Very interesting article sure to get lost on "some" who post here......
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/capitalism-vs-socialism-why-both-101500389.html
For many Americans, the entrance of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) into the 2016 presidential race was the first time since college that they’ve thought much, if at all, about the word “socialism.” It describes the stage between capitalism and communism where the state owns and runs all of a country’s businesses — and back at the turn of the 20th century, the United States actually had a Socialist Party led by Eugene V. Debs. While it may be hard to imagine our country embracing the idea of the same government that runs the IRS, post office and other dysfunctional organizations taking over all private businesses, we seem to be moving in that direction.
We’re currently at a stage between capitalism and socialism that might be called “regulism.”
Regulism is characterized not by the state owning firms but rather by the state making all of the key decisions for firms. The most obvious example includes firms that have been designated by regulators as “too big to fail.” After the 2008 meltdown, the Dodd Frank financial reform law allowed the Federal Reserve to designate large non-bank firms as “systemically important” and, along with banks having more than $50 billion in assets, put them under the control of a government oversight panel, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC). The law allows this FSOC to exercise “tough new supervision” to help minimize the risk these firms take, and it can even play a role in breaking up firms.
This is the most obvious face of regulism — but far from the only one. In the energy field, the federal government is deciding through regulations and subsidies which companies get to continue operations. These decisions are not made based on the efficiency of the firms, but by regulatory bureaucrats and successful lobbying for subsidies by favored firms. Coal is being slowly regulated out of business (enough power to provide electricity to 45 million homes has been lost recently) while wind and solar companies are getting subsidies that allow them to continue, no matter how inefficient they are.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/capitalism-vs-socialism-why-both-101500389.html
For many Americans, the entrance of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) into the 2016 presidential race was the first time since college that they’ve thought much, if at all, about the word “socialism.” It describes the stage between capitalism and communism where the state owns and runs all of a country’s businesses — and back at the turn of the 20th century, the United States actually had a Socialist Party led by Eugene V. Debs. While it may be hard to imagine our country embracing the idea of the same government that runs the IRS, post office and other dysfunctional organizations taking over all private businesses, we seem to be moving in that direction.
We’re currently at a stage between capitalism and socialism that might be called “regulism.”
Regulism is characterized not by the state owning firms but rather by the state making all of the key decisions for firms. The most obvious example includes firms that have been designated by regulators as “too big to fail.” After the 2008 meltdown, the Dodd Frank financial reform law allowed the Federal Reserve to designate large non-bank firms as “systemically important” and, along with banks having more than $50 billion in assets, put them under the control of a government oversight panel, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC). The law allows this FSOC to exercise “tough new supervision” to help minimize the risk these firms take, and it can even play a role in breaking up firms.
This is the most obvious face of regulism — but far from the only one. In the energy field, the federal government is deciding through regulations and subsidies which companies get to continue operations. These decisions are not made based on the efficiency of the firms, but by regulatory bureaucrats and successful lobbying for subsidies by favored firms. Coal is being slowly regulated out of business (enough power to provide electricity to 45 million homes has been lost recently) while wind and solar companies are getting subsidies that allow them to continue, no matter how inefficient they are.
