It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
Did... did you read the article? You may be correct about the correlation, but a) I'm pretty sure you're not and b) the article goes into moderate detail discussing the mechanisms involved, most of which would also be expected to create an appearance that matches what you describe: More socialist countries, by virtue of NOT sustaining zombie banks, have less growth than less socialist countries which ARE sustaining zombie banks, and thus continuing to create the appearance of growth - but it's no more growth today than it was in the years leading up to the collapse.
That is a really poor argument and can be debunked with some simple thought modeling. Imagine a system where returns on capital are higher than labor, and there are a relatively small number of people with large amounts of capital and no 'socialist' policies in place to attempt to interrupt the capital flow. After a period of time, assuming everyone is working and investing if they have capital to spare, would the income be more or less evenly distributed? This result would occur outside of socialist policies so it's very doubtful they are the cause.
Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years.
Meanwhile, most of Europe has seen zero GDP growth in real terms since 2004/05. France has seen an average of sub 1% nominal GDP growth for a decade; negative in real terms. Japan, which is a massive welfare state, has seen zero GDP growth for 20 years; their State spending dug such a deep hole, a quarter of their revenues go to just paying interest on debt, and they've taken to debasing their currency as the last step available to them to hold off further collapse. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, et al. are welfare state disasters, rapidly imploding. The US has seen zero standard of living improvement for 40 years, and that's before accounting for the massive increase in debt that has yet to exact its full toll.
You can count the number of welfare states in the world that are doing well on one hand, with one of them being a temporary oil empire named Norway.
"Freest Economies"? You mean the biggest leach in modern history. They send all of their children to be educated abroad. The rely on the security provided by our military. And they provide safe harbor for all the rich tax evaders who made their money off the innovation created by countries that actually invest in research. Then there's also all the poor as dirt neighboring countries who does all the work for them and live in the pollution byproducts.
We shouldn't measure how well the kingdom is doing by the gloss of the marbles at the king's court.
Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years.
Hong Kong and Singapore had an astounding growth of 2.9% and 3.9%, while socialist China had a miserable 7.7%? I don't get the impression you looked at the numbers at all, or did you?
Whether or not China is socialist or capitalist doesn't really matter: GP said "freer" economies have higher growth. Is China freer than Hong Kong or Singapore?
(BTW: China sure has a market economy, but OTOH it lacks multiple specifics of contemporary Western capitalist economies, e.g. it's not primarily driven by the financial markets, a significant portion of the workforce still works at state owned enterprises, much deeper planned macro economical development than in the West, ...)
> Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years.
I don't know about Singapore, but the last echo I had about Honk Kong was "we have too many poor people, you can't seriously consider letting them vote".
Singapore is a not a "minimal welfare state". As an example, some 40% of the population lives in government subsidized or public housing. Singapore has universal public healthcare. Generous unemployment and government pension benefits. There is free primary and secondary education as well as multiple state-run universities with free/highly subsidized tuition. In short, there are lots of social safety nets there.
So the richest and most technologically advanced societies in the world, consisting of the most educated and most productive free people in the world, people who through democratic institutions can shape their societies as they see fit, are converging to the same basic model, and you want me to believe that this isn't a ringing endorsement of that model?
> ...the most educated and most productive free people in the world, people who through democratic institutions can shape their societies as they see fit...
I don't accept this premise. Voting is only a small input into the colossal self-propelling machinery of bureaucracy (and the government-to-corporations-and-back chain of what could be called pay-offs or bribes... ie campaign donations, to profit-increasing changes in government policy, and back again).
True in the small stuff, but it's pretty ridiculous to say that the modern welfare state is the product of bureaucracy rather than democratic will. Look at polls of what voters say they actually care about.
I'm with you on paper voting being a small input, but (arguably) a more important part of the "freedom" part of our "free societies" is the ability to vote with my time, dollar, and feet - decide where I spend my time, my money, and where I live.
So howsabout this rephrasing:
> people who through [their free actions] can shape their societies as they see fit...
1) I don't necessarily agree with your claim "through democratic institutions can shape their societies as they see it" - democracies are quite a bit messier than that.
2) I wouldn't use the word "converging" - I would probably say becoming stuck in similar states of sub-optimal social organisation.
And to touch on your other suggestions, I would say that, while these are certainly the richest and most educated people in the world, I don't believe that they are as a whole either: a) particularly self-aware of their own desires and values b) particularly conscious of how they might achieve said desires and values or c) particularly cognisant of how contemporary norm of policies and political strategies actually affect and shape society.
My argument would be that if people satisfied a, b, and c, we would see very different policy arrangements in Western societies. Speaking crudely, people would accept that even if it were possible to coerce market outcomes, it would not be desirable. Politics would become extremely boring, because it would no longer hold pretensions about its capacity to "manage" or "shape" the market.
I would assert that these are the policies that an enlightened society would recognise as most contributing and enabling the greatest good to the greatest number, and would therefore pursue.
Fundamentally, I don't think modern societies are as enlightened as you would like to portray them. That's really not meant to be a critique, I don't think it would be fair to expect much more at this stage of history.
The rules of economics do not dictate outcomes. Government intervention can move economies to different equilibriums. It's just how the rules of physics don't necessitate that people give up on the idea of flying. They dictate what one has to do to fly--not what one's end-goal should be.
I find it odd that you seem to find my outlook pessimistic. Quite the opposite: I would argue fervently that I absolutely believe in a world of flight. It is a world underpinned, a world that must be underpinned, at heart, by one utterly simple principle:
Let us defend the right of one another to the freedom to act as we each see fit, as long as we do not cause each other harm.
Note that this is still a world in which many people can and most certainly will make poor decisions and fall behind in life. But there is nothing stopping a true libertarian from feeling that some of their time and resources can be best spent helping those people improve their economic decision-making.
Yet a true libertarian would also honour the decision of another not to care (though they might not respect it.)
So, you don't actually have any data to back up your claim that your proposed fix would fix anything. Here, let me edit your first statement to include your data:
> All of the countries [have] growing inequality [and] heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
The USA has an annualised growth rate of 3.5% at the moment, the UK is around there as well, the Eurozone - which didn't have many zombie banks but did have plenty of insane socialist governments mortgaging their people's futures is on the brink of recession, again.
