Capitalism: Explain how it creates "wealth and prosperity"?

[9aces]

Rather than capitalism (whatever that is), I advocate for liberty and secure property rights. When people are secure in their property rights and have liberty, they have an incentive to invest in capital goods, which increase production and prosperity.

Should a person be allowed to own the labor of another person? ANSWER THIS DIRECTLY.

If the person or corp pays for the labor they own it

I didn't ask you to say what happens, but SHOULD it happen?

Why should someone be able to buy and own the labor of someone else?

It's called employment

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

They are paid for all the work they did moron.

What the really stupid people don't seem to get, is that without the inventor, there is no product. NONE.

Does the inventor need the workers to make his product? No, they do not. The product existed without a single one of them. They can continue to make them without them.

The workers are there to make more of the products. That's their sole function in the business unless they happen to buy some of it's production as well because they choose. Now can the extremely, and I do mean EXTREMELY rare worker come up with something that can improve on the product? Sure, and they'll end up getting rewarded for it because business owners that manufacture things are many things, but few indeed of them are stupid.

The workers are like being a single lug nut on a wheel. Replaceable for the most part, useful to make the wheel roll more efficiently.

 

[Clementine]

Should a person be allowed to own the labor of another person? ANSWER THIS DIRECTLY.

Only in communist countries is the labor of people owned by government. Our government almost owns us as they force us to pay the debt they ring up even though much of it is unnecessary.

Those who work here do so voluntarily and the pay is dependent on the education and experience. Unions act like they own workers and want everyone to pay them a yearly fee for having a job. As far as companies, they hire people who are willing to work. Illegal aliens have bought wages down and some jobs that used to be well-paying now offer minimum wage. We used to have several meat packing plants that had great pay and benefits. Now, you wouldn't want to work there. It's all migrants who work for very little.

Work itself does not create wealth unless people are willing to purchase the product of that labor. You can work all day as a mom and housewife and not earn a dime. Do the same work in a daycare and people pay because they need the service you offer.

If you want to create wealth, you provide a product or service that people want or need. That is capitalism.

After the wealth is created, the government takes what it wants to spend the way it sees fit. When they take a large amount and redistribute it, that is socialism. And socialism doesn't last because the wealth creators won't continue to make money if they will have most of it confiscated. You run out of other peoples' money eventually. Government does not create wealth. They can only seize that which has been created by the private sector. Government does not create jobs. They merely grow in size and steal more money to pay for it. Government does not create prosperity, though can stand in the way of growth by passing overly oppressive regulations and laws.

 

[9aces]

70 percent bad

You've been fired a lot haven't you.

 

[9aces]

How can a person who is poor open their own business when the barriers to entry are high and the only way to make money is to compete in a labor market controlled by the owners who have no vested interest in competition or seeing you succeed?

What barriers to entry?

Cost to own other essential property such as floor space, tools, you know, CAPITAL.

There is a cost to owning CAPITAL, one that most LABOR cannot afford because CAPITALIST pay LABOR less than they are WORTH.

No they don't. They pay what they offer. If said labor feels this is insufficient, they have options.

Work for someone else.

Sponge off the government (we call that the liberal way)

Come up with an idea of your own and make your own product. Many extremely profitable ventures started with almost nothing. Walt Disney started in a garage, Steve Jobs...in a garage.

Your problem is you've decided you're going to fail, so you don't even try. To justify your failure, everyone else must be as useless as you, so you won't feel like a complete waste of oxygen. Morons will think that's exactly what they should do.

 

[Rustic]

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Abraham Lincoln
Read more at Abraham Lincoln Quotes at BrainyQuote.com

Definition: Capitalism -
Capital is owned by a class called the "Capitalist" class, and power rests with them and theoretically the middle class which is co-opted.

An example of a purely Capitalist society would be the Slave South, In the SLAVE SOUTH all the means of production were privately owned, governments were small and non-interfering into the all powerful plantation owner and his personal law over his property, a small few owned all the means of production.

No one would confuse the Slave South with a prosperous country:

90% of all antebellum Southerners were poor, and unable to find gainful employment.

Conservatives have a hard time actually explaining anything, but I won't put words in their mouth, I'll start the discussion by giving a short explanation of where "wealth and prosperity actually comes from".

