Capitalisim Takes A Blow...

As many probably already have seen on news reports from around the country. A teacher named Jay Bennish in Colorado is the center of a fiery debate of freedom of speech after comparing President George W. Bush to Hitler when analyzing the State of the Union with his 10th grade Geography class. Bennish has been put on administrative leave without pay and students for both sides are in an uproar. The story is making headlines around the nation and sparked my interest. Although I have my personal opinions of comparing the President to Hitler I will set those aside and examine something else that Mr. Bennish lectured about, capitalism. Mr. Bennish said the following,

“If you don't understand the economic system of capitalism, you don't understand the world in which we live. OK. Economic system in which all or most of the means of production, etc., are owned privately and operated in a somewhat competitive environment for the purpose of producing profit. Of course, you can shorten these definitions down. Make sure you get the gist of it. Do you see how when, you know, when you're looking at this definition, where does it say anything about capitalism is an economic system that will provide everyone in the world with the basic needs that they need? Is that a part of this system? Do you see how this economic system is at odds with humanity? At odds with caring and compassion? It's at odds with human rights."

Anytime you have a system that is designed to procure profit, when profit is the bottom motive – money – that means money is going to become more important potentially than what? Safety, human lives, etc.”
Wow, my thoughts are he doesn’t agree with the American way. Did anybody else sense that? Well after reading this I started to look at capitalism and realized that in class we are talking about a lot of fundamental parts of capitalism that help keep at least some of the economy from becoming the monster that Mr. Bennish believes it has already become. Tools like price ceilings, price floors, quotas, licenses, “sin” taxes, as well as other governmental protections help to keep the markets in line. Although a price ceiling is not often used aside from rent, according to our text, they are there when needed. Besides, who likes the government stepping in and saying that you can only sell a product for a certain price and even if people are willing to pay more you just can’t accept it. I don’t know about Mr. Bennish (although his words would make me assume that he would disagree with me on this) but I am proud of the economic system set up in America, there may be some problems, but we have created a system that is valuable to entrepreneurs and those who actively participate in our capitalist markets.