Capitalism is alive and well(?) in the United States:

According to the latest Forbes Magazine survey of richest Americans, the combined net worth of the top 400 wealthiest Americans exceeds $1 trillion. This is roughly the same as the entire net worth of the bottom 50% of Americans, roughly 145 million in number.

As of 2002, the richest 400 held 2.2% of the nation's wealth. In 1989, they had 1.5%.

Compare the 2001 distribution to 1989. The richest 1% grabbed an additional 3% of the country's net worth, basically from the middle class.

Solid evidence on the size distribution of family wealth in the United States has long been scarce, but over the last decade researchers have begun outlining a few of its more salient descriptive features. The picture that emerges is disquieting. Wealth ownership in the United States, already highly concentrated, has recently become even more so. Recent evidence indicates that approximately 20 percent of households at the bottom of the distribution have no wealth. While, at the other end of the distribution things are much different. The top 1 percent of wealth owners own about 40 percent of all wealth, and this group enjoyed the vast majority of all increases in financial wealth during the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, Americans have smugly assumed that European societies are more stratified than their own country, but recent research suggests that the U.S. has now surpassed all industrial societies in the extent of family wealth inequality.

You know what the ironic point of this is?

1. At least MOST of the people here on this board are not RICH.
2. Of the bottom 20% the chances that MOST of them will be affording a booze or pot or some form of intoxicant.

So one has to ask:

Why is it that those who WANT TO BE better off do not do what those that are better off are doing?

A person can ONLY be equal to their own peers!

If you associate with with vegetarians - you probably are NOT a hunter!

In order to do better - one MUST DO BETTER!

It's just that simple!

Why should it be YOUR FAULT if I keep crapping my own pants?

I know that last sentence is crude but it is the same for everything in life!

It's okay to have an accident - but - to repeat that same accident over & over again means someone did NOT care enough about themselves (or those who help them) to stay near the toilet!

What makes these people think it is okay for someone else to keep cleaning up their own crap?

Why won't they learn by example?

.... or have they learned by example that there is always some enabler available to rescue them and care about them so they do not have to care about themselves?

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"One Person Will Get $25.00 Visa Gift Card - CLICK HERE To Get Your Chance!"

I think it has been stated earlier; regulated, under control capitalism is the best.

What or where is the incentive for personal growth in a socialistic society? And, because socialism is based on the cooperative efforts of ALL involved, it would totally rely on ALL involved putting forth equal efforts to ensure wealth equality. I just don't see it happening in this life time.

No private ownership of property?? Can you all live with that? of course its for the greater good of the society at large.

Even China, which has one of the largest gaps between its rich and poor in the world (despite its economic "boom") is experimenting with private property ownership....Baby steps folks, and China is creeping toward more regulated capitalism, abandoning the socialist model.

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"A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done."
Fred Allen

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
George Bernard Shaw

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
John Galbraith

Has Socialism innovated any single thing?

Has Socialism ever privided anything to the world?

MY answer to both is no...so capitalism is the freer of the two systems.

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PROUDLY REVILED BY THE LOONY LEFT SINCE 1999!!!!

"I done told you once you son a bitch I am the best that has ever been."

you liberals make me sick to my stomach.

I love liberals some times - they do not get in the way when I am hunting!

They are too busy depending on others to bash a cow in the head to actually hunt their own food!

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"One Person Will Get $25.00 Visa Gift Card - CLICK HERE To Get Your Chance!"