I think free market capitalism is the best economic system humanity has devised.
However, if Mitt Romney is going to claim that he’s most qualified for President because he created many thousands of jobs, then it’s reasonable to see if those claims are true (just as we do reference checks for new employees).
The evidence out there seems to show that while he did make money for his shareholders, many thousands of people lost there jobs to companies that went bankrupt under Bain’s leadership.
In some cases, Bain just slashed R&D while putting more debt on the companies’ books. In many cases while doing this, Bain also awarded themselves dividends from the companies’ balance sheet (justified by these short-term profits). All of these things made it much harder for those companies to succeed in the future, as it had less innovation and cash.
I don’t think the problem we are having discussing Romney is that we don’t have the right vocabulary word for what he did at Bain. When I re-read my paragraph above, it doesn’t sound like capitalism to me. Was capitalism intended to allow a few investors to take over a firm and then slowly sabotage it with debt, which eventually doesn’t get paid because the company goes bankrupt, all the while taking money out the side door through dividends and stock sales?
To me this seems less like capitalism, and more like that scene from Goodfellas when they take out insurance on the restaurant and then burn it down to collect premium.
I do too. However, our system has been bastardized by those "inside the beltway" elites and their various "friends" around the country. Crony capitalism isn't confined to just the politicians in government. It applies to every dirty scoundrel that comes in contact with them. It applies to every person who uses the system to extract "free money" from the bureaucracies built just for that purpose.
I was really hoping the tea party would succeed in ending this system of government. As I watch what is happening in this election, I am nothing but totally pissed!