Is capitalism moral?
Republicans tried to make “We built it” a central theme of the 2012 campaign, capitalizing on President Obama’s awkwardly-put argument that it takes public infrastructure to create successful businesses. But that message was soon drowned out by the controversy over Mitt Romney’s videotaped complaint about the 47 percent of Americans who, by paying no taxes and relying on government handouts, have become wards of the welfare state. Americans recoiled at the elitism and lack of empathy in the candid remarks to wealthy donors, and even Romney recently admitted to Fox News that the comments “did real damage to my campaign.”
Now Obama has taken up the conservatives’ moral challenge in pressing for budgetary and tax fairness. If they mean to have a war over morality, the president seems to be saying, then let it begin here.
We should welcome this debate. In fact, a big reason our political stalemate has lasted so long, I suspect, is that we’ve failed to grapple with these big, important questions. Unfortunately, many of the arguments have been a bit flabby, with both sides taking refuge in easy moralizing.
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It’s neither moral nor amoral. It’s practitioners can be either, and they bear watching.
Jeff Weimer on March 16, 2013 at 8:29 AM
Capitalism is the ONLY system which gives people a good chance to be economically mobile.
Socialism/communism keep everyone poor except the elite, and there is no chance of moving up.
Washington Nearsider on March 16, 2013 at 8:36 AM
What could be more moral than equal opportunity with individual liberty/responsibility.
What is immoral is a system that uses some people’s money to buy other people’s vote.
petefrt on March 16, 2013 at 8:44 AM
It is the least moral system of resource allocation, except for all the others.
A Balrog of Morgoth on March 16, 2013 at 8:46 AM
Capitalism = freedom to choose. If you’re not for Capitalism you’re anti-Choice.
That being said, Capitalism and free markets are not a perfect system. But here’s the key: It’s the best system yet devised by man, and the only system that works when you’re dealing with millions and millions of culturally diverse people, period.
visions on March 16, 2013 at 8:46 AM
is communism/fascism/naziism/socialism/cronychicagoism moral?
newrouter on March 16, 2013 at 8:51 AM
capitalism=rationing resources via people’s vaule to society
marxism=rationing resources via people’s vaule to the decision maker.
cpaitalism is much more “moral” irg to society than marxism.
unseen on March 16, 2013 at 8:54 AM
Capitalism is just free people engaging in commerce. It isn’t a system per se.
The founders didn’t strive to create “capitalism” … they wanted to free people.
darwin on March 16, 2013 at 8:57 AM
capitalism is a byproduct of freedom. It is the way free peoples ration limited resources.
unseen on March 16, 2013 at 9:02 AM
If you believe that capitalism is a “system,” then yes, it’s immoral. You also need to cut back on burning the lettuce.
Capitalism is the absence of a “system”. It’s civilization – the rule of law – without any further meddling from the people in charge.
HitNRun on March 16, 2013 at 9:06 AM
Socialism Is Evil.
Sir Napsalot on March 16, 2013 at 9:10 AM
It is not only moral, it is incumbent upon all to make their own way in life – under the law.
OldEnglish on March 16, 2013 at 9:10 AM
Capitalism is the worse form of economics, except for all the others.
bgibbs1000 on March 16, 2013 at 9:21 AM
Capitalism requires truth, it only works in reality. Hence, not something the left can live with.
deptofredundancydept on March 16, 2013 at 9:22 AM
Capitalism is moral. The ability to freely trade without coercion is the most moral system possible.
ButterflyDragon on March 16, 2013 at 9:23 AM
If you’re a Marxist, you can make the case that liberty is immoral…
mjbrooks3 on March 16, 2013 at 9:32 AM
… Asked Karl Marx and his supporters, sympathizers, and enablers.
My questions…
Is confiscating other people’s private property at the point of a gun and the threat of imprisonment, and then distributing it to other people in the form of cash, goods, or services moral?
Is it moral to confiscate what others have earned and accumulated through years of hard work and/or risk taking, thrift, and frugality, and to then distribute it in the form of cash, goods, or services to other people who took few risks and/or were spendthrifts and/or did not work as hard?
Is it moral for politicians to pander for and buy votes promising to confiscate the earnings and property of others for the purpose of distributing it in the form of cash, goods, or services to people who vote for them?
farsighted on March 16, 2013 at 9:42 AM
Capitalism is much more than than a system of rationing resources.
Capitalism is the most effective and efficient means of creating great wealth.
Most of the wealth of the modern world was created by the capitalist economic system. The capitalist system has raised far more people out of poverty and made far more people prosperous than any other economic system, including communist and socialist ones. It’s not even close.
Capitalism is so efficient and effective at creating wealth that even the Chinese Commies have adopted it.
farsighted on March 16, 2013 at 9:49 AM
Exactly. And this is one of many things the rockheads in the GOP should point out. There are too many illustrations.
