samo:

You’re still looking at it as a zero sum game, which it’s not. Wealth “creation” is just that, not redistribution from poor to rich.

When capitalists take iron ore out of the ground, and through several iterations make cars and bridges and buildings, that’s creation of wealth.

Money is just a medium of exchange, and is printed to keep up with the increase in total wealth. If the amount of dollars stayed the same you would have deflation, where one dollar would buy a lot more stuff. If the government printed too many dollars, you’d have inflation, and a dollar would buy a lot less. These are economic facts, like gravity. They are beyond politics and hold true even in places like North Korea.

That the CIA failed to see the fall of the USSR only speaks to the incompetence of the CIA, and says nothing about why it happened at all. Like I said, I prefer to believe it was because democratic capitalism was more successful than autocratic communism at “creating” wealth.

****************

rico sauve,

I have to disagree on the part that capitalism has
made more people rich and no one poor. That
defies a logic that either the wealth being created
for all is because more money is being printed ,
which is possible and most likely what’s
happening, or that capitalism makes people rich
but at the expense of more people being left
behind, which I take as a way of saying people
not being able or allowed to make much money.

No doubt the people of the u.s. are not ‘hurting’
so much because I would think when the money
is cut off, people will really sit up and take
notice. But that is extreme and the economy is
being handled such that that may not happen or
happen soon.

But I really disagree when ‘private banking
concerns’ are bailed out with taxpayer money
without consent of the taxpayers unless you think
that voting the charlatans into office who do this
is acceptance of bailing out the creators of this
financial crisis we and the world are experiencing. 
I consider it stealing the taxpayer’s money to pay
those bonuses which has been reported.

As per Chalmers Johnson, whom I consider to be
very aware of what happened with the cold war, I
believe him when he says even our intelligence
agencies could not detect the collapse of the
u.s.s.r. or the overthrow of the shah of Iran.
Besides, that was most likely the game of having
an enemy to fight just like this bogus ‘war on
terror’ that has replaced the cold war just so
america can keep fighting wars, if for no other
reason that the military industrial congressional
financial cia msm complex keeps it that way.

Permanent war does not make for good
economies. And growth in the style of capitalism
is not sustainable.

Miko:

What a fairytale scenario!

Actually it’s socialism that takes wealth that already exists and puts a fence around it.

[Conservatives: Working hard so you don’t have to.]

“Been there.  Done that.”

We did? When? Before the establishment of the Fed in 1913?

How long will people mindlessly defend this repeated cycle:
Unelected, unaccountable Federal Reserve manipulates interest rates to form
Malivestment bubbles; all the Government and Banking cronies concoct
unproductive schemes with the free money, then when the bubble pops, all the
wealth of the regular classes that was suckered into the bubble is redistributed
to the bankers and fraudulent Wall St. types.

All the while the bankers make interest and fees on the transactions, and the
Keynsian debt spenders saddle us with a perpetual inflation tax.

It starts with the Fed, and continues with a bought and paid for 2-party
Congress who in the name of Keynes, create false markets with false demand,
funded by inflation and our taxes. 

Who got bailed out when the music stopped?  And you still trust them?

Government and Banks:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard66.html

Uh-oh!  How did I pull Hayek out of the woodwork?
Next it’ll be Ayn Rand and the John Birch >Society.
Been there.  Done that.

A.F. Hayek, Nobel Economics Laureate, more timely.

Author of Road to Serfdom.

A father figure of Austrian/Libertarian Economics, a view that predicted this
mess, and needs to be understood and debated openly in this historically
turbulent time.

If people would just read, and understand and incorporate the concepts before
spouting off their knee-jerk, Democrat/Republican/Keynsian, contemptuous
remarks, we might actually get some progress.

http://mises.org/daily/4730

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/10/5-key-principles-that-unite-
populist.html

And, by the way, the way to win a Nobel in economics, literature and peace today is merely to put a stick in the eye of the USA. Merit is secondary.

samo:

Unfettered anything is the worst form of…whatever.

Capitalism has made more people rich than any other economic system. And NO it has not “made” people poor. True, it has left people behind. But wealth is not stolen in capitalist systems (as opposed to socialist ones), it is created. Wall Street bankers don’t fund their bonuses by stealing from poor people.

Look at China today vs twenty years ago. Then, all Chinese were poor (except the Communist leadership). Today there are thousands of millionaires in China and fewer poor people. Blame it on capitalism.

Why did the West win the Cold War? Capitalism beat communism. Not a shot was fired.

Think about this for a minute:
  “The problem with unemployment is that, theoretically, it shouldn’t exist. Efficient market theory says unemployed workers should always be able to find a job if they just lower their standards enough, just as all employers should be able to find employees if they lower their standards enough.” (When does job insecurity hit bottom?) 
  What about all the jobs shipped to other places, creating the fact that unemployment does exist, and the need to do something about it in practice. Theory be damned if you can’t pay the grocery bill!
  “Providing unemployment benefits can keep workers from accepting the wrong job out of desperation, but providing too many benefits can lead to search times running even longer than necessary.”
  In other words, unemployment benefits can be too generous if they prolong the period of job searching beyond some kind of reasonable limits??? Sounds like another ploy for opposing unemployment benefits, doesn’t it?
  These economist types—where are their main concerns, with employers or with employees.  When do they start talking about the fair distribution of profits?  Three gueses, in any event.

****************

I don’t keep up with nobel prizes other than what
appears on my screen but wouldn’t a economics
prize be better awarded that unequivocally proves
that unregulated, unfettered global capitalism is
the worse form of economics.

Thing is, just looking at the current economic
state of affairs proves just that. Nobel prizes
become more ridiculously circumspect each year
as it is, after all, the rich and elite presenting
awards to those they want to have the award.