At what point will you be comfortable with the state of capitalism in this country?

[Writer]

In terms of numbers... unemployment, ratio between lowest and highest incomes, etc., GDP, etc.?

[mdmc]

1. funny you should ask

I often wonder if I would be such a liberal if I was wealthy. I wonder if I would be comfortable if "I gots mines".. Would I still care about the poor if I myself was not poor?

I would like to think that I would still care about the poor. But I admit that, if rich, I just might be comfortable with the state of capitalism in this country..

[notadmblnd]

6. I've been on both ends

dirt poor, well off and dirt poor again. I can tell you I was the same person during it all. If you have a conscience at all, your views will not change if you become wealthy.

[Warpy]

8. After a lifetime in and out of poverty, I inherited mine

and my ideals haven't changed. I'm still living modestly and paying back what I can out of my income. The principal will go to charity at my death, every last dime of it.

Only a progressive income tax discouraging greed will work. Only ensuring that plutocrats can't pass their wealth intact to their heirs will insure that a democratic system will last. Only curbs on corporate power will end the abuses I've suffered all my life.

Unfortunately, we're unlikely to see any of this in the short term.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. When unemployment us back below 2%, when the safety nets have

been repaired, and when one wage earner can make enough to support a family of four without having his/her spouse work as well. I'd also like to see execs make no more that 20x the salary of their lowest paid worker.

[NYC_SKP]

3. As unemployment and income disparity rise, higher taxes on wealthiest should kick in.

Automatically.

Lately, it seems the opposite dynamic seems to have been in play.

[thereismore]

4. When it's small enough to be drowned in a bathtub? nt

[leftstreet]

5. +1

[KansDem]

7. When it's relegated only to non-essential items, like pizza, CDs, nail parlors, and religion...

Essential items, like energy, health, education, and the environment should not be left in the hands of private concerns...

On edit: Those are national-security issues...

[moondust]

9. Globalization/"free" trade will have to be curtailed.

As long as corporations can stalk the entire planet in search of the cheapest labor on the face of the Earth, things are not likely to improve much for working people and the economy they support.

And it's not just corporations anymore. Smaller companies are doing it over the Internet.

[jotsy]

10. I've considered money as obsolete for better than a decade.

The purpose of capital and its ism have been used like a drug, hence no way to see what benefit it might be of in a more genuine and less addictive form. It doesn't seem to matter who is counting the money or how it is being counted, the lion's share seems to go with those who aren't satisfied with their piece of the proverbial pie, they have esteem issues and require more to validate their notions of superiority.

Why set a bar that is likely not in our best long term interests to set at all? The question strikes me as akin to 'how much is it okay to screw you over?' Provide these standards and compromise from there?

I don't lean left and I don't row right, I'm too focused on forward. The world has grown too small to measure in the old fashioned and conventional ways. Man as machine is not merry in the making and worth more consideration than simple numbers gathered to gage acceptable gaps.

[blindpig]

11. When it is tossed in the dust bin of history.

Nothing less. Justice, humanity and biosphere survival demands nothing less.