| Dark_Lord_2008 said: The elites at the top regardless of the economic system still end up with the lion's share of the nation's wealth, very little is left over for the people who are not part of the ruling elite. It is in human nature to be greedy, selfish, corrupt and evil. The corrupt Socialist dictatorships and social engineering in Nazi Germany, China, Soviet Union, etc have proven that the Utopian world of equality, peace and people acting together for the common good is an unattainable dream. |
The important question is "What is wealth?" ...
While a "unit" of wealth can be represented in different forms and have different values (Dollar, Euro, Yen, Pound, etc.) it is the ability to allocate a portion of the productive capacity for your own benefit.
In capitalism the accumulation of wealth is typically the result of getting people to exchange more of the productive capacity they have control over for a product or service than that product or service requires to provide; essentially creating a profit by selling a product for more money than it costs to produce. This means that capitalism generally allocates productive capacity to those who have demonstrated the best ability to manage it best, and the total wealth of the nation grows faster than under any other system.
While their "slice of the pie" may generally be small, the poorest people are generally far better off under capitalism because the pie is so much bigger; and one of the questions that has to be asked is whether the economy would be better off if more of these people were allocating resources within the economy.
