U.S. Chamber of Commerce Relaunches Capitalism (Take That, Obama!)

I can not agree with you more. People seem to forget that is what made this country great!! I am not an idiot and do not want and or need government to tell me what to do, take all my money and spend it how they see fit. What a scary thought. You people better wake up. You can teach what you want, but the good hard working people of America will teach their chidren to work hard fro what you want. You can teach your chidren to sit back and let the government take care of them and we will see how survives.

I hope that the Chamber of Commerce ads serve an educational purpose. I accept the fact (reluctantly) that self-interest and lobbyist pressures have turned Congress away from capitalism and toward socialism, but I am bothered more by the number of American citizens who seem to support what is happening to our country.

I agree completely with bcmstore. Capitalism motivated the hard work, creativity and sense of individual responsibility which once made ours the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. Recent misuse of taxpayers' money and massive increases in our federal debt are undermining the strengths for which generations of Americans sacrificed to bequeath to us. In return, our current administration seems determined to pass on to future generations a record level of debt, much higher taxes and inevitable inflation resulting from the declining value of our dollar and the billions of dollars in interest payable to China and other foreign countries from whom we're borrowing.

Socialist may claim that taking from the rich and giving to the poor is a humanitarian act. But mismanagement of our welfare programs actually is a longer term disservice to the poor, their children and succeeding generations. Instead of rewarding irresponsibility, why don't we focus on helping alcoholics and druggies overcome their addictions? Why not commit welfare funds to creating jobs and educating the jobless to fill them? Incentives should be awarded to those who want to work, not those who feel that our government is responsible for their care. Is it unreasonable for government to support small businesses and free enterprise rather than crush them with new taxes?

I can't praise the Chamber yet, because I don't know what messages it will convey, but I can hope that it will help to recreate spirit which made us proud to be Americans.

The most frightening part of the article is the quote:
"a huge percentage of young people think socialism is better than capitalism. We have a big education job to do."

I realize that Obama was successful in enlisting young people to support him in his campaign, but I had hoped that increasing deficit spending, the continuing increase in unemployment and the multitude of broken promises since the president took office would cause them to reconsider their choice. Youth today faces much more important decisions than whether a young and eloquent Obama would be preferable to an elderly (albeit patriotic) McCain.

The younger a citizen is, the more he or she will have to pay for the damage being done to our economy. The administration has failed to create job opportunities for recent graduates, its stimulus plan has accumulated debts that they'll have to repay while achieving little or nothing in their behalf. It has done nothing to lessen the threats posed by Al Quieda, the Taliban, Iran or North Korea. The declining value of the dollar will raise the costs of all imported items at the same time that domestic manufacturers are being forced to retrench and higher taxes will leave all of us with less money to spend. The pending health care plan doesn't even pretend to help the young and healthy.

Buyers remorse among the young should have set in by now.

When the country allows rights to be taken away, we will not be a free America. Look at what just happened with Rush Limbaugh, he was slandered with zero evidence, not one quote, no documentation at all and labled a racists....which was a total lie. The reason for this attack was based on his conservative political beliefs. So now in America, we must think like Obama, and the media or we can have slanderous allegations thrown. Obama today attacked Fox News. Why? The only network with some balls to actually show BOTH sides and not kiss Obama's behind. Both sides aren't allowed, only the liberal Obama side is allowed. What president EVER has been on as many networks as he has? He won the Nobel Peace Prize and has not accomplished ONE thing while in office...NOTHING. He has put us further in debt by tripling our deficit, the unemployment rate is almost at 10%, he is making the government huge and more in control of our lives, next will come the taxes he said he would never do to the middle class....THEN people will flip out FINALLY and wake up. Capitalism, free enterprise is in danger. Americans must speak up.

Capitalism is also what drove this country into several depressions in its history, and has you people pissing and moaning about the bonuses the fat cats are getting.

marley, I believe I can agree with you. One seems no better than the other, they'll have to prove themself.

That's because both democrats and republicans follow the Hamiltonian model of government: strong centralized federal power. The ability to manage large number of assets. A 'speaking down' attitude to the media. Hamilton's model is based off of the British Empire of the 1700's and is pretty much a blue print for being an international superpower.

When America no longer wishes to attempt to be an international superpower then we can abandon the Hamiltonian model for, say, the Jeffersonian model. Until then the Democrats and Republicans are going to be pretty similar on one fundamental level.

