Saving Capitalism Chapter Summary

nation's great cities and as oil refining rose so did the popularity of the automobile. With these

Capitalists controlled prices, created ways to increase self profit, and dominated the work field they were in. For example, John D. Rockefeller was in lead of the oil industry through the invention of a trust (Keene, 78). Trusts were ways to combine companies in the same industry under one single head. The government did enact policies like the Sherman Anti- Trust Act, but the vague wording of the document was not enough. The controversial issue of trusts made Americans fear capitalism; these trusts would enable industries to eliminate competition therefore, making prices escalate (Document J). Federal Government should have distributed power evenly to avoid this unfair system that made it almost impossible for middle class citizens to make

As a political personality, Robert Reich writes a book that closely relates the deteriorating status of the U.S. economy with the greed of other politicians and the government as a whole. To some extent, Robert Reich pulls out the sense in economy deterioration with the help of pinning the major government policies. Robert Reich 's argument comes out clearly, directly, and at some point presented willfully. From the heading of the topic of the book, what went wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it, a reader can clearly picture the content of the book that is politics and the financial mess that the United States of America is in today. The book provides a clear, simple, and easy to understand information on how the author, Robert Reich relates the cause a bad financial status for the country and how the government and other wealthy people living in America contribute to causing the financial crisis.

According to the Historical Statistics of the United States indexed prices gradually dropped between 1870 and 1900 making the food, fuel, and lighting prices lower as well as the cost of living (Document A). As good as this sounded, because of the takeoff of corporations, only a handful of businesses grew large in size, defeating the other, smaller, businesses. In The Bosses of Senate the picture shows the large corporations taking over during senate giving other representatives no say in decisions made in government. Due to the success of these businesses, they began taking over government (Document D). An example of this takeover comes from George E. McNeill in The Labor Movement: The Problem of Today. Corporation owners, or bosses, literally act as government. They dictate legislation, subsidize the press, and corrupt the moral sense of the community (Document B). Many, again, became upset with government being controlled by businesses. As said in the People’s Party Platform, “We seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of ‘the plain people’ as with which class it originated.” The economy may have bloomed, but the government became unjust (Document F).

James Tobin had once stated, “The miserable failures of capitalist economies in the Great Depression were root causes of worldwide social and political disasters” (James Tobin Quotes). America has yet to face the dark ages of failing economy when the stock market crashed in the days of October 1929. From a child to a dying old man, everyone’s lifestyles were changed dramatically by the events of this period, the Great Depression. The Great Depression resulted from a combination of both domestic and worldwide conditions. The depression had afflicted every inch it passed by. Every nation, especially the United States, now have to find a way out.

Capitalism, to me ,seems to be one of the best things that could happen to our country. After reading How Capitalism Saved America and after watching Capitalism A Love Story, I have became more aware of what’s going on around. Before our country became overly government regulated inflation didn’t occur , family were able to survive off of one income , and business were able to flourish freely .

In this article, we see a rather obvious case of a duopoly, and after a rough calculation to find the percentage of the market Comcast

Capitalism is a very messy process, the United States attempted to sort itself out through a variety of movements according to the text, “in the 1920s, the progressive movement attempted to provide citizens with a “living wage,” defined as income sufficient for education, recreation, health, and retirement. Businesses were asked to check unwarranted price increases and any other practices that would hurt a family's living wage. In the 1930s came the New Deal that specifically blamed business for the country's economic woes. Business was asked to work more closely with the government to raise family income. By the 1950s, the New Deal evolved into President Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, a program that defined such matters as civil rights and environmental

The intent of this paper is to look closer at what the author, Chris Grey, describes how organizations are losing their link with the communities they are from.

‘The People’s Republic of Capitalism’ is a sociopolitical documentary narrated by Ted Koppel, a broadcast journalist. This four part series was published by Discovery Channel in 2009. The main topic of this documentary is the rising economic power of China in the world. Ted Koppel also described the interdependent relationship of the economies of the United States and China.

In the lecture, “Capitalism Hits the Fan” by Richard Wolff, he explains how a combination of factors led to a severe economic crisis of his lifetime. For example: wages stopped rising, coping with traumas, irrational exuberance and how things don’t work. The purpose of this lecture is Wolff to prove his point about what caused the crisis of 2008.

There is no economy in the state of nature. The economy is a set of rules; based on property, liability, anti-trust, bankruptcy, subsidies and taxes for certain things. Robert Reich has not only demonstrated why the unequal distribution of income isn’t reasonable, but the vigorous strength behind the diminishing American Dream and the battle of our democracy. He shows how a virtuous cycle of higher wages and productivity, which put more money in consumer’s pockets, therefore driving the economy forward and increasing revenues for government investment, was replaced by a vicious cycle in which stagnant incomes undercut consumer purchasing, leading to lower demand and more layoffs along with declining tax revenues and government spending.

The United States of America was once renowned for and demarcated by the size and successfulness of its middle class. Currently, America faces a shrinking middle class and a new rising oligarchy that is creating the largest wealth disparity in eighty years. Robert B. Reich wrote Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, for the sole purpose of exposing the reasons why the wealthy get wealthier and poor get poorer. Reich contends that the free market vs government debate serves as a means of distraction, covering up the real issues of the top one percent reaping economic gains. Reich states in the book that the “free market” is a myth that prevents us from examining the rule changes and questioning who they serve. Reich further states “it is no accident that those with disproportionate influence over these rules, who are the largest beneficiaries of how the rules have been designed and adapted, are also among the most passionate supporters of the “free market” and the most ardent advocates of the relative superiority of the market over the government.”

In the book Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Roy (2004) exposes the darker side of India that is signified by capitalism. The country is home to big corporations such as Reliance Industries Limited, Jindal, Tata, Mittal, Infosys, Essar and Vedanta among others. However, several people continue to suffer in the hands of these companies. They have accumulated a lot of resources that only seem to benefit them. Without any doubt, the economy of India is growing very fast owing to the privatization of all the resources. The people who have the resources are the ones who continue having more. For instance, even though the country has natural resources like minerals, it is only those large companies that can benefit. This situation can be attributed to the high corruption levels in the country. The policies made have enabled large corporations to continue accumulating large pieces of land. When certain debates regarding land redistribution are brought up, people are viewed as lunatics for demanding equal rights.

Due to the rapid process of globalization, the issue of whether socio-economic institutions and policies are converging or diverging across different nations has become controversial. Various literatures on comparative institutional studies has been developed, in which the Varieties of Capitalism approach by Hall and Soskice (2001) is one of the most significant concepts that is being widely discussed. According to Hall and Thelen (2005), the ‘varieties of capitalism’ is a firm-centered approach where firm is placed as a key actor and is being considered relational. It emphasizes the concept of institutional complementarities, which ‘…one set of institutions is complementary to another when its presence raises the returns