“And yet when we think of capitalism as the economy, and it’s victory as ours — as most Americans still do — what power can the average person really have to better his own life?”
According to Wikipedia “Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets.” I suspect that most Americans agree with this — or a very similar — definition. The main problem is that during the past few decades the ability to purchase private property, accumulate capital and earn acceptable wages has declined. Also, due to mass advertising and social peer pressure, expectations have increased. Young people today expect to have leisure time and available funds to participate in fairly expensive activities. When I was a college student the majority of my off campus time was spent working part time, studying, eating and sleeping.
“From about 1980 onwards, it launched something like a blitzkrieg on everything that wasn’t capitalism. On government, on unions, on social systems, on norms and value, on jobs and careers. Everything public was made private, everything social was made a market, and everything that wasn’t a commodity was made one — from education to healthcare to retirement, and so on.”
The four pillars of President Reagan’s economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation, and tighten the money supply in order to reduce inflation. A privatization revolution has swept the world since the 1980s but reforms have largely bypassed our own federal government. I agree that the influence of unions has decreased resulting in less benefits to the working class.
“The average American’s income had gotten stuck, and now the things of his daily existence, his bread, medicine, shelter, education, retirement, were beginning to increase in price, and fall in quality, every year.”
This is the primary source of dissatisfaction for the average American. It can be eliminated without abandoning capitalism. The people need to exercise their civic responsibility by pressuring their elected representatives to provide tax incentives to Benefit Corporations and other forms of business that place more importance on employees and less importance on max profits. Workers should join existing unions or form new unions to negotiate better employee benefits and working conditions.