I am a democrat

and I suggest you actually start paying attention,

The Big ZERO is a socialist.

and he is destroying small businesses.

he is trying very hard to have government control of every aspect of our lives.

he wants redistribution of wealth., yes hehiself stated so, back in 2001 there was an article where he stated he very much wanted redistribution of wealth.

so please the claims are real, and they do not just come from republicans.

but from AMERICANS who see what is going on, because they are smart, intelligent people, who love this GREAT NATION, and do not have the wool pulled over their eyes.

You cannot be a liberal on social issues AND a fiscal conservative. One involves supporting those who won't support themselves in addition to those who can't...While the other forces those who can support themselves to do so. The less the government spends on social programs the better.

When left to churches and other like minded service organizations, social improvement is achievable. On the flip side, the government simply hands out our money with no impetus to stop the flow and improve the individual situations. A beaurocracy is created that needs these people dependent to sustain it's function and purpose. A scenario of dependence ensues that becomes generational. We need to stop the cyle, not perpetuate it.

Since you asked...

The SEC was founded in 1932 as one of Roosevelt's dozens of government programs for the sole purpose of observing and enforcing the many finance and banking laws implemented to prevent another crash. And in case you were wondering, yes people bitched and moaned back then that all this regulation was killing recovery. The problem is that during the 60's and 70's the SEC had an increasing conflict of interest: Should it regulate business or enforce business punitively? More and more the laws the SEC has been regulating were shifted to the later. They were founded to act before disaster struck but more and more were being made to act after the mess hit the fan. This is why the SEC was unable to prevent the savings and loans scandals or the Enron debacle. The SEC's authority to intercede in 'free business' has been pruned back more and more as both parties altered its purpose. Today the SEC is largely broken. It still has punitive power but almost no ability to actually intervene before a market collapse. In 1932 they would have been all over Bear Sterns for over leveraging. Today they did nothing but stand aside while Bear Sterns and Leeman Brothers killed themselves.

YOU SAY: "They were founded to act before disaster struck but more and more were being made to act after the mess hit the fan."

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If the SEC is impotent, then it seems rather strange to me that so many other scammers have been arrested for various pyramid and ponzi schemes long before they eventually collapsed.

Regardless of the SEC's purpose, they had an intrinsic duty to notify whichever branches of government that investigate and prosecute criminal matters...such as the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney General and/or the FBI. The SEC was notified enough times to raise alarm. Even Madoff himself admitted to being shocked they didn't shut him down.

The SEC is largely corrupt. Systemic, structural failure is one thing, moral failure is another, and that is what we are dealing with in ALL areas of our government.

NO system works when it is implemented by people who aren't INTRINSICALLY motivated to act ethically. A big part of the left's chronic failure to successfully govern is in it's reliance on an EXTRINSIC, political morality that requires a huge policing effort. No amount of enforcement is ever enough to maintain the integrity of any government, and excessive enforcement will strangle an economy.

If policing is sufficient to stop corruption completely, the parasitic costs of the enforcement apparatus are prohibitive. If the people are primarily immoral, the government will be immoral, and will fail. From the Soviet Union, to China, to Cuba, we've seen the failure of leftist exo-ethics, or political morality.

External morality, or enforced morality isn't really morality, and has to be enforced by some form of police. Political Correctness is a classic example of extrinsic, pseudo morality. The left has turned the media, and the educational system, into a type of thought police that enforces the insanity of Political Correctness.

Morality and ethics have to come from within. The lack of intrinsically motivated ethics is, and always will be what dooms leftist governing to failure. Neither the SEC, or any other government enforcement function can effectively control the behavior of those within it's purview, unless those who are the enforcers are intrinsically ethical, and those they regulate are largely ethical as well. One thing should be crystal clear: if the enforcers are corrupt, the whole system will fail in it's purpose.

Has there ever been even one leftist government that didn't have excessive numbers of police, and secret police? They have to have inordinate numbers of police to maintain control of society.

The only way government, or any large organization works efficiently is if those who operate the system have a high level of ethics and integrity. That ethical integrity HAS to be intrinsically motivated. This is why devout Christians were able to build the greatest nation on earth.

Government, or business, run by people devoid of intrinsic moral/ethical standards will fail sooner than later.

Democracy fails when the majority become immoral and uneducated.