Capitalism is failing the middle class, say capitalists

[Donnachaidh]

http://teamsternation.blogspot.com/2011/04/capitalism-is-failing-middle-class-say.html

We're painfully aware that the U.S. economy is generating too few good jobs and that people are mad as hell about it. What's surprising is that influential bastions of the Establishment are starting to agree with us.

The latest surprise came from the Council on Foreign Relations, an august group that has as its members high-ranking government officials, world business leaders and prominent media figures. Last month, the CFR published a working paper called "The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge" (just the kind of snoozer headline you'd expect from such an august group).

Here's the CFR's take on all that Ayn Rand crap about market outcomes, especially efficient ones, always making everyone better off in the long run:

That seems clearly incorrect and is supported by neither theory nor experience. It is true, as in the United States, that many goods and services are less expensive than they would be if the economy were walled off from the global economy, and that the benefits of lower prices are widespread. But these cost savings do not necessarily compensate for diminished employment opportunities, and it would be presumptuous in the extreme for policymakers to tell voters what their values and preferences should be. People might trade cheaper goods for assurances that a wide range of productive and rewarding employment options would be available, now and in the future, for themselves and their children and grandchildren, even if the cost of goods they consumer were to rise.

More at the link --

[Warpy]

1. The only way to get a strong and stable middle class

is to work to create one through regulating and heavily taxing the capitalists.

This is a good thing for the capitalists because countries with strong, stable middle classes are also strong and stable.

Capitalism simply does not work for the vast majority, otherwise.

[drm604]

2. Myabe they're coming to the realization

that if they don't employ people, they'll have no customers.

[SoCalDem]

3. Capitalism was never deigned to benefit the "lower classes"

In the pure sense of it, it was designed to benefit the moneyed classes as they use the money of the masses to enrich themselves.

[upi402]

4. George Schultz said unions are necessary in capitalism to balance power

Greenspan admitted that the invisible hand of the free market was a failed paradigm.

And my ass hurts.

[socialist_n_TN]

5. The problem is that IT DOESN'T MATTER............

It doesn't matter HOW many capitalists see capitalism as a failing system. They're still plugged into the system and they can't change it WITHOUT LOSING THE MONOPOLY GAME! A "moral" capitalist is one who will soon be out of business because the REST of the capitalists will take advantage of the "moral" one. It's the system itself that needs to be taken down.

As I've said before, the only way to make capitalism work FOR the people is to make sure that the worker's boot is pressing on it's throat BARELY letting it breathe. When they KNOW they will be crushed if they fuck up, THEN you can make use of whatever capitalist advantages there are.

[provis99]

6. Capitalism benefits those with capital.

That's the whole point of capitalism. The system was never intended to benefit labor; labor is merely an economic input in a capitalist system.

[Fool Count]

7. The whole idea of the so-called "middle class" is invented by

capitalists. There is no freaking "middle class". There are capitalists and the rest of us - paid labor.
They just wanted us to feel co-invested into their crappy system, so they came up with that crap to make
us feel superior to the underclass and allegiant to our capitalist masters. Hello, wake up, we ARE the
underclass. The only change going on now is that before the capitalists felt that they needed to be more
generous towards us to keep us from choosing the then existing alternative. Now they just stopped giving
a shit - where are we gonna go? They always owned the political system in the US, now they think they own
it globally and can stick it to us without any consequence. And you know what - they are probably right.