Are we capitalists?

The Democrats have been pushing the idea that capitalism is evil, and that we should switch to a socialist economic model. There are a number of issues that I have had with this argument. Among them is that we seem to have embraced a binary perspective on economics. Personally, I'm not convinced that the United States qualifies as a capitalist nation.


Before I go any further, there's something important to discuss. What is capitalism, and what is socialism? I wrote this post away from the internet, so I don't have a textbook definition to share. The general idea is that private citizens own and operate businesses within a capitalist economy, and the government owns and operates businesses within a socialist economy. A lot of people focus more on ownership, but I have always felt that operations better reflected the differences.

The United States embraces the idea of private ownership, but we actually have far more government control than most people realize. Our government embraces heavy regulation. Our schooling system including colleges allows the government to take control over workforce training. Even independent schools are being influenced by government control. The government defines a lot of jobs, and businesses frequently adapt to the jobs the government defines. Career aptitude tests are frequently designed as a central planning tool. The government decides which jobs they want in the economy and encourage school-aged children to pursue jobs in fields the government values. We also see subsidies for certain jobs and other government attempts to control the economy.

By many technical definitions, our country could be labeled as capitalist. From my perspective, we have embraced a primarily socialist model. It would probably be the most accurate to refer to our economy as mixed.

There are a lot of people who are becoming increasingly furious as we become more socialist. In their minds, this proves that the capitalist model we have been moving away from is the problem. Instead, we must further embrace the model we have been moving towards. To help make this case, Democrats are talking about how much better things are in socialist countries such as the Scandinavian nations. While Scandinavian nations have high taxes and embrace a public health care system, they actually embrace private business ownership with fewer government regulations. In other words, the argument for embracing socialism is to praise nations that are more capitalist than we are.

I could go on with arguments about how fascism and national socialism, attempts to create a third economic model, are closer to socialism than capitalism. That's not the point that I'm trying to make. The core issue that I wanted to address is that our capitalist nation is not truly capitalist. It makes no sense to me that we are blaming our economic problems on an economic model that no longer applies to our country.