And keep harping on how much more charitable conservatives are–both with their time and resources–than liberals.
BuckeyeSam on March 16, 2013 at 9:50 AM
Is paying these bed wetters for the slop they spew on the opinion pages of the WP moral???
BigWyo on March 16, 2013 at 9:52 AM
Look at all the other systems and then ask that again.
Dingdingding. They learned from the USSR; sticking to your hardcore Commie roots may make the hardliners happy, but it’s not such a great way to create wealth.
MelonCollie on March 16, 2013 at 9:53 AM
This is “Ivory Tower Thinking” at its best. Professor Pearlstein starts off with unsubstantiated straw men and concludes with an amorphous blob of a question “Is government doing the right things?” $16T debt is really a great place to stop borrowing! I’ve earned $.99 over six months on $9.000 in savings because interest rates are so low and banks are awash in money being stored by corporations and high wealth investors. $.99
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I quote:
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Really? Really? There are more new taxes and new regulations thanks to the current regime than at any time in the history of the nation.
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Again:
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Which Americans is he talking about? Certainly not Congressional Americans or entitlement dependent Americans or crony capitalist Americans. In fact, he never even mentioned the Solyndra-type boondoggles of government investment or the legions of lobbyists which infest the halls of Congress to the detriment of taxpaying citizens.
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This is one loopy opinion piece with holes in it like bad Swiss cheese.
ExpressoBold on March 16, 2013 at 10:00 AM
The amoral black hole marxists are obsessed about morality when they think they can use it to advance their agenda.
yhxqqsn on March 16, 2013 at 10:02 AM
Not in the United States. The reason the United States’ amazingly successful economic engine of capitalism is seizing-up is that the sugar of statism, collectivism, and Marxism has been poured into the engine over the past two decades. At any given moment, it is the 50, 60 and 70 somethings that occupy most of the most powerful positions in government, business, educational and cultural institutions. A quarter century ago, the self-disciplined and moral GI Generation passed the baton of these positions to the Baby Boom Generation. The nation has since moved dramatically to the left. There are not enough conservatives in this generation to “hold the fort” for the United States when there are so many former 1960′s counter culture radical hippies intent replacing it with Marxist ideas. They embraced and expanded the socialist welfare entitlement state rather than reforming or eliminating it, and seem unwilling and unable to get out of the way and let free market capitalism work its wonders.
Tripwhipper on March 16, 2013 at 10:24 AM
It’s neither moral nor amoral. It’s practitioners can be either, and they bear watching.
[Jeff Weimer on March 16, 2013 at 8:29 AM]
You’re quite right, if you correct amoral to immoral. Amoral is the absence of the quality of morality, iwo, being neither moral nor immoral.
Anyway, if were going to have an argument about morality, I’d like to see it defined first.
Dusty on March 16, 2013 at 10:24 AM
I stand corrected. Immoral is the work I intended.
Jeff Weimer on March 16, 2013 at 10:47 AM
Wealth is how the limited resources are rationed in a capitaliisic society. the more wealth one generates the greater vaule the society places on them and the more resources they are able to get.
our society places more vaule on sports and movie stars than teachers for example. thus they have more wealth and get more resources. Of course we don’t have a capitalistic society anymore. It has morphed into a crony capitaliism/socialism type of system.
unseen on March 16, 2013 at 10:53 AM
Word, I mean.
Jeff Weimer on March 16, 2013 at 10:55 AM
So now imposing morality is acceptable….hmmmm. How the times have changed.
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The author could have easily stated that ‘it takes successful businesses to build public infrastructure’.
CW on March 16, 2013 at 11:03 AM
What is this “capitalism” you refer to? Perhaps we should try it out comrades.
iwasbornwithit on March 16, 2013 at 11:07 AM
And he could have also pointed out that the infrastructure was not built just for business. The infrastructure is there for everyone to use. It benefits everyone and everyone could have used it to try to build a prosperous business. And not everyone who tries to build a successful prosperous business is able to do it. In fact, only a small percentage of those who try are successful long term.
If there is going to be an ex post facto fee for using the infrastructure that is only applied IF you manage to successfully build a business that should be stated up front, not arbitrarily defined, applied, and collected at any time, over and over and over again. Further, successful businesses pay taxes, too. They pay much more than the average citizen. Those taxes are used to maintain the infrastructure everyone uses and to build new infrastructure.
The entire argument only makes sense if one is a socialist who views everything as collectively created and collectively owned. To the clear thinking it is nothing but a shakedown of the successful made ostensibly legal because the politicians doing it managed to get themselves elected, by telling people what they want to hear and distributing free stuff from the loot they confiscate from the successful. A government that operates this way is little different from a criminal enterprise.
farsighted on March 16, 2013 at 2:01 PM