Historians call it "effluence", political theorists have written thousands of pages on country's "take-offs". One thing is certain, it doesn't matter what socio-economic model you have, wealth and prosperity is possible in any of them.

The Soviet Union was the world's 2nd largest economy, and had the world's 2nd highest per-capita between 1950-1973, after which declining oil prices, and rising demands of an arms race began to degrade their civil-sector economic growth. Chernobyl's destruction of 25% of all USSR Wheat production and $4 Trillion dollar clean-up price tag (in 2015 dollars) didn't help things either.

China is still Communist with state-owned enterprises still leading an economy experiencing 6.9% growth and the largest growth of middle class the world has ever seen.

Where does "wealth and prosperity" actually come from?

Well in short, it comes from monetizing goods and services.

If you can convert a bushel of wheat into money, you've effectively monetized a commodity, which increases the amount of capital in circulation. It doesn't matter if a society is capitalist or communist. If you can monetize a commodity you can convert it into Capital.

What is capital?

Capital is various things, in the 1800s and early 1900s it would have been easily defined as "Means of Production" so factories, tools, mines, farms, things of that nature. But today we've been able to liquidate capital (Monetize the means of production) so in the modern world Capital is largely "money".

Money allows you to represent the means of production, or other things less productive like consumer goods.

Conclusion:

So now that we have established some examples of wealthy non-Capitalist societies, now that we have a working definition of Capital and Capitalism, and a basic illustration of how wealth is created (it is goods and services monetized and therefore liquid and portable to anyone who can accumulate it), I challenge conservatives or anyone else to explain how "Capitalism" is responsible for wealth and prosperity?

What causes wealth and prosperity?

Efficient means of monetizing goods and services, and a broad mechanism for distributing that money to the masses of all society.

A capitalist society is TERRIBLE at accomplishing this task.

Some just suck at it... The successful are good at it.
As with everything in life...

 

[Little-Acorn]

Capitalism doesn't create anything. People do.

However capitalism is the tool they use to make such creations.

Capitalism is merely what you have when people are free to exchange goods, labor, money etc. without unjust interference from thieves, robbers, con artists, and government.

Govt’s only role is to enforce contracts, prosecute fraud and coercion, and adjudicate disputes.

People can create the most wealth and prosperity under capitalism, because capitalism lets them, and keeps govt off their backs.

 

[Contumacious]

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Abraham Lincoln
Read more at Abraham Lincoln Quotes at BrainyQuote.com

Definition: Capitalism -
Capital is owned by a class called the "Capitalist" class, and power rests with them and theoretically the middle class which is co-opted.

An example of a purely Capitalist society would be the Slave South, In the SLAVE SOUTH all the means of production were privately owned, governments were small and non-interfering into the all powerful plantation owner and his personal law over his property, a small few owned all the means of production.

No one would confuse the Slave South with a prosperous country:

90% of all antebellum Southerners were poor, and unable to find gainful employment.

Conservatives have a hard time actually explaining anything, but I won't put words in their mouth, I'll start the discussion by giving a short explanation of where "wealth and prosperity actually comes from".

Historians call it "effluence", political theorists have written thousands of pages on country's "take-offs". One thing is certain, it doesn't matter what socio-economic model you have, wealth and prosperity is possible in any of them.

The Soviet Union was the world's 2nd largest economy, and had the world's 2nd highest per-capita between 1950-1973, after which declining oil prices, and rising demands of an arms race began to degrade their civil-sector economic growth. Chernobyl's destruction of 25% of all USSR Wheat production and $4 Trillion dollar clean-up price tag (in 2015 dollars) didn't help things either.

China is still Communist with state-owned enterprises still leading an economy experiencing 6.9% growth and the largest growth of middle class the world has ever seen.

Where does "wealth and prosperity" actually come from?

Well in short, it comes from monetizing goods and services.

If you can convert a bushel of wheat into money, you've effectively monetized a commodity, which increases the amount of capital in circulation. It doesn't matter if a society is capitalist or communist. If you can monetize a commodity you can convert it into Capital.

What is capital?

Capital is various things, in the 1800s and early 1900s it would have been easily defined as "Means of Production" so factories, tools, mines, farms, things of that nature. But today we've been able to liquidate capital (Monetize the means of production) so in the modern world Capital is largely "money".

