Thinking about the US economic system as fluctuating along the gradient between pure capitalism, which can be thought of as 100% opportunity for personal wealth and 0% economic security, and pure communism that can be represented conceptually by 0% personal economic opportunity but 100% economic security. Socialist-styled systems occur in the middle depending on how that country decides to trade off personal economic opportunity with economic security for the whole population. America, perhaps like many countries, is like a pendulum, and we are certainly moving towards the end of pure capitalism. We will probably never get there, we never have, but how many people’s livelihoods will be destroyed in the process?
Capitalism destroying jobs, you ask? But the capitalists are job creators, you say. It may not be the same for people living in isolated communities or socio-economically homogenous suburbs, but in post industrial urban America it is easy to see the destruction in the wake of capitalism sailing through. The only interest capitalists have in urban areas is developing high end lofts and office space for wealthy urbanites or suburbanites. There is some trickle down as small shops open to provide services (which tend to be low wage anyway), but for the vast majority of its citizens 1) development capital is not available to them and 2) they never see the benefit of the development that does occur. What you end up with are isolated islands of wealth and affluence floating in a sea of poverty. You simply cannot reinvigorate our cities by focusing on the 1%.
They say rising tides lift all boats. Floods lift boats too… and throws them onto shore, sinks them, or flips them over. I would gladly trade the opportunity to gamble on being the last one standing after the flood for a little security in knowing that my boat won’t be sunk in the flood, or if it does, that I will be able to get some help. Because unlike Forrest Gump and Bubba after the hurricane, swooping in to profit from the wreckage of their competition, this flood favors the rich, the ones with boats so large they can’t even see the flood around them.