Capitalism is a failed experiment.
That’s not because it never made anyone rich, but because it keeps proving that the people who do the work rarely get the rewards. And let’s keep this simple. If a system only functions when one kind-hearted billionaire steps in to fix it, that system isn’t working.
Take Leonard Abess, the City National Bank CEO who gave tens of millions of dollars to his workers after selling the company. It was generous. It was rare. And that’s the problem. Workers shouldn’t have to hope their boss wakes up in a charitable mood. In a fair system, the people who build the value share the value automatically, not accidentally.
Our paper recently ran an editorial titled “The Problem With Socialism,” and it made one point I fully agree with. No economic system is above criticism. But if we’re going to examine socialism’s flaws, we also owe it to our readers to examine capitalism’s. The truth is, many Americans aren’t drawn to socialism out of ideology. They’re reacting to the failures of an economic order that has stopped working for ordinary people. Before we judge the alternatives, we need to be honest about why so many are searching for them in the first place.
We’ve known capitalism is flawed for nearly a century.
When it collapsed during the Great Depression, it wasn’t saved by markets. It was saved by FDR, who stepped in with the New Deal: Social Security, job programs, and bank protections.
If capitalism succeeded on its own, the New Deal wouldn’t exist. We built safety nets because unchecked capitalism crashed the country.
A generation later, LBJ expanded that idea with the Great Society. Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights protections, food programs — a simple belief that the economy should serve the many, not just the investor class.
For a while, it worked. America actually felt like a place where hard work paid off.
Then came Ronald Reagan, and the guardrails were dismantled. Taxes on the wealthy were slashed. Unions were broken. Corporations were unleashed. Suddenly the economy began tilting toward people who already had wealth, power, and access. Inequality didn’t creep back in. It flooded in.
So when the 2008 Great Recession hit, we got the same old story. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes while a small group of investors made fortunes betting against the economy, and betting against America. Banks were rescued. Homeowners weren’t. Workers were told, again, that the market would take care of them if they just worked harder.
Meanwhile, a handful of billionaires like Abess are treated as moral victories when they are really warnings. If we’re relying on rare acts of generosity to fix what’s broken, that means the system itself is broken.
Younger Americans aren’t turning away from capitalism because they’re confused. They’re turning away because capitalism keeps asking them to sacrifice while telling them the rewards will trickle down someday. There’s a myth that poor and working-class Americans want handouts and welfare from the government or billionaires.
They don’t.
They want a system where their sweat actually counts for something.
A fair economy shouldn’t depend on luck, charity, or nostalgia for a time when the rules worked better.
If capitalism wants to survive, it doesn’t need better branding. It needs to remember the lessons FDR and LBJ already taught us and stop repeating the mistakes Reagan baked into the system.
Nowhere is that failure more obvious than in the lives of people trying to afford the basics.
Affordability is where capitalism’s cracks show most clearly. Americans aren’t imagining the squeeze. Housing costs have exploded far beyond wage growth. Groceries, insurance, rent and
utilities are rising faster than people’s paychecks. Even middle-class families now feel like they’re sprinting in place.
Capitalism promises choice, but what choice does a worker have when the cost of simply existing climbs each year while salaries barely move? This isn’t bad luck or a personal budgeting failure. It’s the predictable outcome of an economy built to maximize returns for investors rather than focusing on affordability for the people who live paycheck to paycheck.
This isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue. It’s an existential American crisis. Former President Joe Biden misread the public mood on inflation and paid the political price. Now President Donald Trump calls affordability a “con job,” as if people can’t feel the strain every time they buy groceries, pay rent or pay their electric bill.
Both parties failed the American people here. Both pointed to a strong economy, rising stock markets, and low unemployment, but those headlines miss the point.
We’re living in a K-shaped economy, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. What we need is a system where opportunity is real, where upward mobility is possible, and where growth lifts all boats instead of just the yachts.
As if to underline how distorted the system has become, we’re watching Elon Musk ask shareholders for a compensation package worth up to a trillion dollars. Not for inventing a cure for cancer or solving world hunger, but for running a company propped up by taxpayer subsidies and public infrastructure.
A trillion dollars for one man, while his workers fight for livable wages and basic protections. It’s the purest illustration of modern capitalism: rewards that grow astronomically at the top, justified by a mythology of genius, while the people who build the actual products are reminded they should be grateful for the opportunity.
But imagine, just for a moment, if the script flipped. What if a billionaire walked into a shareholder meeting and asked for a trillion-dollar employee package — a historic investment in the people who actually built the company? What if that money went to the assembly-line workers, the engineers, the customer-service teams, the folks on factory floors and overnight shifts? It would be one of the greatest acts of sweat equity recognition in modern history. And the fact that it sounds absurd tells you everything about how capitalism assigns value. We can picture one man becoming a trillionaire, but not a million workers becoming secure. That is the distortion.
Sweat equity shouldn’t depend on the generosity of a unicorn billionaire.
If the rules don’t change, the future won’t be a debate between capitalism and socialism. It will be a choice between reform and collapse.
