Loving Capitalism A Little Less

A RECENT SURVEY indicates that fifty six percent of the American people like, approve of, accept, or whatever their words were, the American capitalistic system. This is a decrease from the sixty percent approval free market economics received in twenty twenty one, during the pandemic, but before the long term economic effects of the pandemic took full effect and hit home. Millions of Americans were adversely impacted financially by the pandemic and the short term shutting down of society and economic activity which resulted from it. In a way, its a bum rap against capitalism; a system which has delivered prosperity to millions of Americans and fantastically enriched an elite corporate few seemingly does not deserve to be given reduced support merely because a pandemic temporarily disrupted it. Alas, life isn't fair. (On the other hand, such disruptions, "externalities" in economic jargon, are inevitable) One caveat is that the survey, reported on Scripps News television, didn't give the participants a precise definition of the term "capitalism", but relied on whatever knowledge and opinions about American economics the term engenders within each individual. This wss probably the best way. A well known phenomenon is that Americans express great support of socialism when it is described by words like "cooperative economics", or "economic equality", and the bias fraught, much maligned word "socialism" is omitted. Historically, American enthusiasm for capitalism waxed and waned like the moon or a roller coaster, depending on the times. Capitalism suffered a great decline in popularity around the turn of the twentieth century, when teh onrushing factory system reduced millions of American workers to what at the time was called "wage slavery". It regained its moxie during the socially and economically roaring twenties, but plummeted again, drastically, during the great depression. In 1920,and again in 1932 ,communist and socialist candidates for president received more than a million votes. World War Two and the post war economic prosperity of the post war period brought the the popularity of capitalsim roaring back. As the twentieth first century progresses, the primary trends, capitalistically, seem to be a rapid concentration of wealth, and, a shrinking of the middle class,and a large growth in the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line. A staggering amount of material wealth is being manufactured, but is being concentrated in the hands of a tiny fraction of the population. There is a theory that the current young generation of Americans is more progressive than its parents, and will take the United States in a progressive direction over the next few years. Perhaps there is truth in this. Perhaps the same is true of democratic socialism, as opposed to the plutocratic corporate capitalism we have now. Young Americans seem to like equality. Whereas we do not have a true democracy in America, but rather, a sort of republic of, by,and for the wealthy, similarly, instead of true capitalism, we have a corporate socialist system, an economy rigged for the wealthy, by the wealthy. In an economy in which less than one percent of the people own and control a third of the wealth of society, the teeming masses of the rest of us cannot be expected to give our approval of the political and economic status quo indefinitely. As more and more people see themselves, quite accurately, as being left out of the proliferating prosperity of the wealthy class,and as wealth continues to concentrated in the hands of an elite few, societal discontent with the economic system, corporate capitalism, or whatever one chooses to call, can only spread and grow. chooses to call it, can only continue to grow.