Can Capitalists Save Capitalism?
JAN. 20, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/opinion/can-capitalists-save-capitalism.html?comments#permid=13893903
There is a working and tested model for "inclusive capitalism" which has been quite sucessful in most market economies outside of the US - it is the "social market economy" model practiced in much of Europe. Unfortunately, virtually all US politicians and most US economists write off this model of "social market economy" as "bankrupt socialist/communist regimes".
For example, most US proposals for stemming the extreme polarization of income and wealth attempt to use the tax system and thus open themselves to the conservative bug-a-boo critique of "communist style redistribution". What is needed is a complete refocus of the role of business and corporations not just to enrich the "owners of the means of production", but that these businesses and corporations also have a real responsibility for their employees and for society in general - I'm thinking here of the German principal of "Mitbestimmung", the right of employees to have a say in setting the policies of the corporations they work for.
To make "Capitalism" work in the future - I hate that term, because it alone sets the wrong framework, that "Capital" should be the driver of everything - we need to realize that we are no longer in the age of "rugged individualism" where all people are "masters of their own destiny" and the only limit is their willingness to work and take risks. Today's globalized market economies ensure that the individual is, for the most part, just a small cog in a huge, complecated structue.
For example, most US proposals for stemming the extreme polarization of income and wealth attempt to use the tax system and thus open themselves to the conservative bug-a-boo critique of "communist style redistribution". What is needed is a complete refocus of the role of business and corporations not just to enrich the "owners of the means of production", but that these businesses and corporations also have a real responsibility for their employees and for society in general - I'm thinking here of the German principal of "Mitbestimmung", the right of employees to have a say in setting the policies of the corporations they work for.
To make "Capitalism" work in the future - I hate that term, because it alone sets the wrong framework, that "Capital" should be the driver of everything - we need to realize that we are no longer in the age of "rugged individualism" where all people are "masters of their own destiny" and the only limit is their willingness to work and take risks. Today's globalized market economies ensure that the individual is, for the most part, just a small cog in a huge, complecated structue.
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