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Robert Reich | The Answer Isn't Socialism; It's Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolutionhttp://www.nationofchange.org/answer-isn-t-socialism-it-s-capitalism-better-spreads-benefits-productivity-revolution-1336396195
Francois Hollandes victory doesnt and shouldnt mean a movement toward socialism in Europe or elsewhere. Socialism isnt the answer to the basic problem haunting all rich nations. The answer is to reform capitalism. The worlds productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich societies to fairly distribute its benefits. The result is widening inequality coupled with slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment.
In the United States, almost all the gains from productivity growth have been going to the top 1 percent, and the percent of the working-age population with jobs is now lower than its been in more than thirty years (before the vast majority of women moved into paid work).
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But most of the gains are going to the shareholders who own the companies, and to the relatively small number of very talented (or very lucky and well-connected) managers, engineers, designers, and legal or financial specialists on whom the companies depend for strategic decisions about what to produce and how.
Increasingly, via stock options and bonuses, the owners and the talent are one and the same. While many other people indirectly own shares of stock through their pensions and 401-K plans, 90 percent of the value of all financial assets in the U.S. belongs to the richest 10 percent of the American population.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Sure, you can "reform" it for a generation, but eventually it chews through the restraints again and starts killing everyone vulnerable. Whee, let's do this again!!!!!
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Can we get to pure (as in actual) socialism? I am not sure if right-leaning America will ever buy that. However, we can all agree that our system needs to be moved a LONG WAY to the left.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Tax the rich and bring jobs back to the US. Then the working class won't be in such siege mode that survival is the only concern. People need jobs and living wages. "Pure" socialism is about meeting the needs of working people. When we take care of our class, then they can have the breathing room to be more progressive.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)but also push workers in the 3rd world to form workers parties of their own, to push for better working conditions, less pollution and better pay?
If we can succeed in doing that, there'll never be an offshored job again. Ever.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)TheWraith
(24,331 posts)Reich gets the fact that economics is modeled around human behavior, not the other way around. There's no real way to remove want from the human brain, so you need to regulate the results.
kentuck
(111,078 posts)rather than "socialism".. Brilliant!
ProSense
(116,464 posts)Summary:
But more Keynesian stimulus wont help solve the more fundamental problem...it cant be a permanent solution...During the Depression decade of the 1930s, the nation reorganized itself so that the gains from growth were far more broadly distributed. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 recognized unions rights to collectively bargain...Social Security, unemployment insurance, and workers compensation spread a broad safety net. The forty-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime also helped share the work and spread the gains, as did a minimum wage. In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid broadened access to health care. And a progressive income tax, reaching well over 70 percent on the highest incomes, also helped ensure that the gains were spread fairly.
This time, though, the nation has taken no similar steps. Quite the contrary: A resurgent right insists on even more tax breaks for corporations and the rich, massive cuts in public spending that will destroy whats left of our safety nets, including Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, fewer rights for organized labor, more deregulation of labor markets, and a lower (or no) minimum wage.
This is, quite simply, nuts.
And this is why a second Obama administration, should there be one, must focus its attention on more broadly distributing the gains from growth. This doesnt mean redistributing from rich to poor, as in a zero-sum game. It doesnt mean socialism. The rich will do far better with a smaller share of a robust, growing economy than theyre doing with a large share of an economy thats barely moving forward.
This will require real tax reform...a larger Earned Income Tax Credit... Medicare for all...limiting executive salaries and empowering workers to get a larger share of corporate profits. The Employee Free Choice Act should be an explicit part of the second-term agenda...We dont need socialism. We need a capitalism that works for the vast majority. The productivity revolution should be making our lives better not poorer and more insecure. And it will do that when we have the political will to spread its benefits.
Excellent contrast between the solutions of the FDR era and where we are now after decades of eroding those reforms.
Hey, it's not socialism, it's American capitalism at its best.
Still, what's not to love about socialism:
Socialist Hellhole Blogging
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/socialist-hellhole-blogging/
JHB
(37,158 posts)Breaking up monopolies and trusts, estate taxes to discourage pooling over generations, high marginal tax rates to change economic calculations to less favorable to squeeze every cent possible once you're already up in the stratosphere, etc.
BOG PERSON
(2,916 posts)the solution to capitalism is communism.
i'm not saying one is better than the other. that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
NS2012
(74 posts)[link:http://www.davidkorten.org/|
NS2012
(74 posts)Dr. David Korten offers a very compelling argument for an alternative to both Capitalism and Communism. The idea is that as humanity evolves, and as humans work more toward the benefit of each other, a new economic system can take hold.
True it's utopian, but a compelling argument regardless. You may find it interesting. There's an audio link at the top of the page.
OneGrassRoot
(22,920 posts)kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)CapitalISM is the supremacy of capital. It concentrates benefits among wielders of capital by nature and holds their selfishness and aggression to be virtues. Asking it to spread the benefits of productivity gains is like asking Bank of America to share the interest from its loans and its credit card fees out among the debtors as dividends. You suffer from a fundamental misperception of the subject at the grammatical level, Bob.
randome
(34,845 posts)Just as we decide the worth of the money we trade.
kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)You just placed SOCIETY as prior and superior to capital. That move is what is necessary to compel capitalists to do what is not in their nature to do: share the benefits they have extracted from their workforce.
kentuck
(111,078 posts)He knows that "socialism" would not be accepted by the same name. It is called "framing".
BOG PERSON
(2,916 posts)that such a movement has to conceal its aims, or brand itself deceptively to gain people's trust, then its possible that people aren't ready for any movements currently
kentuck
(111,078 posts)that people have not bought into the propaganda about socialism vs capitalism...
On the Road
(20,783 posts)is that prices of many goods and services are on a sliding scale depending on income. Since there is so much political opposition to higher marginal income tax rates, a dose of this might be easier to implement.
provis99
(13,062 posts)Reich sounds like one of those medieval doctors who would bleed the patient more when they kept getting weaker.
high density
(13,397 posts)is maximize next quarter's profits. There is no other concern. There is definitely no thought given to the fact that Americans can't consume when nobody here has a job.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)10 percent of the American population."
This is exactly why Socialism is indeed the answer.
How is it that he can know that, despite the fact that nearly every worker in the U.S. is, for all practical purposes, forced to place their future retirement in the hands of the Wall Street casino, yet still they own a mere 10% of the total dollars in the game, and still claim that this system is the solution?
BOG PERSON
(2,916 posts)as in, it is human nature to want to be dominated by your superiors, e.g. robert reich.
Better Believe It
(18,630 posts)Wasn't that reform project started in the 1800's?
If it "reforms" any more we'll all be in the poor house!
Well, 99% of us will be.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)likely work. They worked for FDR. America was capitalist back then too.
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)The super-rich control government in both the US and UK so good luck getting anything that doesn't benefit them through the system.
Selatius
(20,441 posts)By that, I mean he takes his wealth and buys up as many politicians as possible in order to enact a progressive agenda.
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,023 posts)Stuck on that old time discredited religion when it comes down to it.
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)You can't regulate capitalism in the long term. You can't spread the benefits around for too long. It's not in the nature of the system. Capital demands growth and expansion, it demands higher profits. Anything that gets in the way of those profits will eventually be done away with.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)The French LOVED IT!
Come on Obama. Have some guts.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)It's VERY hard to do and you're always in danger of being eaten.
EVERY TIME REGULATION IS TRIED IT DOESN'T WORK OVER THE LONG TERM. Why? Because "regulated" capitalism is the antithesis of what capitalism IS.