Capitalism: Friend, Foe, or Something in Between?

Capitalism: friend, foe, or something in between? Many believe that the U.S. thrives with the capitalist system. As Al Capone said, "This American system or ours...call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity."

However, many others believe that capitalism has major negative effects in this country. Albert Einstein has said, "The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." In my opinion, capitalism is a political system with many strengths, but are matched by many flaws. Capitalism is a friend to countries because this system encourages economic growth, gives everyone a chance in business, and provides consumers with options. With open markets full of competition there are many opportunities for people to increase their income and put the money back into the market as consumers. This increases economic growth which helps support the economy. With equal opportunity for people to increase their income comes challenges, especially for entrepreneurs who start out new to the "producer" side of the business scene. If they are successful, they earn the big bucks, but this is very rare. Due to competition between various businesses consumers have option to choose from. By keeping the costumers happy, the businesses know that the consumers will come back and/or tell their friends about the businesses' product(s).

Capitalism is a foe to some countries because their system is based on unfair competition, exploits workers, and depletes resources. It is very hard to become a new entrepreneur in the business world, as it has been pointed out before. Large monopolies control most of all of the resources of products for consumers. This makes the Mom and Pop stores go out of business because they can't get enough support to be a stable business. Ever wonder why goods can be so cheap, it's practically unbelievable? Many workers are severely underpaid and consequently have to live an inefficient life. For example, some American companies pay workers in other countries next to nothing to make their X-boxes, computers, and other unnecessary luxury goods. Getting paid ten cents an hour definitely is not enough for a worker to earn compared to the billions of dollars that a company makes off of profits of their product. With the ever-increasing demands of consumers, there is also an ever-increasing need for resources to meet those demands. Since the U.S. uses many nonrenewable resources, the demands of the economy will not be fulfilled by these severely decreasing resources for long.

As anyone can see, capitalism has numerous positive points, but also many negative points as well. Both sides prove to even each tower out, therefore, capitalism is something in between a friend and a foe. The truth is, no system is perfect and capitalism seems to work for some countries and not others. Not all countries are the same, so capitalism cannot be a one-size fits all puzzle piece as a part of a country. Capitalism can be viewed as a saving grace or a system from hell. Still, capitalism is equally a supporting and undermining system in the world.

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