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.

Yet that still amounts to a lot of unnecessary suffering, and doesn't change the fact that they, and the many people across the globe suffering far worse, do not have to live like that any more.

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.

The point is, we do not have to be poor at all anymore. Saying things aren't as bad now under capitalism as it once was is entirely beside the point, because things do not have to be like that at all anymore.

I *strongly* deny that the US economy (or most of the First World economies) is unregulated.

I *strongly* insist that it is compared to other First World nations, based on simple empirical observations with the great de-regulation trends and drive towards privatization that has occurred since just before the Reagan and Clinton eras, as noted here and here for starters. The latter is even an instance of a capitalist-friendly pundit bragging about American deregulation and calling for more of it.

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 didn't say it was full deregulation. I said it was considerably more unregulated here than in other G8 nations. Are you reading me correctly, or is your anger and frustration over our disagreements on this topic interfering with that?

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.

All of these trends are interconnected with the economy, because all have a lot to do with a failure to distribute resources free of a price tag, and thus precisely in the amount actually needed (as opposed to what local governments can afford).

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.

The more workers are denied the ability to have needed items and services on the basis of inability to pay, the worse off they will be, both materially and psychologically. A capitalist free-for-all is not the way to achieve that, since it allows the capitalist system to operate with no restraint on its emphasis upon greed and single-minded pursuit of profit, and the utter lack of compassion this type of system entails.

(Libertarians know this as the "Roads Fallacy")

Libertarians consider anything that impedes greed and selfishness to be a "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?

A classless, moneyless society would have no homeless in the first place.

And you dare tell me regulation helps poor people?

You're nit-picking extreme examples, and you know it. That's not a foregone law of regulation.

You too can do better, Dissident.

I think we can all do better than stubbornly hold onto an archaic system that is past it's time when modern technology allows for a far more advanced economic and social order.