Which capitalism will it be?

Reform cannot just rush parents and kids back into the mall, it must encourage them to shop less

As America, recession-mired, enters the hope-inspired age of Barack Obama, a struggle for the soul of capitalism is being waged. Can the market system finally be made to serve us? Or will we continue to serve it?

George W. Bush argued that the crisis is “not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system.” But while it is going too far to declare that capitalism is dead, the philanthropist George Soros is right when he says that “there is something fundamentally wrong” with market theory.


…The crisis in global capitalism demands a revolution in spirit – fundamental change in attitudes and behavior. Reform cannot merely rush parents and kids back into the mall; it must encourage them to shop less, to save rather than spend.

Penalize carbon use by taxing gas so that it’s $4 a gallon regardless of market price, curbing gas guzzlers and promoting efficient public transportation.

And how about giving producers incentives to target real needs, even where the needy are short of cash, rather than to manufacture faux needs for the wealthy because they’ve got the cash?

Newsday