A Globescan BBC poll on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (2009) found that 23% of respondents believe capitalism is "fatally flawed and a different economic system is needed", a majority of respondents including over 50% of Americans believe capitalism "has problems that can be addressed through regulation and reform". Of the 27 countries polled, majorities in 22 of them expressed support for governments to distribute wealth more evenly. Socialist parties in the United States reached their peak in the early 20th century. Current active parties and organisations include the Socialist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, the latter having approximately 10,000 members. Some of the primary criticisms of socialism are claims that it creates distorted or absent price signals, results in reduced incentives,causes reduced prosperity, has low feasibility, and that it has negative social and political effects. I lean more towards free market capitalism. This story sounds like libetarin socialism propaganda to me. But who I am to stand in the way of the new world socialist movement.

I have mixed feeling about responding to this, as "juicy" as it is, as Artemis so aptly observes.
First, I don't think any comment of mine will have any particular effect, or probably any great benefit to others.
Second, my thoughts on this are mostly not very encouraging.
Still...

The basic statements here are accurate.
US health care IS rotten. Despite the marketing "happy talk" from Republicans, US health care is far from the "best in the world."
It is corrupt, and psychotically expensive beyond all reason because of its multiple layers of corruption. Its actual services would put most third world countries to shame. The "doctor-patient" relationship is a uniquely constructed hell hole of paranoia and greed.
I can say this having seen health care in many other countries in the world.
I live in the most beautiful place in the US and am happy being here in own bit of sustainable ocean side autarky but I know I must establish an alternate base in a country civilized enough to have good health care at some point soon. Fortunately, there are many countries like that outside our borders.

Human greed has found its perfect nesting place in unregulated capitalism but that doesn't mean as overwhelming as the evidence is that we are murdering the planet through mass collective poisoning, the "system" will change.

Socialism isn't going to be happening.

The planets resources are firmly in the hands of the same people who control the financial system, (holding several trillions of dollars of currency and laughing at impotent and impoverished governments around the globe including ours), the legal system, and a world wide array of armies and militarized police forces.
I don't want to be Debbie Downer about this, but wishing and hoping isn't the same as talking a clear look at the balance sheet and seeing who owns, and controls, what.

Doubtless my cynicism has grown with the passage of time.
I admire JanforGore's unflagging attempt to educate and stir others to moral action (and I myself support those on the cutting edge of the struggle like Julian Assange), but except for the thin thread of hope provided by science what I mostly see is continued and very fast degradation of the planet; something that I have been witnessing continuously first hand for all of my adult life.

I must confess that the very end that the best hope I see is for what most would term disaster.
Except for a very small elite, I do see a continuing economic collapse.
It would be wonderful if all the woggy fundamentalists on the planet suddenly received and benefited from a college level understanding of the issues of human population and climate change and everyone pitched in and saved the planet from the enemy, (as Pogo put it), which is US.
But outside of some very hokey movies, that is not going to be happening.

However you label the virus of human greed and human devastation of the planet it is here and its not going away.
At least, that is, until the virus follows the pattern of most plagues.

We will do one of two things: either we become a socialist country or prepare for a crash that will make 1929 look pleasant in comparison. Heath care and Wall Street reform are a start, but we as a people need to enforce a standard of behaviour on all the raging capitalist. Where are they going to go and to whom will they peddle their wares to. I have hope for the working poor as they stand up to Walmart and McDonalds. The taxpayers should not be subsidizing their profits by supplying food stamps and medicaid for them, it's their profits that bleed out our economy.

Good stuff, Kenny.

Edward Abby boiled it all down: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Great find, kenny! These 10 things are sounding the alarm for the collapse of the capitalist system. The pure enormity of the obsticals the system has created, will eventually prove it's downfall.

Is it capitalism inherently or the corrupted individuals controlling the system? Could you not have corruption in any other type of system as long as the people controlling it are immoral?

Oh , this is a juicy one ....

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4. Inequality Bubble now at 1929 level, warning of end of capitalism

Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz shines in his new book “The Price of Inequality:” “America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity,” he writes in Project Syndicate. But while we all have individual examples “what really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual’s life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents?”

