Quote from traderyin:
Sitting here and watching free-market capitalism chips away to socialists.
Don't delude yourself. Though there are elements of free market capitalism existing in the US (particularly with regard to small businesses.) In the broad economy, we've been very far from free market capitalism for a long, long time. Our government is a government by and for big businesses and special interest groups with money or voting clout, such as the AMA AARP AHA, etc. We are just as far from free market capitalism as socialism is. I'm not taking any position here re good or bad, just pointing out reality. In true free market capitalism the customer or client can vote with their feet. But to make that work you have to have a government that serves as a watchdog to prevent cartels and monopolies and keep the market place truly open. The managed (poorly at times) economy of the American Republic is far from the free-enterprise capitalist model. One could even say that attempts by the Reagan and latter Bush administrations to move the US toward a capitalist model (in their minds at least) by removing or ignoring regulation, have so far proved to be utter failures. And that's to be expected, since, ironically, to have any hope of maintaining free markets you have to have very strong government oversight and regulation. The exact opposite of what the Reagan and Bush administrations attempted.