The goal of any system is to raise the standard of living for the greatest number of people. Capitalism is effective at that.

There are lots of ways to increase wages in a capitalist system. Eliminate non-competes, publish wages, make employer feedback available to prospective employees. Provide tax incentives for employee ownership. That is just a starting point.

Taxes on the rich should increase until we have a balanced budget. End tax expenditures for corporations and the rich.

I get really uncomfortable with state ownership or control of private companies, because it always leads to abuse. It is what MAGA wants.

And I've heard they're not too happy about it.

I'm not going to completely trash capitalism. Like any system, it has its good points and bad. The problem is the people behind it. They're greedy, avaricious, and sometimes flat out psychopaths. When you don't care about anybody but yourself, anything goes. But there are ways of reining in capitalism that doesn't throw out the baby with the bath water.

I'm for regulated capitalism. No owner should make thousands of times more than their lowliest workers. And these percentages should be published so everyone knows what that baseline is. No company should be allowed to spew toxins into the air, land, and sea such that we are presently, and in the future, poisoned. Corporations and companies who advertise and sell known defective products should not be allowed to do so. These are just a few examples that are on the top of my head.

We were actually working on a good outline before Reagan. Americans were prospering, the economy was going well, and there was general satisfaction in the populace. Then came Reagan, the Moral Majority, and the policial implementation of "one trick ponies" like abortion and guns to take our eyes off the overall picture. Reagan (and Cheney, behind the scenes) started tearing down everything we built to control laissez faire capitalism. Deregulation became Reagan's only economic policy, along with the trickle down economics umbrella to explain it all.

I'm not against capitalism. I'm against laissez-faire capitalism. The type of capitalism that exists where anything goes, and it's buyer beware at all times. I really don't like Ferengi economics!

The government started putting up all kinds of protections for corporations and the rich, and weakened the safety net. This drove down wages and concentrated wealth.