Sunday, July 29, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The American election is really a battle for the future of capitalism
Mitt Romney embodies a system dominated by financial engineering that uses companies as casino chips
The American election is really a battle for the future of capitalism | Will Hutton | Comment is free | The Observer
Extract:
'Look, if you've been successful, you did not get there on your own. When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative but also because we do things together." So said President Obama, campaigning in Roanoke Virginia, last week. He went on: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help".
He listed great teachers, government research, roads and bridges and the whole fabric of the American system as various ways in which "somebody along the line" would have contributed to your success. This was the essence of the social liberalism of the great British thinker Leonard Hobhouse, but now championed by an American president. Hobhouse passionately argued that capitalist wealth was co-created by the interaction of society, social capital and the entrepreneur. Government investment, financed properly by taxation, was the precondition for a successful capitalism.
Obama has begun the counter-argument. Innovation is necessarily about taking risks and unless there are mechanisms to share them between the private and public sectors, the risks and innovation are necessarily not undertaken. "The internet didn't get invented on its own," Obama argued. "Government research created the internet so that all the companies could make money off the internet."
Friday, July 13, 2012
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