[Cyrien]

Actually the vast majority of modern systems are a combined system that utilize some free market and some socialism and er... other forms. The socialism is used to define a level of life for all persons. In theory anyways. The captitalism is used to offer the carrot of advancement to the masses. Yes you to can rise up and make more of yourself. Despite the large costs of higher education, after all you have loans... that you have to pay back... with interest. And then of course there is corporatism. This is marked as capitalism and free market but isn't really. This is where the corporations use their money to influence governmental policies for their own benefit. Such corporations often illegally come to agreements with competitors for mutual benefit (note the rising frequency of cases focused on these acts) and also act to ensure their own survival through government bail outs and intervention when they screw up. This is not part of capitalism. In Capitalism the big boy would fall down and leave room for new growth. The argument is that doing that would have long reaching economic impacts blah blah. Quite simply we don't really know. There has never been a time in history when we have allowed all of the big companies in an area to go down.

Simply put neither government nor economics is a science. You can't say A + B = C the best people can do is say A + B might be C or was C Last time. But the time before that it was D.

PS: That whole reagonamics thing was just wrong. You can look at the numbers and see that exactly one thing and one thing only ended that 80's depression. OIL. Iran and Iraq went to war and sold more oil despite OPEC agreements not to. This decreased oil prices and refreshed the economy. In fact it could be argued that the excessive waste of Reagan spending HURT the economy. But I won't make that argument here.

Oh. And just so the whole oil thing is cleared up and I don't hear the same argument again... it isn't just Gasoline. Think of all the ways oil is used and how the prices of all those are affected. Oil for lubrication. Oil based paints. Oil based pLastics. And of course oil fules. Now think of how all those interconnect with the products produced. Keeping machinery running. Powering the machinery. Transporting the Goods. Powering the place of sale. Powering the consumer. Transport for all of these. In addition the federal reserve board had a retard in control for the start. In fact a whole new term was coined for the previously unknown combination of poor economy, high inflation, and high interest rates. Stagflation. Also look at the percentage of power produced using oil prior to this. IE: late 1970, early 1980. It's alot more than today. By the time the economy started to recoved most of them had gone out of business or been shutdown and were being replaced by A> Nat. Gas or B> Coal again.

I have done detailed looks blah blah on Reagan and his "economics". An economic theory that was even attacked by his own party. The economy recovered despite his plan. Not because of it.

As for Clinton. No comment since that part of history is still too recent for any in depth analysis. IE: We are still feeling effects of that and it is still to early to say one way or the other.

PPS: The power structure I described above is heightened in the US due to winner takes all politics while proportional politics in many other coutries reduce the impact as each vote "counts more". IE: With winner takes all you only need enough votes to win and you have it all. No sharing. Proportional you need to try and keep more of your voters happy because every vote determines how much power you will have.

[ 08 April 2002: Message edited by: Cyrien ]