Really? America hasn't been capitalist since the 1980's if you ask me. Right now is the best time since then, but ...

This article is the best chronological description of our creeping demise, I have read to date.

We never were fully capitalist. And there are other countries that are more capitalist in some respects.
The word "Capitalist" is used wrongly in this article.

Socioeconomic mobility, the idea that one is limited only by their level of ambition in how high up the income/wealth ladder they can climb, has fallen significantly in the U.S. over the last century. The root cause, supposedly, is education, which is why economists keep insisting that parents should do everything possible to see their children get a college education.

The flaw I see in the education argument is that trade schools as another form of post high school education are almost never included in studies. When my father was growing up, college was harder to get into, so trade schools represented a low cost way of moving up the economic ladder. Today, a welder (as one example) is highly valued and can draw a $40K annual salary to start as a novice. The reason is that children are less often encouraged to aim for less than a college degree. The result is that nearly half of college entrants don't get that degree, leaving indebted and without skills for a decent hourly paid job. We could correct this by giving more attention to encouraging trade schools, but SJWs attack any such effort as "demeaning" and trying to keep the economically disadvantaged in a lower class.

History has proven repeatedly that a society with too generous a safety net loses its drive. There's nothing wrong with failure, as long as you have the determination to keep trying and not repeat mistakes, but if the consequences of failure are softened by economic "cushioning" it's too easy to just stop trying.

From a newly elected member of Congress, 'Now that I have been elected, my first priority is to get myself re-elected!'

What IS capitalism? It simply the Natural process to capitalize and thereby allow individuals to try and make their lives better. Certainly that's superior to the "rule of law" which are normally & unwittingly created by fools and socialists (same thing, right?

Great article! Thanks for sharing!

As long as the leading class lives by its appetite for mansions, yachts and private planes, capitalism will stay.

They will never admit it. In communism the elite lived the life of the privileged, while preaching "proletarian dictatorship".

Hussein used his presidency to accumulate his net worth.

There is no reason to deny it. Why all reps/senators retire millionaires?

America ceased to be capitalist sometime in the 1870s. Atlas Shrugged was largely about that fact, though Rand was far from first to recognize it.

If you look at the Index of Economic Freedom, we aren't even in the top 10. https://www.heritage.org/index/

Rule of Law
Property rights? tied for 25th in the world (with 1 other country).
Government integrity? tied for 19th in the world (with 2 other countries).
Judicial effectiveness? 11th in the world

"Property rights are guaranteed, but protection has been uneven. For example, civil asset forfeitures by law enforcement and an expansion of occupational licensing requirements have encroached on property rights. The judiciary functions independently and predictably. Corruption is rare, but the Pew Research Center reported in late 2017 that only 18 percent of Americans trust the government always or most of the time."

Government size
Tax burden? 113th in the world!
Government spending? tied for 124th in the world (we are profligate spenders - tied with one other country)
Fiscal health? 131st in the world (blame our tax and spend behavior plus all of our promises to future generations)

"The top individual income tax rate is now 37 percent, and the top corporate tax rate has been cut to 21 percent. The overall tax burden equals 26.0 percent of total domestic income. Over the past three years, government spending has amounted to 37.8 percent of the country’s output (GDP), and budget deficits have averaged 4.1 percent of GDP. Public debt is equivalent to 107.8 percent of GDP."

Regulatory Efficiency:
Business freedom? 15th in the world
Labor freedom? 3rd in the world
Monetary freedom? 101st in the world

"Significant regulatory reform has resulted in the delay or withdrawal of 2,253 pending regulatory actions since January 2017. Successful challenges to compulsory unionization have expanded the right to work, but new minimum wage laws have curtailed low-income job opportunities in some areas. Subsidies for agriculture, health care, green energy, and corporate welfare continue to add billions of dollars per year to the U.S. national debt."


Open Markets

Trade freedom? 16th in the world
Investment freedom? tied for 9th in the world (with 14 other countries)
Financial freedom? tied for 4th in the world (with 12 other countries)

"The combined value of exports and imports is equal to 26.6 percent of GDP. The average applied tariff rate is 1.7 percent. As of June 30, 2018, according to the WTO, the United States had 2,228 nontariff measures in force. The Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (which amends certain aspects of the Dodd–Frank bill) were signed into law in 2018."

Sorry but we are definitely NOT a free country any more. If you want economic freedom (though not personal freedom), move to Singapore or Hong Kong (at least until the Chinese take back complete control of the latter). If you prefer a European country, try Switzerland.

This makes it sound like everything's going down hill. During the same time, the idea of valuing reason over religion has gained more sway. We went from having out-and-out slavery based on physical appearance to the idea that anyone can and should go anywhere and follow his dreams and live an free, examined, and prosperous life.

If we did all that in 200 years, maybe we can fix the problems of gov't intrusiveness and cost.