Pete, I hope you wasn't suggesting that I didn't answer your question, or don't on a regular basis, I debated with you my view.
I've raised the point myself on another thread about the backlash in Europe against the austerity measures. But I don't think people are objecting to capitalism. We are all the same, rich and poor, we want more stuff, better cars, longer holidays and so on. The banks when they lent all that money out, had to lend it to someone. But many people don't want to pay for it. In Greece for example, its typical for people to retire at 50 from what I understand. And tax fraud is rife, with millions of people, not just millionaires not bothering to pay income tax.
That just isn't sustainable. As it currently is in the Eurozone, near bankrupt countries are being kept afloat by richer neighbours who have ideological dreams of a single europe. But millions of the public don't share that view and as I said in my other post, where as we in the UK tend to just shrug our shoulders, in Europe people are much more active in their protests and I think ultimately we may see some mini-revolutions. Germans won't want to keep paying through their hard work for the slacking off of the Greeks.
Normally when a country comes close to bankruptcy, it devalues its currency which at least buys it more time, as was the case in the UK in the 70s. But the Greeks can't do that because they have no control over their currency, but ultimately, they will go bankrupt.
What that really means is that someone else will benefit from their hardship as they take ownership of the debts, debts currently owned by the EU and the IMF, will end up in the hands of the Chinese who currently own billions of US debt, and practically own many African countries.
But the communist Chinese don't want to spread communism across the world, they want to spread their own version of capitalism, buying, and making stuff then selling it to the rest of us at a profit, making them even more richer.
So we have to take them on head on. Pay off our debts, and become more competitive so that we can compete with them and build a new global economy. That's happening already, capitalism isn't dead, its booming in many places around the world, recently Brazil took over us in the size of its economy and they are the worlds leading produces of loads of agricultural products; coffee, beef, orange juice, all sorts of stuff, and its all happened without agricultural grants as in Europe, hard work and little in the way of benefits, but its making them rich and as Chris has said, when people at the top get richer, people at the bottom get richer too.
So capitalism won't go away, its just that we will become third world as the world order rearranges.
If we don't want to be third world, we need to understand and adapt to what is happening in the world instead of clinging to old fashioned ideals about the state providing us with a big fat pension from the age of 50, etc, etc.
We are better placed for several reasons, we are more independent and flexible than most of Europe, our language is widely used, and we have history from the days of Empire, that often isn't seen as badly around the world as we view it ourselves.
We just need politicians with balls, and vision. (God help us then!)
I don't know if that answers your question, but its my opinion anyway.
Topic: More Anti Austerity Gains (Read 2010 times)