Socialist elements refine our system

Jim Cassidy, Henderson

Sunday, Oct. 9, 2011 | 2:02 a.m.

In his Wednesday letter, Verlon Berkemeyer submits that “socialism” is a flawed system that eventually taps everyone’s money. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have had a little more than 100 years of our “capitalism,” as we like to call it. When you look at how our capitalism has been chipped away at, it becomes debatable as to what our system has evolved into and what we should call it.

Organized labor eliminated sweatshops and brought about worker rights and safety. Bank regulation brought numerous protections — deposit insurance through the FDIC as an example — and deregulation from a few years ago led to our most recent collapse. Mandates on emissions reversed pollution trends in places like Los Angeles. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration reduced worker injuries. With laws in place requiring auto insurance, injured parties are protected against those who bring losses upon them.

All of these hamstrings applied to “free enterprise” have reversed atrocious conditions we were experiencing with our “capitalism.”

Today, our system has morphed into an amalgam of socialized capitalism, or perhaps capitalized socialism. To be sure, there is not a single example of our socialist injections to our capitalist basis that has taken us backward. Our biggest global competition problem is that the rest of the world is going capitalist.