One of the most fundamental questions to ask when determining an operable economic system is how much should the federal government get involved in the daily lives of its citizens. To some, the finest, most unsurpassed economic system is a free market capitalist based system; one that contains very little government involvement in personal economic choice. To others, a social market based system with varying amounts of government involvement is a much more viable choice. Many people today make the assumption that socialism, whether it be democratic or not, is an indefectible way of how our state and economy should function. Many advocates for socialism favor its ability to maintain income inequality, and …show more content…
Influenced by the economic principle of “Laissez Faire”, capitalism is not a set ideology like socialism. Capitalism is a reflection of the overall idea of liberty. Capitalism allows the consumer to have full control on what gets produced by society, without the influence of any government bureaucracy. It has been proven by a great deal of economists that lowering government intervention and eliminating the dependency on the government through a welfare state will help stabilize and increase economic growth and prosperity in a nation (LePage 133). Many challengers of capitalism tend to bring up the fact that inequality is never addressed when capitalism is put into practice. People seem to forget that inequality also a major problem under socialism as well. As seen in one of the longest running socialist states, China, inequality is still seen as a major problem, as many Chinese bureaucrats are getting richer, while the private business sector shrinks on all levels, whether it be on the corporate level or the small business level ( Feng/Yu 225). It is considerably ironic that an ideology that advocates the fight against income inequality through the use of government intervention has government officials with a bigger salary than the private …show more content…
This is incentivized to the common individual through the promise of free, government-issued, programs, such as universal healthcare, or upper education. People always seem to forget that through this government intervention in order to provide you with said free stuff always requires some form of force, mainly through steeper taxes, as seen in democratic socialism (LePage 141). As great as free healthcare and education sounds, nothing is ever truly considered free, as your taxes are surely to go up under the platform of democratic socialism. The quality of these things also goes down when the government gets involved. Healthcare in a country that consists of mainly privatized plans (The United States), typically has higher survival rates for serious injury and disease (LePage 143). A majority of the best schools in the world also tend to find their way to the United States, where college education is paid for by the individual, rather than the government. Democratic Socialism tends to have cures for particular issues in society caused by free market principles, but these cures are typically overrun by the poorer quality of socialist incentives, such as universal healthcare and free education, as well as the problems that are brought with traditional socialism,