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A Point of View: The revolution of capitalism
BBC News Magazine ^ | 9/3/2011 | John Gray

Posted on 09/04/2011 4:26:04 PM PDT by chickadee

In fact, in Britain, the US and many other developed countries over the past 20 or 30 years, the opposite has been happening. Job security doesn't exist, the trades and professions of the past have largely gone and life-long careers are barely memories.

If people have any wealth it's in their houses, but house prices don't always increase. When credit is tight as it is now, they can be stagnant for years. A dwindling minority can count on a pension on which they could comfortably live, and not many have significant savings.

More and more people live from day to day, with little idea of what the future may bring. Middle-class people used to think their lives unfolded in an orderly progression. But it's no longer possible to look at life as a succession of stages in which each is a step up from the last.

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: capitalism; financialinsecurity; globalization; middleclass
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Don't let the name Marx deter you from reading this article. It is real food for thought.
1 posted on 09/04/2011 4:26:09 PM PDT by chickadee
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To: chickadee

Except it confuses industrialization with capitalism.


2 posted on 09/04/2011 4:36:01 PM PDT by SeeSharp
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To: chickadee

I would argue that misguided liberal policies have distorted true capitalism into a form which is bound to fail. Paradoxically, the growth of Government and entitlements has made it “safe” for companies to flee the USA. They can still make a fat profit while the Government kept the Middle Class afloat through deficit spending. Once the credit limit is reached, however, that’s when things start to get dicey because the domestic market will finally suffer. If Government was not there to pick up the slack, business would have figured out long ago that outsourcing was not in its long term best interest as it would destroy the Middle Class.


3 posted on 09/04/2011 4:45:29 PM PDT by rbg81
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To: SeeSharp

Or perhaps he’s mistaking state capitalism with free markets.


4 posted on 09/04/2011 4:48:13 PM PDT by Red Dog #1
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To: chickadee

The article mentions Victorian values- one of which was thrift, and they would have held in abhorrence modern practices such as putting debts not yet paid to you in the profit column, borrowing obscene amounts of money relative to what you make, and considering a home as merely a financial asset. They also understood rightly that the government had no business screwing around with economics.....


5 posted on 09/04/2011 4:58:44 PM PDT by GenXteacher (He that hath no stomach for this fight, let him depart!)
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To: rbg81

I see some merit in your argument, but, it took both Dems and Repubs to allow open borders, another way of undercutting the domestic middle class’s jobs. I agree with you about domestic companies setting up shop overseas.


6 posted on 09/04/2011 5:00:45 PM PDT by chickadee
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To: SeeSharp
Except it confuses industrialization with capitalism

How so?

Industrialization is simply an effect of Capitalism. There are other, and more recent, effects, which I think is what Gray is getting at.

7 posted on 09/04/2011 5:02:10 PM PDT by jack gillis
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To: GenXteacher

Excellent thoughts - the Beltway crowd truly believed that they couldn’t kill the golden goose. I think the poor thing is on life support.


8 posted on 09/04/2011 5:02:25 PM PDT by chickadee
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To: chickadee

The Golden Goose has been sold for a Needy Donkey..


9 posted on 09/04/2011 5:07:51 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole...)
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To: GenXteacher

A system utterly dependent on mass consumption, which is pretty much what we’ve had in the USA since 1946 (and in Europe since the end of WWII reconstruction, say, 1955 or so) has to mass consume—even by way of debt if that’s the last resort.

On the other hand, the reciprocal approach—producerism—doesn’t really work without a mass market to consume the objects of production.


10 posted on 09/04/2011 5:09:07 PM PDT by jack gillis
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To: chickadee

The premise of this article is wrong. Neither Britain, nor the United States, have practiced capitalism for a very long time.


11 posted on 09/04/2011 5:22:44 PM PDT by Lazamataz (If Hitler had been as lazy as Obama, the 1940's would have been a very nice decade!!)
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To: rbg81
" If Government was not there to pick up the slack, business would have figured out long ago that outsourcing was not in its long term best interest as it would destroy the Middle Class. "

I appreciate your comments, they are worth some thought.

The immediate thought that comes to mind is that Henry Ford established the $5 hour wage to that his employees could buy what they built, AND HE PROFITED FROM THAT. But if government had handed out money and millions more high paying government jobs had been created, he could have just as well had the products built more cheaply (overseas in today's terms) and PROFITED EVEN MORE.

12 posted on 09/04/2011 5:23:15 PM PDT by LZ_Bayonet ( I AM THE TEA PARTY LEADER !)
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To: Red Dog #1

“state capitalism” = Corporatism


13 posted on 09/04/2011 5:26:09 PM PDT by griswold3 (Character is Destiny)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks chickadee. The free market is like the environment -- it can be changed in any way except for the rules by which it operates.

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14 posted on 09/04/2011 5:28:57 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: LZ_Bayonet
The immediate thought that comes to mind is that Henry Ford established the $5 hour wage

$5/day.

15 posted on 09/04/2011 5:35:55 PM PDT by Graybeard58
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To: chickadee

It would be interesting to see how much damage has been done by the shift from a market economy to a status economy: i.e. set asides because you are black, Asian, Mexican; the hiring as wage earners minorities as opposed to whites etc. etc. I wonder if the dollar value of such a shift could be quantified.


16 posted on 09/04/2011 5:43:51 PM PDT by AEMILIUS PAULUS (It is a shame that when these people give a riot)
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To: jack gillis
Industrialization is simply an effect of Capitalism.

So that's how they did it in the Soviet Union--capitalism!

17 posted on 09/04/2011 5:47:12 PM PDT by Defiant (Calling all citizens from all over the world, this is Captain America calling.)
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To: Defiant
So that's how they did it in the Soviet Union--capitalism!

Quite so, actually, and you can see the process again playing out in China.

I'm tempted to link the Mr. Jensen speech from Network, but instead I'll just point that what happened in the Soviet Union--and what's happening in China now--is that they simply copied the technical modes of production that had been developed by "revolutionary capitalism," as the author above puts it.

18 posted on 09/04/2011 5:58:19 PM PDT by jack gillis
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To: chickadee

When you drop “free” from Free Enterprise you abandon Capitalism.


19 posted on 09/04/2011 6:13:29 PM PDT by Misterioso (The worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny. (Ludwig von Mises)
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To: jack gillis
"A system utterly dependent on mass consumption,"

Given aging demographics in the West and expanding demographics in the East and Third World, would not capitalism dictate that the means of production shift to markets where the demand and the opportunity for profit is growing? American and European government policy is simply accelerating the process.

20 posted on 09/04/2011 6:19:36 PM PDT by buckalfa (Confused and Bewildered With a Glass Half Empty)
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