Mark makes good points about Democracy being supportive of Capitalism but misses the point that Capitalism is regressing into Feudalism as a practical reality not a theoretical difference in terms.

Furthurmore, Feudalism has historically occurred when an economic monopoly was retained through generations while amassing wealth and "partners" until the economic power purchased an Army. They then purchased the church and became Kings with Divine Dispensation to rule by the power of God. This has worked like Mark points out until starving people revolt and set up another system that slowly forgets the last revolt and re-establishes another monopoly that retains wealth through generations and then that power overwhelms the controls of the revolution and recreates another Monarchy, or Corporation.

It's not the bourgeousie, it's the RICH and it's ALL the people involved that do not recognize exactly what Reaganomics has malisciously provided to the majority of this country. We have homeless schoolkids in this country, half our students qualify for school meals and that seems to be just fine with most Americans and that means we truly suck as a people!

Mark J. Saulys #8; Your totally correct on the 60's movement, this all came out of the Kennedy Administration who were more interested in racial and gender equality than a broad based equality that was not burdened by an obsession over a few specific groups. John Kennedy embraced his mother's liberal beliefs, that had been handed down by Eleanor Roosevelt, over his father's Right Wing beliefs that made him politically powerful and very wealthy from his earlier bootlegging activities. Far too many Liberal Democrats still promote that belief today despite the fact that all groups that fall in the lower 90 percent of today's population remain excluded from any real participation in their government's decision making ! The rights of Women and Blacks will continue to languish in this country until those fights are joined with the all consuming fight for a comprehensive system of rights and protections for all citizen classes, one that totally rejects the power of private economic dynasties !

Reagan grew the goverment by 60%. He increased spending, taxes, regulation, and debt. He was the most protectionist President since Hoover.

The system that Hartmann is describing is NOT free market capitalism. There is nothing wrong per se, with income inequality. However, if you goal is income equality, then free market capitalism is the economic system you should support. I don't see how private property, contracts and the ability of people to start their OWN businesses can be likened to feudalism.

Big business also historically opposes welfare benefits because they want the subsidies instead but also because welfare benefits compete with wages and force employers to pay higher, more living wages.

"Right to Work" is the right to work your ass off for the privilege of living in poverty. They say "there are more jobs" in Right to Work states. Seems they want ours to be a very busy starvation - frank enslavement.

Cuts to welfare and Right to Work are a two pronged offensive by the owners of business in the class war to enslave those who work for them.

Everyone should have the right to work. Why should anyone br denied the right to work? Well, everyone does have the right to work. Right to work laws are about unions and they're bad for union workers and they're bad for non-union workers too. When union wages are stagnated by right to work laws, so are non-union wages because non-union employers pay less than their union counterparts in wages and benefits but just enough to keep them all from joining the union. So, when the cost of living goes up as wages remain stagnate, then the standard of living goes down, for both the union and the non-union worker. The only ones who benefit from right to work laws are the employers whose profits and standard of living goes up. I'm a retired union plumber and back in 1975 I was talking to a non-union plumber and he said "I'm glad ya'll (the union plumbers) make the money you do because if ya'll weren't making the money you make, we wouldn't be making the money we make".

Speaking of regulation reminds me that I am a plumber because I've implemented a lot of regulation in my time. I've put many regulators on gas, water,air, and madical gas lines. You see regulation keeps bad things from happening. Just like regulating the pressure on the water line comming into your home keeps your pipes from blowing apart and flooding your home (a bad thing), regulation in the lending and investment banking industry can prevent massive foreclosures and a stock market crash (bad things). That's what governmental regulation is about, keeping bad things from happening and without governmental regulation bad things will happen. Most regulations were written because bad things had already happened and if you remove the regulations as we've seen with the banking industry bad things will happen again.

Good god y'all... Pat Robertson is the worst imaginable example to promote religion. Bad advertising!

This is your brain on religion.

stecoop1, class privilege is stronger than racial, gender and other privilege. One can more easily "diversify" their ruling clique than give up privilege altogether. One unfortunate thing about '60s movements for justice in the U.S. is that they never developed a sense of class consciousness and class struggle. The U.S. was a middle class society in the '60s and had a very large blue collar middle class. Labor was very strong - and corrupt, it had become, in many instances, part of the problem.

Relatively, there wasn't much poverty in the U.S. in the '60s and what of it there was largely race based, it was largely the result of racial discrimination. Thus the justice movements of the '60s were more about racial than class justice.

The values co opted from the '60s movements by mainstream society, therefore, embraced "diversity" but not much outrage at economic inequality or challenge to capitalism. Thus, we are now told, and many believe, that everything is okay now because we have diversity. We have Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas and Barrack Obama so nothing's wrong with society anymore.

"Capitalist Society"...... In my opinion it's a society where unchecked obsessive and massive accumulation of wealth by a relative few, creates an exaggerated sense of their own importance and abilities, which in turn leads to a false belief that the vast majority is little more than a subordinate commodity to be exploited.

This money equals power arrogance is why labor almost always requires unions. It's also why Democratic Socialism is the only pragmatic solution to economic and social injustice. How many more times do we need to repeat the Grapes of Wrath?

Reply to #19: Thank you Elioflight. I’ve always known you to be a strong, righteous sister with a good heart, and I knew you weren’t attacking me personally. I just hate this system of healthcare apartheid with such a bloody passion! It is a ruthless, cruel, predatory racket and the ACA (aka “Obamacare”) such a weak remedy for all that abuse. I hate how it preys on people when they're most vulnerable. What it’s doing to people’s lives and to this country is the stuff nightmares are made of. Whenever the subject comes up, it takes very little to set me off. Thanks for your gracious response, Elio, and for understanding where I was coming from in that post.

....and they're better looking, so therefore, more deserving to be on top and in control....they just can't come out in say it in pubic, but can and do... at their private jet-setting parties in the Cayman Island, St. Croix, and other tax havens.

Feudalism? Yes, if by that you mean fascist. This is the fascist oligarcy which now controls not just the Amercian government and the American society, but has been reaching out with its tentacles throughout the world. Fascist capitalism, corporatism, or modern feudalism if you prefer, must consume to survive. That means constant turnover; constant consumption; built in obsolence; and forcing open ever new market places, and most of all...debt. Individual debt is nice, but it's national debt that it needs the most. That's what is at the heart of the US/West vs Russia hostilities. It's about the World Bank and the IMF. Meanwhile, they've created the perpetual war to feed the beast and an increasingly tighter security apparatus to weed out the thinkers; the troublemakers; the resisters. White, rich, "Christian", and male? No. This goes way beyond that.

Huh? Wisconsin embraced feudalism back in the 1990s, with the mandatory workfare agenda -- min. wage or less/no workers' rights or protections. I read that some 80% of middle classers agree with this agenda, so why restrict it to only our very poor? Right now, the rich are doing to the middle class what the middle class already did to the poor. Who didn't anticipate this?