Stephen Shanahan 5:33 pm on February 4, 2016

Capitalism Socialism and Communism I have some ideas…

Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism. I have some ideas on this. Communism is flawed because it lacks incentives for improvement. Capitalism is more flawed because it promotes greed and abuse of the less fortunate. Socialism is unique, because what I have noticed is, America is already a partially socialist country, we have programs such as social security, and income assistance that takes money from the young and the wealthy and redistributes it to the old and poor. I would like to know where my peers stand. Are you a fan of the socialist programs that we have, do you think government should have a bigger influence in our economy, or are you a fan of dog eat dog economics and just let the market do its thing.

Michael Ruben 7:21 pm on February 4, 2016

Personally, both lack accountability. Both work in theory, but in my experience rarely in reality. That’s just my slanted view from being in the private sector and public and standing in an unemployment line twice. In theory, capitalism sounds great. You are rewarded for your hard work and success. Yet, twice I have been terminated as a sales manager for making my company way too much money. At one location I was pulled into the conference room at least half a dozen times and reprimanded by the President and Vice-President of Sales who told me to stop earning repeat business and selling at high margins. Maybe I’m just the only one in this rabbit hole, but if the customer is happy and comes back again and again and doesn’t care about the price then who is to argue? Capitalism in theory is good, and perhaps even communism, but both require more accountability: it should be a two-way street. But until then, both will have their flaws.
Anthony Murdoch 1:24 am on February 8, 2016

Mike, I agree that there is a lack of accountability with capitalism and socialism, but only if you’re expecting your government to take care of you. I think many view the capitalistic ideology in an old school type of way, that being the freedom to live/die/survive from your own actions and to take care of yourself and for their to be action by the Fed to only step in when needed. The socialist aspects that I think are well implemented into our capitalistic society are welfare and social services for those mothers/orphans who were left to take care of themselves or mothers with more kids than can possibly raise in the right manner (especially when talking about health and education). I do believe that there are way too many people that abuse these services and think we would all be better off without the government giving us undeserved money. That is the part of socialism that I do not agree with. We cannot keep conditioning able-body citizens with government subsidies and welfare. My utopia will come from me supporting myself and not taking freebies. At the same time the notion of big corporate tax breaks are destroying America. Bring back the small businesses and stop letting the Wal-Mart’s pay their employees so little that it falls on the rest of us to pay for their food stamps while the big CEO’s are wiping their butts with Benjamin’s.

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Capitalism Socialism and Communism I have some ideas…