Does Capitalism Work?
Answer:
Capitalism works, but for whom? Not everyone.
The example you cited is why Western European nations have a mixed economy in a more socialistic direction, and they have provided the best standard of living in the world for the vast majority of their people.
But Jefferson and Madison did NOT invent capitalism. The economic system of the time was primarily mercantilism. And Jefferson for one believed that America should be a nation of small time agriculturalists. That is far from capitalism.
Well it is time tested, and it does work. But it has it's pitfalls such as the working class basically getting the shaft.
Capitalism has worked for over two hundred years for the united states so i guess you could say," yes it does work".
Yes, the whole thing is based on people suceeding. Communism does NOT because it goes aganst natural human tendencies. Say fred is a nuclear scientsist, he works 12 hour days in a communist country, and works his *** off all day. Tom is a toilet cleaner at mc donalds and works 6 hours a day, and gets paied the same as Fred. Fred finds out about tom and says to himself "Wait a minute, if me and Tom are getting payed the same amount, Why should I work so hard? Were getting paied the same amount anyway, hmm, I think I will take tommorow off" Capitalism pays the hard working, and raises education, although the education system in America is corrupted.
Capitalism does work if competition and minimal intervention by the government is executed at it's purest form. Unfortunately, people mis-use or manipulate it to their advantage which means the government steps in to regulate. Man can not be trusted to the right thing.
It works better than any other option before us.
Capitalism is really nothing but the (free) trade in capital goods. The word was coined by Marx, oddly enough.
I wouldn't call Jefferson and Madison mercantilists, but they did believe that high tariffs would stimulate domestic economy. That is why they funded the government out of taxes and tariffs on foreign goods. Jefferson would later be very critical of inequality and the failure of his simple agrarian world view.
Free markets and free market capitalism has been around ever since man was born. Feudalism and later Mercantilism was a low point of free markets, but still there were free cities existing during the time. The industrial revolution was one of the high points for free market capitalism, but Russia and China both industrialized with communism.
Today, free markets are more in favor than in the 40's, but most developed countries have a mixed economy that has a lot of government control.
well its still around.
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