And unfortunately, today the “numbers show that the American dream is a myth … the gap’s widening.” Since 2008 “the top 1% of U.S. income earners captured 93% of the income growth. … The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.”

5. Debt Bubble: Debt-ridden college grads selling burgers, lattes

For more evidence of the gap see the amazing cover on Utne, a cartoonish Albert Einstein serving a McDonald’s hamburger special: “Fries with that? What’s a college degree worth these days?” Not much.

And in Good magazine’s “Minimum Rage,” many stories about grads handicapped by college debt. We’re killing our competitive future: 27-year-old NYU grad “Emily Sanders has been a waitress or bartender, on and off, for almost a decade. … She has no health insurance, no 401(k), and a pathetic savings account. Most days, she gets to her first job at noon and leaves her second after midnight. If she’s sick but a little short on cash, she downs some DayQuil and goes into work anyway.”

6. Global Jobless Bubble: Governments warned, revolutions coming

In “The Fallen,” Rolling Stone’s Jeff Tietz gives us another snapshot of capitalism’s accelerating train wreck: A “sharp, sudden decline of America’s middle class … They had good stable jobs, until the recession hit. Now they’re living out of their cars in parking lots.”

Time used a wider-angle lens on the new global “Jobless Generation” where “tens of millions of young people are unemployed.” This is bigger than Arab Spring and OWS. Governments are warned: Figure out “how to get them jobs before they become unemployable — and erupt in fury.”

But if Grantham’s right, governments won’t act till it’s too late, and anticapitalism revolutions sweep the planet.

7. Oil Bubble: New oil crisis will trigger new Arab Springs

Financial advisers say invest in emerging markets, the “new normal” for U.S. stock returns is too low. Maybe not: Foreign Policy’s Steve Levine warns that petro-rulers worldwide are watching the price of oil “plunge at a rate they have not experienced since the dreaded year 2008. Industry analysts are using phrases such as ‘devastation’ and ‘severe strain’ to describe what’s next,” possibly a “fresh round of Arab Spring-like” revolutions, “the nightmare scenario” for oil dictators.

8. Risk Bubble: U.S. recovery threatened by global economic risks

Writing in Project Syndicate, Stephen Roach, former Morgan Stanley chairman, warns that since 2008 “the U.S. economy has been on a weak recovery trajectory.” Why? The American consumer went cold “in the aftermath of the biggest consumption binge in history.”

Since then “exports have accounted for 41%” of America’s rebound, with a whopping 83% of our export growth from Asia, Latin America and Europe. But since all three are now “in trouble, the U.S. could be quick to follow.”

9. Slow-Growth Bubble: New normal is anemic returns, austerity

Listen closely: Over 200,000 financial advisers across America already heard this report. Advisers have been warned to start “preparing clients for a low-return reality,” code for a new normal and austerity: “Slow economic growth, modest and selective improvements in equities, and interest rates remaining low.”

Get it? “Anemic growth in the second half,” with huge risks ahead. In fact, individual investors and American capitalism alike will face three doomsday scenarios in the near term: The Euroland crises, America’s post-election “fiscal cliff” and the risk of global recessions in emerging markets.

10. Capitalism Bubble: selfishness weakens our role as a leader

“The world is in a state of drift, transition or even increasing chaos,” writes Brent Scowcroft in the recent National Interest. Scowcroft’s a retired Air Force General and Bush-41 National Security Adviser.

In an update to his 1998 book, “A World Transformed,” Scowcroft says, “once we were viewed as trying to do our best for everyone: now we are seen a being preoccupied with our own special interests,” a myopic vision that reflects the trend among many politicians to govern using Ayn Rand’s extreme capitalism.

Now you know why Grantham warns of capitalism’s total lack of “ethics or conscience” and “its absolute inability to process the finiteness of resources and the mathematical impossibility of maintaining rapid growth in physical output.”

No moral compass. No vision of the future. No grasp of the consequences of their short-term thinking. These three threats are merging into a critical mass that will trigger a scenario that will “bring capitalism down and America with it.”

Bottom line: America’s new Ayn Rand style of extreme capitalism is self-destructive.

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