Clearly, we both disagree with him, but the important thing is, he clearly identifies regulated capitalism as being necessary to save the system, not destroy it. Most importantly, though, he doesn't put the narrative before the facts and seriously try to argue that unregulated capitalism would give better upward mobility or a thriving working class.

> The system is wrong!
> You have to save the system!

I've never understood people who, like you, on the one hand want to smash the economic system and on the other are desperate to save it. Which is it? If you truly believe a certain set of regulations keeps it from self destroying, why on earth do you support those? Wouldn't it be more auspicious for your goals to allow the system to self destroy? Sorry, but that is... not even hypocrisy... that is political schizophrenia!

I understand soft left Social Democrats who want that kind of world. I also understand their soft right equivalent, Christian Democrats. I don't understand why hard leftists would want that.






I don't deny and have never denied that inequality is growing in the USA (and many other countries) and has since about 1980 (the Reagan - Thatcher revolution). I don't deny and have never denied the components of this argument: wages are stagnant, employment is falling, jobs are being exchanged via outsourcing and robotization.

I do deny that this makes the poorer segment automatically worse off. Even through the rise of inequality. The poor today may be more in number, and have a smaller share of national income than before (maybe than ever), but they are still better off than the poor of before inequality rose. There are worrying social trends and outcomes on the rise too. I don't deny that either. But overall it is still better to be poor today than to be poor in the 1970s.

I *strongly* deny that the US economy (or most of the First World economies) is unregulated. On either of the two variants of the argument: (a) the economy is unregulated in an absolute sense or (b) the economy is becoming less regulated and has been constantly deregulating from Reagan onwards, up to and including Obama (and whoever succeeds him). Just because it isn't the regulation you'd like, or doesn't produce an effect you'd like, doesn't mean it's not a regulation.

I deny that the negative social trends I identify are related to the rise in inequality: the crisis of the family, the rise in violence in urban areas, the huge increase in drug consumption and addiction (in which I include legal drugs, btw), the fall in educational attainment (levels HS and lower; college follows a different dynamic)... those are not products of inequality. Those are products of deliberate incentives to societal collapse by prizing bad decisions in all sorts of communities.

And I *strongly* deny that bloated government and/or tight regulation of economic activity are the only way to provide for the "losers" who are so innocently. (Libertarians know this as the "Roads Fallacy") You do know that there are places where feeding the homeless is illegal because there's a regulation saying all food has to pass inspections, right? And you dare tell me regulation helps poor people? You too can do better, Dissident.






Cuteness is to die for
Cuteness cannot fail
Cuteness knows no limit
Cuteness will prevail