Money allows you to represent the means of production, or other things less productive like consumer goods.

Conclusion:

So now that we have established some examples of wealthy non-Capitalist societies, now that we have a working definition of Capital and Capitalism, and a basic illustration of how wealth is created (it is goods and services monetized and therefore liquid and portable to anyone who can accumulate it), I challenge conservatives or anyone else to explain how "Capitalism" is responsible for wealth and prosperity?

What causes wealth and prosperity?

Efficient means of monetizing goods and services, and a broad mechanism for distributing that money to the masses of all society.

A capitalist society is TERRIBLE at accomplishing this task.

DINGLE BERRY

YOUR POST IS SO FUCKING RETARDED THAT I DO NOT EVEN NOW WHERE TO START

THE SLAVE SOUTH IS AN EXAMPLE OF A FASCIST OR SOCIALIST SOCIETY , YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH



Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

Republicans on the USMB think southern slave holders were liberals.

I've seen no evidence of that. They were, however, solidly Democrat.

 

[2aguy]

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Abraham Lincoln
Read more at Abraham Lincoln Quotes at BrainyQuote.com

Definition: Capitalism -
Capital is owned by a class called the "Capitalist" class, and power rests with them and theoretically the middle class which is co-opted.

An example of a purely Capitalist society would be the Slave South, In the SLAVE SOUTH all the means of production were privately owned, governments were small and non-interfering into the all powerful plantation owner and his personal law over his property, a small few owned all the means of production.

No one would confuse the Slave South with a prosperous country:

90% of all antebellum Southerners were poor, and unable to find gainful employment.

Conservatives have a hard time actually explaining anything, but I won't put words in their mouth, I'll start the discussion by giving a short explanation of where "wealth and prosperity actually comes from".

Historians call it "effluence", political theorists have written thousands of pages on country's "take-offs". One thing is certain, it doesn't matter what socio-economic model you have, wealth and prosperity is possible in any of them.

The Soviet Union was the world's 2nd largest economy, and had the world's 2nd highest per-capita between 1950-1973, after which declining oil prices, and rising demands of an arms race began to degrade their civil-sector economic growth. Chernobyl's destruction of 25% of all USSR Wheat production and $4 Trillion dollar clean-up price tag (in 2015 dollars) didn't help things either.

China is still Communist with state-owned enterprises still leading an economy experiencing 6.9% growth and the largest growth of middle class the world has ever seen.

Where does "wealth and prosperity" actually come from?

Well in short, it comes from monetizing goods and services.

If you can convert a bushel of wheat into money, you've effectively monetized a commodity, which increases the amount of capital in circulation. It doesn't matter if a society is capitalist or communist. If you can monetize a commodity you can convert it into Capital.

What is capital?

Capital is various things, in the 1800s and early 1900s it would have been easily defined as "Means of Production" so factories, tools, mines, farms, things of that nature. But today we've been able to liquidate capital (Monetize the means of production) so in the modern world Capital is largely "money".

Money allows you to represent the means of production, or other things less productive like consumer goods.

Conclusion:

So now that we have established some examples of wealthy non-Capitalist societies, now that we have a working definition of Capital and Capitalism, and a basic illustration of how wealth is created (it is goods and services monetized and therefore liquid and portable to anyone who can accumulate it), I challenge conservatives or anyone else to explain how "Capitalism" is responsible for wealth and prosperity?

What causes wealth and prosperity?

Efficient means of monetizing goods and services, and a broad mechanism for distributing that money to the masses of all society.

A capitalist society is TERRIBLE at accomplishing this task.

Capitalism is essentially the free exchange of goods and services.......and it creates prosperity because individuals are able to pursue those things they are good at without someone dipping their hand in to take what they create......

Capitalism has created more freedom and wealth for all people than any other economic system......until the socialists come in and start taking the wealth from the people who actually earned it.......

 

[2aguy]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

No...they get low wages because they dropped out of high school, or got pregnant and had kids and now live on government welfare, or have not aqcuired skills that pay more.....

Graduate from high school, get a skill or a degree in a field that is in great demand, and don't have kids until you are married and can afford them....and don't get a criminal record.....and you will be successful.......

All done freely without the government telling you what to do....

That is how you become wealthy......

