Switching between various news channels and reading a dizzying array of news posts on the net regarding the 99% "Occupy" movements and the upcoming republican general election, I started to put some thought into the whole situation. It would seem that in a capitalistic system we would encourage companies to be as successful as they can be - likewise we would encourage individuals to be as successful monetarily as they can be. Now there are stop-gap measures and regulations to limit companies from becoming too powerful and controlling, since that hurts the free market. But we don't really have measures like this for high-earning citizens outside of taxation.

What my concerns were is that if we acknowledge those who accumulate wealth and earn a lot of money as being successful, why would we punish them through higher taxes? But on the flip side, modern day efficiencies and an international free labor market have lead to many U.S. workers being pushed out of a job and have increased the ability of the "rich" to get even richer. As a society though we have to question the role that government has in protecting our own people at the expense of companies accumulating wealth. Capitalism isn't a warm, fuzzy, feel-good system where everyone is wrapped up in a nice blanket and awarded a good job. It WILL eliminate jobs if that can be used to produce more wealth. So if society has a demand for paying jobs, what path are we heading down if there is no intervention to start setting up guidelines that are good for Americans.

So I get the republican viewpoint that a capitalistic society would have minimal regulations and government would play a very small role, because they're right. But is that good for society in general?

Define 'society in general'.

The global population is massively better off now than it was 50 years ago. A lot has happened since then, like the global supply of low/unskilled labor expanding by an order of magnitude or so, through the end of the cold war and asia dragging itself out of the mud.

If by society in general, you mean the american car factory laborer; yeah, that society has had a few setbacks, related to the above. But its a rather narrow definition.

Personally, I don't think it's right that so many people think it's ok to think the solution to the problem of having to work two jobs or not having enough money to educate yourself etc. etc. is to just take money from more successful people. It's an easy out because there are more non-successful/moderately successful people in the US than there are tremendously successful people. Ideally the goal should be to create a system where the long term sees more balanced success across the board.

Solutions like lowering the barriers to entry for secondary education are more in line with my ideal. I think anybody who wants to increase their ability to benefit our society should be able without being crushed by debt.

Switching between various news channels and reading a dizzying array of news posts on the net regarding the 99% "Occupy" movements and the upcoming republican general election, I started to put some thought into the whole situation. It would seem that in a capitalistic system we would encourage companies to be as successful as they can be - likewise we would encourage individuals to be as successful monetarily as they can be. Now there are stop-gap measures and regulations to limit companies from becoming too powerful and controlling, since that hurts the free market. But we don't really have measures like this for high-earning citizens outside of taxation.

What my concerns were is that if we acknowledge those who accumulate wealth and earn a lot of money as being successful, why would we punish them through higher taxes? But on the flip side, modern day efficiencies and an international free labor market have lead to many U.S. workers being pushed out of a job and have increased the ability of the "rich" to get even richer. As a society though we have to question the role that government has in protecting our own people at the expense of companies accumulating wealth. Capitalism isn't a warm, fuzzy, feel-good system where everyone is wrapped up in a nice blanket and awarded a good job. It WILL eliminate jobs if that can be used to produce more wealth. So if society has a demand for paying jobs, what path are we heading down if there is no intervention to start setting up guidelines that are good for Americans.

So I get the republican viewpoint that a capitalistic society would have minimal regulations and government would play a very small role, because they're right. But is that good for society in general?

As an outsider I think both ideas are naive and frankly puny (as in "helpless"). The helplessness in this case stems from a plethora of problems and decisions in the middle of which lies the screwed up binary system you Americans are stuck with - as an end result you have the rich and the poor, but there's no middle class - just as there's no "moderate" party or a place for moderates to effectively express their opinion. Hell, you don't even have a news outlet that can be considered both moderate and respected. The result is a bias that manifests itself exactly the way it does right now: finger pointing, which leads to more bias. Add to that the potential crapper the country's economy is spiraling toward and you get something like this:

I don't agree that the rich should be taxed more. However I also don't agree with how the rich are represented in America: as corporate leeches. The catch-22 here is that your legislation is so full of loopholes that have been carved in there over decades that it becomes punitive to distinguish between people who have accumulated their wealth legitimately and people who have, for lack of a better word, stolen it from the general public, that there's no longer a way or a fair method of telling the two apart. The result is blind hate and class warfare, which is perfectly normal and a historically proven consequence. If anything, this is history as it has always been. As such, ironically probably the best way to see how it'll turn out is by reading a couple of history books.

Oh, and note that the sentence "99%ers poking fingers at a failure of capitalism" is an oxymoron. Think about it for a second. I'll give you a hint: the keyword here starts with the number 9.

The most hilarious thing I saw was a news poll saying that 46% of people support the 99% movement...

Then again, I find most western world protesters of this generation obnoxious to the extreme ( although frankly if I was alive in the 60's I would have probably hated hippies too, I sure as hell hate the generation of selfish bastards they became ) these days. The one that just boggles my mind is people comparing it to the Arab Spring, which is insulting to the extreme. Now, if the police start firing at them, I will give that comparison a bit more weight.

