I see you're stuck with the rose colored capitalism goggles on. Back in 1910, where a poor Irish boy lands at Ellis Island with dreams of making it in America. Maybe when "Capitalism" catches up with "non-discrimination" that whole fairy-tale will work out just fine. The few anomalies you're likely referring to are not the norm.
Because when profit is the main motivator for a company, as is often the case in the US, things like outsourcing happen. A company takes a lot of its positions overseas where it can get away with paying a worker much less than minimum wage, leaving the people in this country who could have done that job, well... out of the job.
Also, there's this belief amongst people that, in a Capitalist society, "anyone can be rich!" Which is true. There's not any one thing in particular that's stopping any one person from gaining wealth. That statement is different, however, from "EVERYONE can be rich!" which is false. Capitalism as it works requires some people to have money, and some people to have much less money.
That is absolutely true. Not everyone can be rich, some people are more driven than others. That is just the nature of human beings.
But any one person can be rich.
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That wasn't an answer.
Give me a reason and I'll give you stories of people who have overcome that reason.
Capitalism is fine. However, there are limits and that is why we need regulation.
Limits to the flow of information, labor, etc means that capitalism can be corrupted, and you can end up with market inefficiencies and unfair practices. For example, you can end up with monopolies and oligopolies where a larger number of sellers would serve the market better. You also have situations where employers have so much more power than labor and can suppress wages and worker rights.
Capitalism with reasonable and transparent regulation is probably the best way to go, though still not perfect of course.
I think you're making the common mistake of confusing "anyone can be successful", which is true, with "everyone can be successful", which is blatantly false.
A capitalistic system is hierarchical by nature. You are going to have a lower class, a middle class, and an upper class no matter how determined each individual is because the system doesn't function otherwise. There might not technically be any rules that stop someone from traveling from the lower class to the middle class, or from the middle class to the upper class, but that doesn't change the fact the entire lower class cannot all join the upper class under any circumstances.
However, there are ways to change the standard of living in each class. In a pure, wholly unregulated capitalistic society this can result in the lower class having unnecessarily poor standards of living so the upper class can have what boils down to a barely noticeable increase in their standard of living. I view this as an unacceptable situation, and I feel that if necessary, the government has an obligation to step in and slightly lower the standard of living in the upper class in order for the lower class to attain a more acceptable standard of living.
Roleplaying, hardcore Raiding, running LFR on the occasional weekend, PvPing, rolling alts, achievement hunting, pet battling, or just enacting an endless series of whims, I don't care how you play WoW. Just as long as you have fun doing it.
So... could I inquire from you as to why unemployment is a problem?
The way you stated it sounds like you're somewhat oblivious to the point of working in a society. Unemployment by itself isn't a problem, at all.. That's just an incredibly stupid claim that only an economist (read, uneducated person, no offense) would state. Unemployment is brought up as a problem because payment for work is a necessity in order to survive in a society, not because unemployment is bad.
You know how countries usually ''solve'' unemployment ''problems''? They simply don't count certain types of people as unemployed. There. Problem solved. Back to business as usual. -.-
Minimum wage isn't the cause of unemployment... The imperative of profit at all costs is the cause.
A true free market is still the most efficient form of economics. What we have currently is a pseudo-capitalisim/socialism/oligarchy going on. Having the political system influenced by large wealthy elites does little to make it a fair game system. You don't increase prosperity via more rules, rather you do it with less so that smaller companies and entrepreneurs can arrise to challenge the status quo of current companies. A lot of these large companies did not start large, but rather as a small player. Of course more regulations if applied across the broad, would make it harder for the smaller guy to compete with these larger companies. And believe it or not, the largest employer is NOT the corporation, but rather small business owners.
To have an efficient market place, you need to have an educated populace/consumer and a market of true free trade in both information and ease of doing business.
That assumes that wage levels are the reason that employers are not hiring more.
If I can produce widgets for 25% less by paying workers at any level I want, why would I hire a single more worker unless there was actually an increased demand for my widgets? I wouldn't. I could just pay my workers less, sell the same number of widgets, and pocket more money at the expense of my workers. On a wider scale this could come back to hurt later since workers also buy my widgets, but since workers are making less my widgets are less affordable. So I either sell fewer of them--forcing me to lay people off--or I have to lower the price and my profits drop again. But in the meantime I have pocketed that extra profit at my workers' expense.
Lowering wages only increases employment when there is unmet demand due to high marginal production costs. Generally speaking, that's not the problem. Products are usually already priced at the points to produce the highest level of profits. Yes if iPods were $20 you'd sell hundreds of millions more of them, but you wouldn't make any money so you have no incentive to do that.
Well any economy that uses currency has flaws. How about something that does not have a currency? Re: Resource Based Economy?