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

No...they get low wages because they dropped out of high school, or got pregnant and had kids and now live on government welfare, or have not aqcuired skills that pay more.....

Graduate from high school, get a skill or a degree in a field that is in great demand, and don't have kids until you are married and can afford them....and don't get a criminal record.....and you will be successful.......

All done freely without the government telling you what to do....

That is how you become wealthy......

I don't know if you become wealthy that way, but certainly put yourself in a much better position in life.

I think economist Dr. Walter Williams said it best when he explained the common way to get wealthy.

He said he used to get that question all the time from his students in college. "Dr. Williams, what is the key to wealth?"

He said the key to wealth is quite simple: make your fellow man happy. That's it.

If you operate a drill press, fill vending machines, dig ditches for a living, you make your fellow man happy by one, two or at most a dozen, and your pay will be reflective of that.

However, if you make a great hamburger, open up your own restaurant where you serve hundreds of people every week, your pay will be reflective of serving your fellow man by the hundreds.

If you decide to franchise your wonderful restaurant and serve people by the millions every week, your income will be reflective of that just like McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's.

Whether you are talking about entertainment, products, or services. The wealthy are those who made their fellow man happy by the millions. That's why Bill Gates is the most wealthy man in America today.

 

[2aguy]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

No...they get low wages because they dropped out of high school, or got pregnant and had kids and now live on government welfare, or have not aqcuired skills that pay more.....

Graduate from high school, get a skill or a degree in a field that is in great demand, and don't have kids until you are married and can afford them....and don't get a criminal record.....and you will be successful.......

All done freely without the government telling you what to do....

That is how you become wealthy......

I don't know if you become wealthy that way, but certainly put yourself in a much better position in life.

I think economist Dr. Walter Williams said it best when he explained the common way to get wealthy.

He said he used to get that question all the time from his students in college. "Dr. Williams, what is the key to wealth?"

He said the key to wealth is quite simple: make your fellow man happy. That's it.

If you operate a drill press, fill vending machines, dig ditches for a living, you make your fellow man happy by one, two or at most a dozen, and your pay will be reflective of that.

However, if you make a great hamburger, open up your own restaurant where you serve hundreds of people every week, your pay will be reflective of serving your fellow man by the hundreds.

If you decide to franchise your wonderful restaurant and serve people by the millions every week, your income will be reflective of that just like McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's.

Whether you are talking about entertainment, products, or services. The wealthy are those who made their fellow man happy by the millions. That's why Bill Gates is the most wealthy man in America today.

Yes.....you are right......I guess my points, which also come from Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are the best ways to not be poor......

Those guys are great.....someone should put them in a Presidential cabinet....

 

[2aguy]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

No...they get low wages because they dropped out of high school, or got pregnant and had kids and now live on government welfare, or have not aqcuired skills that pay more.....

Graduate from high school, get a skill or a degree in a field that is in great demand, and don't have kids until you are married and can afford them....and don't get a criminal record.....and you will be successful.......

All done freely without the government telling you what to do....

That is how you become wealthy......

I don't know if you become wealthy that way, but certainly put yourself in a much better position in life.

I think economist Dr. Walter Williams said it best when he explained the common way to get wealthy.

He said he used to get that question all the time from his students in college. "Dr. Williams, what is the key to wealth?"

He said the key to wealth is quite simple: make your fellow man happy. That's it.

If you operate a drill press, fill vending machines, dig ditches for a living, you make your fellow man happy by one, two or at most a dozen, and your pay will be reflective of that.

However, if you make a great hamburger, open up your own restaurant where you serve hundreds of people every week, your pay will be reflective of serving your fellow man by the hundreds.

If you decide to franchise your wonderful restaurant and serve people by the millions every week, your income will be reflective of that just like McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's.

Whether you are talking about entertainment, products, or services. The wealthy are those who made their fellow man happy by the millions. That's why Bill Gates is the most wealthy man in America today.

That is the key that I have heard Dr. Williams say many times....Capitalism asks the question...how can I serve other people...and in doing so you create wealth for yourself, and as a happy benefit you create a wealthy society....

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

No...they get low wages because they dropped out of high school, or got pregnant and had kids and now live on government welfare, or have not aqcuired skills that pay more.....

Graduate from high school, get a skill or a degree in a field that is in great demand, and don't have kids until you are married and can afford them....and don't get a criminal record.....and you will be successful.......

