Capitalism Causes Poverty!

We have talked about capitalism throughout this semester but we never really focused on the critiques. I normally like play the devils advocate role on topics and I'm going to continue playing this role. Capitalism is often though as the best economic system in the world. Many people believe those who are poor did not work hard enough. This is not true; capitalism creates poverty. Rather than being designed to provide economic wellbeing for everyone, from the beginning capitalism was organized to allow a small elite to control most of the wealth produced by working people. The capitalist system as practiced in the United States today, with regulations and tax loopholes expanded, gives a massive share of total wealth and income to a small elite (a.k.a big businesses) and leaves the remainder to be competed for among the rest of the population. You essentially have the losers and the winners. Capitalism has created this model  that greed is good and that isn't acceptable. Because the decision of what to produce is driven by considerations of return on investment, the effect that product or service has on the larger society is never considered. For example, corporations create unhealthy food products and contribute to climate change while spreading  lies and misinformation to the public to protect profits. What's even more mind boggling is how the political parties respond the income gap problem in the United States. Liberals want to help the individual, to give them access to public programs, until they can get on their feet and get back into, or join, the capitalist system. Conservatives, pointing to the failure of government programs like welfare and food stamps to lift people out of poverty, want to cut those programs claiming they cause laziness and dependency. Both liberals and conservatives avoid looking at the capitalist system itself as a primary cause of poverty. Individual effort is a factor in economic and social success, but we all participate in a capitalist system. Leaving the system itself out of public policy discussion completely ignores capitalism as a driver of poverty. It’s time to have an honest discussion about how capitalism really works, and for whom it works, not how we imagine it works, or wished it worked.