WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT CAPITALISM?

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/4/09)

What's so good about capitalism? The Great Depression of the 1930's was the product of unbridled capitalism, and it was ended by large infusions of socialism. Our current debacle is the result of unregulated capitalism, and now the capitalists in a gush of socialism are begging for federal funds, one might add, to save their own skins.

The fact is that old-fashioned, entrepreneurial capitalism is a myth, a left-over illusion from our frontier, simpler days. Today, the capitalists are money traders and CEO's of behemoth corporations on the government dole either through bailouts or tax-breaks. In short, they are fat cats who don't produce a damned thing. They trade money or, worse yet, the illusions of money.

The justification for capitalism is that it fosters the entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, it smothers it by buying up the entrepreneurs once they become successful. The economic engine of American is the small entrepreneur with news ideas, knowledge, and ingenuity who develops new products that work.

The theory has been trickle down: give tax breaks to the wealthy, the corporations, and the banks so that'll have lots of money that they can trickle down to everyone else. It didn't trickle down. They kept it, squandering it on themselves.

Rather it should be tax breaks to the entrepreneurs and abolish the tax breaks for the rich, the corporations, and the banks. Capitalism is for fat cats. It has nothing to do with democracy. Give the breaks to those who deserve them, the entrepreneurs.