All done freely without the government telling you what to do....

That is how you become wealthy......

I don't know if you become wealthy that way, but certainly put yourself in a much better position in life.

I think economist Dr. Walter Williams said it best when he explained the common way to get wealthy.

He said he used to get that question all the time from his students in college. "Dr. Williams, what is the key to wealth?"

He said the key to wealth is quite simple: make your fellow man happy. That's it.

If you operate a drill press, fill vending machines, dig ditches for a living, you make your fellow man happy by one, two or at most a dozen, and your pay will be reflective of that.

However, if you make a great hamburger, open up your own restaurant where you serve hundreds of people every week, your pay will be reflective of serving your fellow man by the hundreds.

If you decide to franchise your wonderful restaurant and serve people by the millions every week, your income will be reflective of that just like McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's.

Whether you are talking about entertainment, products, or services. The wealthy are those who made their fellow man happy by the millions. That's why Bill Gates is the most wealthy man in America today.

Yes.....you are right......I guess my points, which also come from Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are the best ways to not be poor......

Those guys are great.....someone should put them in a Presidential cabinet....

LOL, they couldn't take the pay cut.

I recently read a quote from Sowell that I loved. He once said "Just what is YOUR fair share of what somebody else has worked for?"

That hits home right there. LOL! Liberals hate him.

 

[rdean]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

There are different levels of labor, and each level has different pay. If you are not making the desired money because of your skill level, then the solution is to move up a level or two.

You mean, like, I hate to say it since Republicans think it's for snobs and liberal. You mean, gee this is hard. You mean "Education"? Is that what helps you move up?

 

[TheCrusader]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

There are different levels of labor, and each level has different pay. If you are not making the desired money because of your skill level, then the solution is to move up a level or two.

You mean, like, I hate to say it since Republicans think it's for snobs and liberal. You mean, gee this is hard. You mean "Education"? Is that what helps you move up?

So if everyone gets an "education" that will CREATE higher paying jobs?

Jobs aren't created by people being educated.

 

[TheCrusader]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

No...they get low wages because they dropped out of high school, or got pregnant and had kids and now live on government welfare, or have not aqcuired skills that pay more.....

Graduate from high school, get a skill or a degree in a field that is in great demand, and don't have kids until you are married and can afford them....and don't get a criminal record.....and you will be successful.......

All done freely without the government telling you what to do....

That is how you become wealthy......

I don't know if you become wealthy that way, but certainly put yourself in a much better position in life.

I think economist Dr. Walter Williams said it best when he explained the common way to get wealthy.

He said he used to get that question all the time from his students in college. "Dr. Williams, what is the key to wealth?"

He said the key to wealth is quite simple: make your fellow man happy. That's it.

If you operate a drill press, fill vending machines, dig ditches for a living, you make your fellow man happy by one, two or at most a dozen, and your pay will be reflective of that.

However, if you make a great hamburger, open up your own restaurant where you serve hundreds of people every week, your pay will be reflective of serving your fellow man by the hundreds.

If you decide to franchise your wonderful restaurant and serve people by the millions every week, your income will be reflective of that just like McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's.

Whether you are talking about entertainment, products, or services. The wealthy are those who made their fellow man happy by the millions. That's why Bill Gates is the most wealthy man in America today.

There are plenty of people making money by building bombs and killing women and children in wars for oil.

Sorry, but your "Dr. Walter Williams" is a fucking idiot.

Rome was built by murdering people weaker than the Roman Legions.

Don't you fucking forget that.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Abraham Lincoln
Read more at Abraham Lincoln Quotes at BrainyQuote.com

Definition: Capitalism -
Capital is owned by a class called the "Capitalist" class, and power rests with them and theoretically the middle class which is co-opted.

An example of a purely Capitalist society would be the Slave South, In the SLAVE SOUTH all the means of production were privately owned, governments were small and non-interfering into the all powerful plantation owner and his personal law over his property, a small few owned all the means of production.

No one would confuse the Slave South with a prosperous country:

90% of all antebellum Southerners were poor, and unable to find gainful employment.

Conservatives have a hard time actually explaining anything, but I won't put words in their mouth, I'll start the discussion by giving a short explanation of where "wealth and prosperity actually comes from".

