Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

I would say it is true in most places in human history, those with power consolidate their power and use that power to take advantage of those without power (or very little power). That is the current system in the USA. I would agree in the USA it is less than in many other countries today.

So I agree the USA is less bad. But it is bad. And it is getting worse the last 20 years. And it is getting less and less capitalistic with relatively free markets (not the political extreme, might-make-right-markets, but actual economic markets that are free of monopolistic pricing power).

The USA has many advantages and does some things well (like having a marketplace where businesses can indeed grow quickly and prosper - even if it is far from perfect). This has given us great economic advantages. The huge amount of wealth we had and built up after world war two is a huge part of why the USA is where it is today. The USA mainly did well enough not to squander too much of that wealth advantage - it certainly could have done much worse. It could also have done much better.

The USA's health system is by far the worst in the rich world (double the cost and no better results - and this is the most expensive area of economics so being twice as bad as everyone else - and much more than twice as bad as the good health care system - is very bad). This problem is very much tied to the non-capitalist pro cronyist policies that are in general bad for the USA. Health care is just far worse here than anywhere (maybe some tiny, nearly insignificant markets are as badly broken relatively in the USA - say sugar quotas or something but economically it is just giving billions to a few people and costing everyone very small amounts of money). Health care is hugely broken and massively costly to the economy.

In most other areas the USA is mediocre or comparatively good but there are numerous where there are problems (and many are getting worse in the last 15 years).

Other than health care I don't so much see that the USA needs to turn to other examples of countries doing a better job of using capitalism to improve results to society (though there are examples such as new Zealand for farm policy…).

But the USA is creating great loss to our people by not taking advantage of capitalism (letting markets work - which is not what political talking heads mean, letting big business distort markets with monopolistic power). I want the USA to stop throwing away the benefits capitalism would allow us to gain.

There are many individual facets of society we could benefit from improving (and have lots of examples of countries doing much better - education, policing, foreign policy…).

But I would agree with your point that most other countries are even worse at taking advantage of the gains possible with a capitalist economic system.

In fact the USA is often responsible for making those other countries worse. The huge damage done by the copyright cartel (and associated patent messes) is the worst in the USA and the USA uses its political and military might to demand that its vassal states in Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. (I know they don't think of themselves as basal state but they really just bow down to whatever the USA actually demands only given token resistance where the USA allows it) allow such pitiful policies to flourish. The constitution of the USA had an appropriate understanding of the government GRANTING rights to private citizens/companies that DON"T exist WITHOUT government granting them (copyrights and patents). The economic theory is to balance the benefit to society from encouraging innovation through government granted monopolies with the cost of the GOVERNMENT taking from society to give to the private entity. The current USA policy is purely about supporting big business and allowing markets to be broken with extremely bad policy and no evidence they even have the vaguest understanding of capitalist or any economic theory on how the government should be acting in taking from society and giving to individuals.

Ah well, I doubt anyone will actually read this far. Obviously I am emotional on this topic. Which I know is odd. I just have seen how many people across the globe suffer because we don't get nearly the benefits from capitalism we could if we didn't allow the idiotic ides that capitalism means those with the power make the rules to break markets and direct the benefits to their own pockets.

That was in the 80's. 30 - 40 years ago. A lot has changed, and not much of it for the better.

A century ago we had the Great Depression, followed by a major application of regulation, followed by the biggest and longest boom in middle-class history in the US.

In the 80s we started massive deregulation including killing Glass-Steagall, opening up banks to so destroy the global economy that we're having this discussion today.

Your history of regulation and relative wealth is backwards.

Edit: I'll acquiesce that the tax code is laughable, but mostly in how upper-class income tax levels are half what the middle class pays.

Because a simple walk down an average street nearly anywhere in the country strongly indicates otherwise. In science, we like to imagine that we'll begrudgingly discard our theories in the face of a single contradictory fact. Economists don't even seem to pretend that's a thing they'd ever do.

There are some 50-60 million people living in poverty in the US. Schools don't have books or desks. People are quite literally fighting insurance companies for their lives on a daily basis. That's quite a lot of demand out there for pretty basic things. There are staggering numbers of unemployed and underemployed people out there as well, so we're not hurting for supply-side capacity either.

There's simply more profit to be made by "investing" capital in playing financial games than there is in meeting actual demand. We can quibble about whether this is a failure of capitalist theory or a failure caused by too much regulation, or probably a dozen other claims. But whatever the case, it's a pretty cut and dried case of the bleeding obvious that we're not at capacity in our economic system.

I don't think he's saying that there's anything "wrong" with it. Just that it's not enough to really kickstart the faltering economic engine back into its top gear.