t’s time to Occupy Democracy
AmpedStatus - Knowledge Is Power - 0 views
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Through a system of legalized bribery — campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and the most powerful global corporations — our government has devolved into a rigged system of exploitation.
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we will focus our energy on striking at the root of evil by ending the system of political bribery that holds our future hostage.
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Dictionary of American History - 0 views
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ictionary of American History | 2003 | COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. (Hide copyright information)
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CAPITALISM is an economic system dedicated to production for profit and to the accumulation of value by private business firms. In the fully developed form of industrial capitalism, firms advance money to hire wage laborers and to buy means of production such as machinery and raw materials. If the firm can sell its products for a greater sum of value than that originally advanced, the firm grows and can advance more money for a new round of accumulation. Historically, the emergence of industrial capitalism depends upon the creation of three prerequisites for accumulation: initial sums of money (or credit), wage labor and means of production available for purchase, and markets in which products can be sold.
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Eliminating negative features of capitalism while preserving positive ones is not a simple or straightforward matter. As Robert Heilbroner observed, a medical metaphor is inappropriate. It is not possible to "cure" capitalism of its diseases and restore it to full health. Moreover, measures that eliminate one problem can help produce the next. For example, if government spending and transfers provide a "floor" to soften depressions, inflationary tendencies can result. But a historical perspective helps underscore the fact that capitalism is not an immutable system; it has changed in the past and can continue to do so in the future.
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Wealth Distribution - 0 views
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The democratic argument: The concentration of wealth in a small group allows for anti-democratic influence of social policy. The wealthy have the ability to create their own "think tanks" and astro-turf front organizations. These are then used to create the perception that the public is in support of their self-serving objectives. Recent studies have shown how these techniques were used in the repeal of the estate tax debate as well as in the rise of new factions opposing the liberal social policies of the Episcopal church. When such vast amounts of money are under the control of a tiny group the basic mechanisms of democracy are undermined
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When the wealth of a society gets sufficiently unbalanced it ceases to valuable since there are no people with the resources to purchase it. During the French revolution most of the furniture in the estates was looted and much of it was used for firewood. It had no value in a peasant's home. It didn't fit, wasn't practical, and the decorative detail was useless.
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So any plan that is going to shift the balance of wealth has to deal with issues of extracting real value from the accumulations of the wealthy without causing a drop in the marketability of the assets.
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capitalism Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about capitalism - 0 views
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Yet capitalism cannot function if violence is too great or if it is continuous.
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There must be substantial pauses between wars and revolutions. Government must be able to prevent mob violence. The typical entrepreneur of early capitalism, unlike the feudal lord, was unwarlike by temperament and motivated by the search for profit. Bourgeois civilization, compared with the forms of social organization that preceded it or with the totalitarian forms that now compete with it, has remained inherently peaceable, rationalistic, and materialistic.
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The enforcement of commercial contracts by the state and the extension and protection of property rights—all essential to the development of capitalism—required a strong government. The process of saving, investment, risk-taking, and profit-making flourished best, however, when the powers of the state were restricted so that their exercise would not be arbitrary
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