannot be viewed by congress without 'permission', and forms a group that dictates policy to gov'ts. Not the other way around.

Yes, there is still "upward mobility". Now more and more are forced into the corporate version rather than striking out on your own.

It's still being done by individuals, albeit, less and less with even higher failure rates. If you do succeed, you end up bought out by a bigger fish or taxed so heavily upon death that there's no way to pass that on as a successful business without going "public".

There is no way to regain what was lost, that I can see without massive trauma to the economy and the citizens.

There are now two set of rules/laws. Those directed at us, the citizens which are getting more restrictive and closing the door on freedom. The second set is for business and gov'ts which answers less and less to "laws or rules". IE, more freedom to do as they please.

But don't mistake or label this capitalism. It's not. It encompasses left and right, effecting both.

If it has to be labeled, then it looks more like feudalism than anything else...

I think what helped create the glory years of the 50's and 60's was the events that happened in the 30's and 40's (obviously, but hear me out). First, in the 30's we had the Great Depression. This exposed much of America to great hardship and need. The people who lived through and survived this period NEVER wanted to be that destitute again. What brought us out of the Great Depression was WWII and a shot of adrenaline we put into our manufacturing base to produce war materials (no it wasn't the New Deal, don't believe anyone who tells you this, it's a lie). We infused our worker force with patriotism from the low class to the upper class. The reason this worked is because WWII was the last war of defense we have fought. It is much easier to be sympathetic to a war cause when you are fighting for survival and on the defensive. Once WWII ended, this patriotism and great work ethic bled over into the civilian world as the manufacturing plants switched to domestic, peacetime products instead of war materials. As a result the 50's and 60's happened as they did.

This may be why our leaders keep trying to incite WWIII, yet aren't trying to be the aggressor. They keep aggravating other world powers to attack us so we can have a reason to go to war with them citing defensive reasons. The situation in the Ukraine with Russia seems to be along this line of thought. I'd bet that if Obama could get Russia to slip up and attack us or our allies, he would be ecstatic since all the events of the 30's have lined up (massive poverty and high social program enrollment) and all we need is a major war to (truly) bring us out of the economic slump we are in. Then Obama can take credit for it all, just like FDR did.

As for your question. Yes, we have the same capitalism as our grandparents. Crony Capitalism. It has ALWAYS been this way. Here is some good reading about our transcontinental railroad's construction in the 1870's. Crony Capitalism and the Transcontinental Railroads If there was crony capitalism back in the 1800's, you can surely bet that it existed in the 1950's and 60's.

Back in the fifties and sixties, you could start a small business in your community and make a living at it. Not like that anymore. There used to be little stores and meat markets all over the place. A small town always had two hardware stores and three or four markets along with a couple of bigger stores. Farmers were delivering potatoes and veggies to people on a route. People could make a living doing what they wanted to do. Not anymore, every decade it gets worse and worse. At least we have regained farmers markets here that sell local produce and meats again. One day a week. We are starting to get some new small markets here, but only organic selling markets seem to make it and they need a beer and wine market to make it go.

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
Oh yeah - and LOBBYING needs to stop. But the SCOTUS has now set a precedent that corporations can, indeed, buy politics.
Le sigh.
Le pew.

Lobbying via bribery should stop. Not lobbying. There is a difference.
You do want to be able to petition the government, right?

a reply to: rockintitz

Lobbying via bribery should stop. Not lobbying. There is a difference.
You do want to be able to petition the government, right? - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I see your point, and 'lobbying' the way it is now is bribery. Yes, there is a difference.

Sure, I want to be able to petition the government - what irritates me is that since I don't have buttloads of cash, no one cares what I think. All I can do is "vote." LOL!!

Oh, and write my congressmen, which I do. To very little avail.

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
a reply to: rockintitz

Lobbying via bribery should stop. Not lobbying. There is a difference.
You do want to be able to petition the government, right? - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I see your point, and 'lobbying' the way it is now is bribery. Yes, there is a difference.

Sure, I want to be able to petition the government - what irritates me is that since I don't have buttloads of cash, no one cares what I think. All I can do is "vote." LOL!!

Oh, and write my congressmen, which I do. To very little avail.

Money as free speech is probably the worst thing to ever happen to our country and was a straight up selling of our country's values out to the highest bidder.

a reply to: Merinda

Ah, nice topic.

It is not capitalism at all anymore, let alone our grandparents' capitalism.

1. Bailouts: You cannot privatize profits and socialize risk/loses in a capitalist system. That is called "Lemon Socialism" and it may actually be an even worse disease than full-on socialism is. The American system has become bastardized towards one which no longer allows any form of corporate Darwinism to occur... the idea of "too big to fail" has wrecked things to the point where we can no longer even remotely be considered capitalist. To be capitalist, every transaction or investment at the corporate level must have a trade-off or opportunity cost. The whole reason CEOs and major investors get the type of jack they build their off shore account with is (supposed to be) because of the massive risk of loss they're taking on. Problem is, if the tax payers' dollars are sitting their to save their asses from failure, they're being paid huge amounts of money for essentially nothing. This isn't a partisan issue, either... Equal parts Democrat and Republican voted for the bailouts because equal parts Democrat and Republican are owned by the corporatists and lobbyists.

2. You cannot regulate your way to prosperity. Since the 60s, America has handcuffed itself in the most sado-masochistic of ways with a slew of bullcrap environmental and labor taxes and regulations. Take coal, for example... The claim "there is no such thing as clean burning coal" has been used to outright prevent this plentiful, inexpensive resource from being used in the USA. Instead, thanks to large sums of money going into politician accounts, that coal is sold for pennies on the dollar to China where it is then burned in an environment with nearly zero pollution controls in place. If there was one ounce of sincerity to the rationale of "protecting the environment" behind the politician's banning of coal use in this country, they wouldn't happily watch as it is exported to a country to be burned.

3. Globalism: We cannot have American prosperity and globalism. The two are mutually incompatible. Either we have strong individual national economies, caring not about the plights of our competitors, or we have a strong multinational corporate sector and a globe of nations whose economies ebb and flow at the whims of the global elite. The 50s and 60s saw great, wonderful nationalism and national protectionism policies in place. Tariffs on imports, tax breaks for domestic production, international corporate espionage, and propaganda shaming Americans away from buying foreign crap. Globalism is a loser's path to skid row on a national level.

4. The opening of the American labor movement vacuum. This is a big one and it is partially self-imposed by the American work force. The labor movement was a good idea, but when it combined with the happy horsecrap "We are one world" ideology, it hung itself. The unions talked a big game in the lead-up to NAFTA... but where were they when Ross Perot was running for office promising to nix the agreement? You cannot have robust worker wages, employer taxes, and strict regulatory protection AND free trade with countries where workers are paid a pittance, manufacturing taxes are scarce, and regulations are lax. You simply can't. Any manufacturer with any business sense and even a single hair on their ass is going to send the manufacturing jobs to the country where they can make the most money. That's called "business" and it amazes me how few people understand it or how many people allow themselves to be lead like sheep into this manufactured class warfare nonsense politicians use to lift the heat off of themselves. The wealthy are simply following human nature, which is greedy and self serving by definition... the politicians are the problem because they open as many doors as possible to help the greedy serve their nature for kick backs and palm greasing.