Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics The Debate: Is America’s future capitalist or socialist?

Senator Hatrack (I do like that name) what you did is read something into my comment that isn't there. I just implied that capitalism, despite your extreme bias toward it, is very likely not the sole reason for the improved living conditions of the world. To understand my comments about capitalism it would help if you could look at capitalism while recognizing your bias for it.

In other words, "I'd rather not read it, my mind is made up"? Yes, you use questionable sources, but I still read them. THEN I laugh and make fun of them.

Um, you do realize you didn't address the question at all? Just checking. Cost Externalizing (Wikipedia). I'd suggest this as a start.

A Capitalist Breadline.

My last several posts were intended to make a point, my friend Hatrack. It is that you make broad generalizations both for and against ideas without responding substantively. Capitalism is a form of market enterprise, where the markets are defined into certain categories. It is a generalization of a method of organizing an economy and a shorthand to represent various elements of the system. Socialism is also a generalization of concepts of government providing for or controlling aspects of an economy. Neither form of economy exists in the real world, anywhere, in a pure form, or ever has.

Externality is a concept familiar to all economists in any discussion of capitalism and market economies. It is not always considered a bad thing. For example, the siting of a facility in a community has "externalities" unassociated with the actual production of the goods/service marketed by the company. On the positive side, the wages paid to workers, and expenses of the enterprise circulated in the community (e.g., lumber bought to build the facility) are positive externalities, just as the pollution, burdens placed on local infrastructure, and such, are negative externalities. Pretending that they don't exist is not rational nor consistent with discussion of the costs and benefits of capitalism as a system. Surely you actually recognize that?

The bread lines of the Great Depression are an anomaly in the history of capitalism.

When did I ever say that pure capitalism, or pure socialism, ever existed? I never did say that! But you are taken something I have never said to give a lecture as if you were some genius. You are not a genius. You are stuck in the ideological cocoon of liberalism. You obnoxious and condescending "lectures" are one of the main reasons I had thought to leave the CHBRR. Unlike you I give the people here credit for knowing the difference between capitalism and socialism and that neither one has ever existed as pure socialism or capitalism.

You never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity... or a point. How's the view from your high horse? I have an idea: rather than spend your type whinging about how holier-than-thou you think I am, you address the substance of the point?

Only in that in previous cycles the destitute were just left to starve. The point you so assiduously miss is that bread lines are not a product of socialism. They are more often a product of the business cycle.