Historians call it "effluence", political theorists have written thousands of pages on country's "take-offs". One thing is certain, it doesn't matter what socio-economic model you have, wealth and prosperity is possible in any of them.

The Soviet Union was the world's 2nd largest economy, and had the world's 2nd highest per-capita between 1950-1973, after which declining oil prices, and rising demands of an arms race began to degrade their civil-sector economic growth. Chernobyl's destruction of 25% of all USSR Wheat production and $4 Trillion dollar clean-up price tag (in 2015 dollars) didn't help things either.

China is still Communist with state-owned enterprises still leading an economy experiencing 6.9% growth and the largest growth of middle class the world has ever seen.

Where does "wealth and prosperity" actually come from?

Well in short, it comes from monetizing goods and services.

If you can convert a bushel of wheat into money, you've effectively monetized a commodity, which increases the amount of capital in circulation. It doesn't matter if a society is capitalist or communist. If you can monetize a commodity you can convert it into Capital.

What is capital?

Capital is various things, in the 1800s and early 1900s it would have been easily defined as "Means of Production" so factories, tools, mines, farms, things of that nature. But today we've been able to liquidate capital (Monetize the means of production) so in the modern world Capital is largely "money".

Money allows you to represent the means of production, or other things less productive like consumer goods.

Conclusion:

So now that we have established some examples of wealthy non-Capitalist societies, now that we have a working definition of Capital and Capitalism, and a basic illustration of how wealth is created (it is goods and services monetized and therefore liquid and portable to anyone who can accumulate it), I challenge conservatives or anyone else to explain how "Capitalism" is responsible for wealth and prosperity?

What causes wealth and prosperity?

Efficient means of monetizing goods and services, and a broad mechanism for distributing that money to the masses of all society.

A capitalist society is TERRIBLE at accomplishing this task.

Rather than capitalism (whatever that is), I advocate for liberty and secure property rights. When people are secure in their property rights and have liberty, they have an incentive to invest in capital goods, which increase production and prosperity.

Should a person be allowed to own the labor of another person? ANSWER THIS DIRECTLY.

No owns the labor of another

A laborer sells his labor to an employer at a price determined by the skill of the laborer, the demand in the market place for that skill and the negotiating ability of the laborer.

If the laborer feels he is not getting what his labor is worth from an employer then he is free, completely free, to sell his labor to someone else

 

[mikegriffith1]

The Soviet Union was the world's 2nd largest economy, and had the world's 2nd highest per-capita between 1950-1973, after which declining oil prices, and rising demands of an arms race began to degrade their civil-sector economic growth.

Eee-gads! Most Soviet citizens were poor, lived in substandard housing, and depended on the government for everything. The Soviet middle class was small and consisted mainly of higher-paid government personnel and certain people in favored industries. Most Soviet citizens had little or no disposable income after basic expenses. Not to mention the fact that they lived in a police state, could not leave the country without permission, and lived in constant fear of running afoul of state spies and informants who were alert for any expression of criticism of the state.

China is not still "communist." China abandoned the very economic theories that American liberals are trying to foist on everybody else. China is still authoritarian and tyrannical, but Chinese leaders were smart enough to realize that socialism simply does not work because it ignores the human reality of profit incentive.

 

[2aguy]

Are Employees paid 100% of what they produce? If not, by what justification are they not paid for all the work they did?

An employee is paid to perform a service. He is paid 100% of the agreed upon amount.

The agreed amount? People don't agree to work for slave wages, they are forced to work for them because a labor market that is controlled by owners, not by workers.

There are different levels of labor, and each level has different pay. If you are not making the desired money because of your skill level, then the solution is to move up a level or two.

You mean, like, I hate to say it since Republicans think it's for snobs and liberal. You mean, gee this is hard. You mean "Education"? Is that what helps you move up?

So if everyone gets an "education" that will CREATE higher paying jobs?

Jobs aren't created by people being educated.

No.....jobs are created by people starting businesses to fill a need or desire of their fellow citizens....serving other people, asking "What can I do for you?" And then they hire other people to help achieve this goal. And if they do it well, then people keep paying them to have that need or desire filled.....that is how jobs and wealth are created.

If you tax what they earn excessively, then they can't expand and grow.....and they can't create more jobs and more wealth...