American families are clearly on the decline. Divorce rates and out-of-wedlock child birth rates are up. Capitalism has played a crucial role in this evolution. <br>
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Decades ago, it took just one income to support a family. That included a 40 hour week, full health care, vacations, savings and retirement. Unions won most of those family-enhancing struggles. This represented a bit of a loss for capitalism as many of those family-beneficial victories came at the expense of additional profits for the richest.<br>
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But capitalism relentlessly seeks to maximize the profitability of any situation. A war on unions and worker rights was the response from capitalism to all those family-enhancing detriments to profitability. Good jobs with family-supporting benefits have routinely been downsized, offshored, mechanized, computerized, and broken into several part time positions with no benefits.<br>
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The traditional male/female roles where he works, brings home the bacon, and she is the home maker have now been relegated to the rich who can afford nannies, cooks, gardeners, etc.<br>
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Family values have become luxuries only affordable to the rich. Capitalism is the culprit.<br>
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Clearly, in order to make America great again, families are going to need something more than empty words of support. <br>
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Capitalism is a wonderful and powerful wealth-generating tool, but it is also dangerous to American family values. The lesson is apparent: Capitalism must be balanced with the proper amount of socialism. Capitalism is like a powerful engine. The engine of capitalism, without socialism as a governor, and left to run at wide open throttle, is bound to blow up. Our challenge is not a choice between capitalism and socialism, it is clearly one of how to blend the two.<br>
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Our young nation is at a point where we are falling behind the other older nations which have already figured this out. It is now time for us to accept this challenge and show that we can do it better.
