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Has the Time Come to Reform Capitalism?

Sometimes one has only to pose the question to know the answer. How many of the following questions could you confidently answer with a simple YES or NO?

Do the forces of free-market (unregulated) capitalism tend to narrow the economic gap between rich and poor?

Generally speaking, under capitalism the more money you have the easier it is to make money, and the less money you have the harder. If it were economically feasible to reverse this dynamic, would such a reversal be undesirable?

When you have money you can buy power, and when you have power you can make money. Does an economic system that leads to huge concentrations of wealth strengthen democratic government?

President (senior) George Bush’s wife Barbara said in a speech, “Good education is the essential foundation of a strong democracy.” If she had said, “Well distributed property is the essential foundation of a strong democracy,” would she be articulating one of the core ideals of the Republican Party?

Does John Ralston Saul’s contention, ‘The citizen owns the state,’ represent the true state of affairs under the existing form of capitalism?

Many have asserted the existence of a government-corporate alliance. Can these claims be dismissed as fanciful?

Does unregulated capitalism make a serious effort to protect the family, mothers and home makers from the harsh demands on time and energy that prevail in the work place?

Can it be taken for granted that there are bound to be more winners than losers in a free market, deregulated economy?

Horace Greeley remarked, “The darkest hour of any man’s life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it.” Does the capitalist ethos recognize that such a statement might have some application to share shuffling and currency speculation?

Is money’s primary function as a social convenience (i.e. a measure of value, a store of value, and a medium of exchange) completely compatible with it’s speculative use as a commodity that is bought and sold in the foreign exchange markets to the tune of over a trillion dollars a day?

Is the spirit of competitive capitalism in complete accordance with the spirit of the Gospels, particularly the verse: ‘A man’s life does not consist in having more possessions than he needs.’ (Luke 12:15)?

Fully fledged Capitalism, though comparatively recent in human history, has had a colourful and turbulent career. It has many indisputable virtues, as befits the world’s most successful economic system, and it often attracts something akin to religious loyalty. Yet, there have always been people who insist it has equally indisputable vices. Today capitalism affects almost every person on the planet and is poised to play a starring role in a future that is, judging from present indications, mined with explosives. If you would like to inquire more deeply into the phenomenon of capitalism, then click HERE. What you will find is a organized collection of quotations which try to give credit and debit where each is due. By the way, if you answered NO to all of the above questions, so by a curious coincidence did we.

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