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The Pros And Cons Of Capitalism In The United States

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There are many dysfunctionalities in capitalism, things that are kept in place as part of the system although they are unsuccessful and unproductive, such as inequality. In recent times, the slumps caused by capitalism have awakened “The anticonstitutional and anticapitalist social movements that shaped the constitution of opportunity during the twentieth century” (Kessler 2016:1553). These movements are working to change the ineffective qualities of capitalism into something useful for the system and for all the groups working under it. Succinctly put, “Capitalism, when left to its own devices, creates great harms. It generates levels of inequality that are destructive to social cohesion; it destroys traditional jobs and leaves people to fend …show more content…

These solutions can resolve the issues that functionalists may find in capitalism and allow the system to adjust and once again find a reasonable equilibrium. For example, “Unconditional basic income directly tames one of the harms of capitalism – poverty in the midst of plenty” (Wright 2016:21). While this would fix the issues of inequality and most of the living conditions as well as monopolies, it may not solve the issue of pollution. Conversely, Downing argues that “The only solution is to reverse the pressure to privatize and re-fund our public domains—for the public good and benefit of all” (2017:10). This way, the system can once again find a balance and many of the same issues would be solved. Either way, “The guiding values of such a post-capitalist system will have to be by necessity those of an economic system that has to be symbiotic with its ecosystems, which are unable to tolerate further increases of throughput, and those of a system that must also be symbiotic with societies that no longer seek the quantitative economic growth but to improve their quality of life” (García-Olivares 2015:41). This argument entails that both pollution and life quality for all groups be changed for the better through a more symbiotic economy. A functionalist standpoint may agree with this more than a capitalist economy since it would have the necessary interdependence and stability that capitalism

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