The term “Patriotic Capitalism” keeps popping up lately. We have Mitt Romney’s wealth capitalism that’s design for accumulating, or extracting wealth from investments, and now after the faebook IPO we have a co-founder of facebook renouncing his American citizenship to avoid taxes on the the week of his windfall. What will it take, as the norm not the exception, for successful “capitalist” to re-invest in the system that brought them success rather than pull it out and hide away in trust funds?
I’m both sad and angry about how greedy we’ve become; mystified that people don’t seem to care, and amazed that for some reason shouting “Capitalism!” with vigor and a touch of an aristocratic accent is the magic ticket to get people to stop talking about basic fairness and reciprocity, which are truly the foundation of any stable society.
If you claim to value capitalism, if you value a strong economy, then do just that… don’t value only yourself through accumulating as much wealth as possible. HELP capitalism sustain – be patriotic for Capitalism by re-investing in it – don’t milk it dry and leave it for dead like the Romney economics model. Economic patriotism understands that an individual cannot become wealthy without giving back to the economy, not just taking more out of it.
Honestly, I had not heard the phrase patriotic capitalism… for for a brief moment I thought it might be novel, but of course, when I Googled it I found someone else having used the term over a year ago, so we should give credit where it’s due: Brent B from the Hill, “New politics, patriotic capitalism”
But back to my point: capitalism must be patriotic (to itself, or its “exercisers” being patriotic to it more so than themselves):
Beyond the Republican party’s claim to embrace capitalism (because lets face it, they’re just working on social issues no matter how much they keep repeating that they “want to talk about jobs”), and beyond those political claims to über-free-market advocates who probably have forgotten that humans do, in fact, need some sort of order and structure to prevent them from bashing one another over the head with a club – basically all we have left shouting “Capitalism!” from the rooftops is a very small number of extremely wealthy people donating huge sums of money to control politics… in order to keep as much money as possible… and so we ask them: why? We will never get a straight answer, so we must look at actions, the same way that in politics we must look at policy, not speeches.
What really got me was the facebook… guy… kid… renouncing his citizenship to avoid paying taxes on his windfall. Astounding. One of the luckiest people on the planet will have BILLIONS of dollars for an idea… and clearly his plan is to keep as much to himself as fiscally possible. No one, NO ONE needs that much money.
The only thing hope I have left for that particular “young and outstanding man” is that he wants to prevent the government from spending what would be taxes on things that don’t help us as a county – so that the money he saves he gives back to build new things, put it into education, fixing infrastructure, start some new companies, establishing foundations that create jobs AND help people, rather than just jobs hat focus on profit and dividends: be patriotic to the thing that rewarded him so greatly, rather than hide it all away somewhere that only he can gloat over and coddle his billions.
We can hope, but thus far I tend to be disappointed.
So patriotic capitalism (in a non-concise definition as I see it) is a form of free market that supports the market just as much as it does so the individual. Just like a social contract where a government acknowledges rights to citizens and in exchange, citizens follow certain laws, so too should capitalism.
A true capitalist actually cares MORE about the market(s) than himself. If all you care about is acquiring wealth, we’ve seen that people do so at the cost of thousands of jobs and companies, and even countries by moving jobs all over the world to save as much money as possible. That’s wealth gathering, that’s NOT capitalism.
I think true capitalism is patriotic… it acknowledges that in order to be sustained and to avoid ultimate collapse, it must re-invest – heavily – back into itself. It cannot over-acquire… or horde all the wealth in one place, otherwise it falls.
Does anyone really need billions of dollars? I mean ** really ** need that much to be comfortable and have their family taken care of for generations to come. Anyone who says yes lives in some universe with which I am not aware.
But my arguent extends beyond greed, it’s focus really is that capitalism won’t survive, especially given public companies and the demands of stock markets, unless it reinvests… unless its winners reinvest… just as much as it takes out.
There should be a cap on profit (no that doesn’t make me a socialist). I’m saying in our own, individual minds. Take Elon Musk, for example, who is a perfect example of how you can be a driven capitalist, but do so in positive ways rather than simply to accumulate wealth. Elon Musk has had great success and near great disasters, but he’s building, inventing, giving back, and putting his money back into the economy, not just in off shore accounts and avoiding personal taxes at all costs. It is possible to be patriotic to capitalism and be extremely successful as well as have long-term, positive impacts on industry and in some cases how people will live and move int he future.
If you claim to value capitalism, then do just that… don’t value only yourself through accumulating as much wealth as possible. HELP capitalism sustain – be patriotic for Capitalism – don’t milk it dry and leave it for dead like the Romney model.