Then again, I am Canadian and simply put, our government is vastly superior and more representative of the people than yours and our banks were more responsible, so I don't really feel all that much outrage... ;) If I was an American I think I would be so exception disillusioned with politics at this point because your system has really become hijacked. I think as long as you have a two party system... a two party system paid for by the same lobbyist, representative democracy is dead. I think the best thing that could have happened to your country would have been for Ross Perot to have won, which would have completely shattered the two party system. Now, it is so horribly entrenched, short of an actual Arab Spring style uprising, you are screwed.

I think that that isn't the best representation of the issue. It's not that the rich are rich and need to be punished for it, or that their wealth should be scattered around in general or even that capitalism isn't fair. It's that things have changed in the last 60 years to redistribute wealth away from the middle and lower classes upwards. Whether or not you think that that's good or appropriate, it isn't how things used to be and and it does hamper opportunity for many.

Heavy wealth accrual depresses net spending somewhat (each marginal dollar is more likely to be spent the fewer dollars you have overall), and promotes speculation which raises prices on some things and generally tiies up money non-productively. And there's a sense (which I think is accurate) that the wealthiest have a disproportionate amount of political power, which they use to enrich themselves further at the expense of others and the free market itself.

I'm on my phone now so bit's hard to type out a better response, but economic opportunity is not good in the US lately. There's little mobility, and a person is far more likely to move down the ladder than up, even if the reward for getting to the top is greater than ever. This is much more severe in the US than in other capitalist countries like the UK, so it's not necessarily a feature of capitalism as it is of the American implementation of it. The 99% aren't anti capitalism, they're just against the disappearance of opportunity and an erosion of democracy.

One of the most central issues concerning the 99% movement isn't necessarily wealth and how much of it someone has, it's that the people with the most wealth have the most access to our democracy and political system. As a consequence of that, the system has been and is continually being rigged in such a way that favors the wealthy by making it even easier to buy influence. A feedback loop has been created here and I don't think even the 99% movement will bring an end to it.

One of the most central issues concerning the 99% movement isn't necessarily wealth and how much of it someone has, it's that the people with the most wealth have the most access to our democracy and political system. As a consequence of that, the system has been and is continually being rigged in such a way that favors the wealthy by making it even easier to buy influence. A feedback loop has been created here and I don't think even the 99% movement will bring an end to it.

My point though is that we're still going to see industry becoming more efficient as more and more things can be automated or replaced with cheap labor from overseas. So as a result you do cut down on the middle class.. the rich get richer by virtue of being able to do more with less. The poor get poorer because they aren't necessarily needed.

BUT, as a country are we allowing businesses to operate in a fashion that gives them unfair(?) incentives that improves their economic position at the expense of the people? Your response would indicate that yes, in fact we do.

Should capitalism being constrained though by government to protect the working class of people or is the system doomed to create an increasingly larger divide between the poor and rich.

Then again, I am Canadian and simply put, our government is vastly superior and more representative of the people than yours and our banks were more responsible, so I don't really feel all that much outrage... ;) If I was an American I think I would be so exception disillusioned with politics at this point because your system has really become hijacked. I think as long as you have a two party system... a two party system paid for by the same lobbyist, representative democracy is dead. I think the best thing that could have happened to your country would have been for Ross Perot to have won, which would have completely shattered the two party system. Now, it is so horribly entrenched, short of an actual Arab Spring style uprising, you are screwed.

The problem has a lot to do with our single winner voting system. It creates an environment where the only result is two rather extreme parties where the middle is unrepresented. In Canada there is a parliamentary system where casting a vote that may not win can still get a better result than if you didn't cast that vote. It isn't really to do with how much money corporations are allowed to give people. If we had a non-single winner system we would be much better off because the amount of money necessary for corporations to get as represented in congress as they are now would be much much larger and the risk of not being represented for the money you donate would increase greatly. We'd also get many more middle of the road parties.

BUT, as a country are we allowing businesses to operate in a fashion that gives them unfair(?) incentives that improves their economic position at the expense of the people? Your response would indicate that yes, in fact we do.

Should capitalism being constrained though by government to protect the working class of people or is the system doomed to create an increasingly larger divide between the poor and rich.

Yes, of course our system allows people to acquire wealth at the expense of others. That's the nature of capitalism. When there is competition, there are winners and there are losers. I don't think that itself is unfair. As the saying goes: "you win some, you lose some." I think the wealthy win more than they lose. The unfair part is that the wealthy get to make the rules of the game that the middle class are losing. Deregulation is a prime example of this. Regulations are put in place to protect the environment and consumers -- the middle class. When we deregulate, it effects the lives of the wealthy in a positive way through increased profits and/or opening new markets. This is oftentimes at the expense of product safety. The wealthy have enough money to ensure that their own lives are not effected negatively by this -- they can afford the increased cost of safer products, and afford living in areas that are less effected by the damage done to the environment.