I have often heard it said that communism sounds good in theory or principle but does not succeed in reality. Stalin and Cuba serve as examples. Hayek and von Mises are quoted. On the historical examples, they are no doubt correct.
However, Stalinism was not communism. Nor is oligarchy egalitarianism. Nonetheless, critics of the left continue to conflate authoritarianism for principles of class equality or dissolution. This is not a paean to communist thought.
Rather, the question I am most interested in is why no one says the same of capitalism: theoretically good, bad in practice. The short answer is that the majority of students at UF were educated in our public school system, which is concerned more with socialization than education.
Regardless, we saw banks collapse. We saw markets tumble. In other words, "Wall Street got drunk." And capitalism, as a system and ideology, must be viewed as guilty and broken. Deregulation was the chant of the free-marketeers; deregulation is, in large part, the cause of our current woes.
The Bush tax cuts were a failed experiment in "trickle down" economics. The nonpartisan think tank, Tax Policy Center, reported that between 2001 and 2008, the bottom 80 percent of tax filers received about 35 percent of the cuts. Meanwhile, the top 20 percent received about 65 percent; the top 1 percent alone claimed 38 percent. But the wealth did not reiterate in the form of job creation.
Between March 2001 and December 2007, job and income growth was at its slowest rate since the end of World War II. A tax policy designed to spur growth instead curbs it. Laws that favor the wealthy at the expense of the nation (the cuts cost $2.6 trillion) should be repealed, especially when ineffective.
In 2009, the poverty rate was around 14 percent. Children in poverty, a historically higher indicator, topped 20 percent. The rate of non-insurance was roughly 16 percent. Insofar as capitalism provides goods and services to all people, it fails for a portion of our society.
The 2007 poverty rate for Alachua County was 16.2 percent. Furthermore, roughly 1,000 homeless people live in Alachua County, while there are only 350 beds between various shelters and transitional programs. The free market belief that charity alone can satisfy welfare needs is simply untrue. It seems to me that capitalism is broken because it produces a system that privileges profit over people.
It occurs to me, also, that capitalism is not broken. In fact, it is alive and well. For capitalism is working when the compensation of S&P 500 executives rises at a rate of 28 percent compared to the average worker's increase of 1 percent over the same year. Unemployment remains stagnant.
Capitalism is alive and well when Verizon workers suffer cuts to health benefits, pensions and sick days while the company makes $10 billion in profits. Capitalism is alive and well when Verizon pays nothing in federal income tax while enjoying a $10.3 billion dollar tax rebate for 2010.
And capitalism is alive and well when democracy and representation too become commodities. All things have a price. The Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court has only evinced this problem.
Furthermore, democracy itself is under attack when interests, corporate or otherwise, disguise their agenda as independent and "grassroots" (see the Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and the tea party) while dealing strictly in ideology in a PR technique known as astroturfing.
This is, indeed, capitalism.
Ryan Fenton graduated from UF with a degree in English.
