Regarding the previous post on oligarchy . . .

I published a comment on it but I want to address it here. Obviously manufacturers moved their operations overseas in search of cheap labor and lax or non-existent environmental and safety regulations so they could make their products more cheaply, and yes, that made many products cheaper for consumers. WalMart is particularly known for squeezing manufacturers to lower prices and hence encouraging this dynamic. Americans as consumers benefited, Americans as workers lost out. As it turns out, the net result was losses for people with less education, as those manufacturing jobs -- often unionized -- that enabled blue collar workers to achieve the white picket fence and two cars in the garage, and educate their kids, disappeared. Better educated people, who had white collar jobs that didn't go to Mexico and China, benefited because they could buy cheap stuff. The people who benefited the most were the plutocrats who, in addition to making big profits, were no longer paying taxes.

That was the point of the post -- that for these and some other reasons, inequality in the United States has increased drastically in recent decades, so the benefits of economic growth have gone exclusively to upper middle class and wealthy people while the people in the bottom half of the income distribution have found their incomes stagnating or declining. As a matter of fact, their life expectancy has declined as well. So we have growing social problems including addiction, and homelessness, and despair. (Not crime, by the way, which has been steadily declining, despite what Faux News wants you to believe.) 

I am well aware that the past 200 years have featured unprecedented economic growth, and that this has mostly occurred in societies with some form of capitalism. Pointing out some of the various bad things that have happened and are happening and will happen in capitalist societies is just telling the truth. It does not ipso facto assert or imply that we should have Communism instead, which obviously hasn't worked very well when it has been tried. What I do assert is that we need to manage our largely capitalist, though in fact mixed economy better, for the benefit of more of our people, through social democratic policies. The specific point of the previous post was that rich people should pay a lot more in taxes. If they did, we as a society could afford to take actions that will make us on the whole more prosperous and healthier. That is what I suggest.