r/Republican • u/NoPineapple705 • 8d ago
Discussion Why Capitalism is necessary and why we need to fight hard to keep capitalism in the 2026 midterms:
Why Capitalism is necessary and why we need to fight hard to keep capitalism in the 2026 midterms:
Democrats also want to blame the rich people for everything. They want to blame rich people for their high cost of living. But here’s the thing: the top 10 lowest cost of living states are Republican and 9 out of 10 highest cost of living states are Democrat except for Alaska. This is due to high taxes and services cost more in these Democrat states. And most of this tax money is just a waste.
Want to know why college costs so much? The Bennet hypothesis that was made in 1987 says student loan forgiveness and other college government programs are giving more money and universities know they can charge more. If people went to community college more where you can get the same degree and went to a cheaper 4 year state college and you looked into it then many universities would have to lower their prices to still keep making money. This is the student loan problem inside of America.
Healthcare? Obamacare. Good healthcare companies can no longer compete with each other for better health insurance because the government intervenes too much and the top medical companies stay at the top because they are supported the most by our federal government and no third parties can do much about it.
The Biden administration injected too much money into the economy, triggering inflation that for a while has permanently raised the floor for food and consumer goods. Now our grocery prices are going to be too high. And what do you want Trump to do about it? Burn all our money? We cannot do that. But from January 2019 to now: the vast majority of that inflation has happened under Biden and since January 2025 it has not risen as much.
And also, why should we tax the rich people insane amounts? They are the ones who hold the economy. They are the ones giving people the jobs, and when high urban cities tax them they are just going to move elsewhere. Higher taxes on rich people and capital gains can reduce the money needed for business investments, startups, and it makes creating a business really hard and expands the wealth inequality. Therefore, taxing rich people these insane amounts Biden wanted will create something called socialism and it causes countries like Venezuela and the Soviet Union problems.
And you may ask: What about the poor and needy? Extreme poverty has dropped sharply worldwide as free markets and trade expanded over the last two centuries. The rate dropped to 3.5% in September 2019. And for women? It dropped to 3.6% which was the lowest in decades. And for other demographics? Asian women were even lower at 2.7%, latino women at 4.7%, and black women at 5.6%. And was the overall unemployment rate under Biden? 6.4% at the peak and 4.1% at the end. That is worse than 2019 by a lot! And while we could blame COVID-19 for this, January 2025 was years after the pandemic. Biden’s massive federal spending packages, like the American Rescue Plan, fueled high inflation rather than helping the labor market heal naturally. Donald Trump's administration in his first term helped with poverty and homelessness by shifting federal funds away from unconditional housing toward "Treatment First" models that require actual work and find people jobs.
And people want to blame Trump for the national debt reaching $40 trillion, but for the most part he is just inheriting the interest. This is like Andrew Jackson giving the issues of removing the national debt to Martin Van Buren. And also: most of this debt is owed to our own country, not other countries. So we could compromise with our own people instead of blaming the rich people and needing socialism. A kid doing $10 for chores for their mom and dad and giving their siblings $7 of it and they keep $3 and he would rather keep his money than get taxed a bunch on the bond profit interest he makes.
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u/Santaneria 8d ago
On a small scale, capitalism is amazing. With these modern corporations, its killing the small businesses. I got a love hate relationship with it.
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u/MadeInAmerica1990 8d ago
Oh boys, if you think anything will go our way come midterms, I believe you are sadly mistaken. I believe in the principles our Republic was founded on, but these last 2 years have been rough. The quote by our President: “Affordability is a Democratic psyop!” still rings in my ears. We will pay dearly at the ballot box for his reckless policies, words, and actions. It’s not hard to see.
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u/global_ferret 8d ago
100%, plus the whole just call the democrats commies doesn’t work when 85% of the country doesn’t pay attention to politics and has no clue who the DSA is. Trump 2.0 has been objectively bad outside of killing woke (for now) and the Republicans who ceded the entire government to Trump deserve to pay for it.
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u/cathbadh 7d ago
Capitalism is one of the biggest factors why our country has become so great over its history. Unfortunately the Dems are leaning towards the DSA and their love of socialism, and the Republicans are fully MAGA with its love of unchecked monopolies and Xi's China style command economy where one person gets to dictate how large parts of the economy will be allowed to function and who gets to be a winner or loser. Neither is especially capitalistic or healthy for the country.
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u/SoilEquivalent4460 7d ago
So corporate socialism good though?
Walmart getting subsidiaries in the form of food stamps and section 8 for it workers. To the tune of billions.
Or how Walmart shorts on a lb of bacon to edge out another 12 million in profits because they are out of compliance with FDA weights and measures.
This is so fucked.
I want a level playing field and we don't have that with the government picking winners and losers. It's no wonder that the "kids" are flying to DSA.
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u/cathbadh 7d ago
So corporate socialism good though?
Were you talking to me or a straw man that you erected? Must be him, since I didn't say that.
I want a level playing field and we don't have that with the government picking winners and losers. It's no wonder that the "kids" are flying to DSA.
On this part we agree. Like I said, I don't like how the most popular parts of both sides of politics is handling things economically. Neither is out for the best interests of most folks.
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u/moto_becane1 2d ago
Where in the US do you see a market that abides by your definition of capitalism?
How do you account for industries where prices are inelastic and information asymmetry makes adverse selection and moral hazard problems unavoidable?
What serious politician is actually advocating for socialism?
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u/Teulisch 8d ago
price floors create surpluses. price ceilings create shortages.
a price floor is minimum wage, it creates a surplus of labor. thats unemployment. fewer businesses can hire at those higher wages and stay in business.
a price ceiling is rent control. it creates a shortage of properties to rent. mostly by removing the incentive to build new housing. this problem never ends until the rent control is removed.
and what do the democrats do? they want higher minimum wage and rent controls. because their voters are ignorant and just hear the politicians promise them more money and cheaper rent. but it always backfires.
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u/Opposite_Culture_512 7d ago edited 7d ago
Price controls aren’t bad. If someone were to develop a cure for cancer but wanted to charge $100,000,000 per patient would it not be necessary for the government to step in and tell them no? There needs to be a limit somewhere to what you can charge for something beyond just the free market.
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u/TaylorSvarne93 6d ago
There are very specific markets than cannot be handled by the free market alone, and this is my hill to die on. The problem is our government tries to overregulate fucking everything.
But to your point, I work in pharma consulting, and there's a famous white paper by GS, essentially opining that no curative, particularly for an infectious disease, can ever be profitable from an opportunity cost POV because you essentially wipe out your own market.
This became a renewed debate in the wake of Gilead curing Hep and absolutely smashing their market cap and growth. This becomes particularly true if you understand the nuances of clinical development as curative trials are not the same as treatment trials, so you must take on a shit-heap of risk to purposely smash your own market.
We are currently in an era with a new wave of potential curatives when you consider the advent of gene therapy, and it's a fucking shame how inherently limiting the current market structure is to the development of these therapies. It's partially offset by a lot of nuance not worth going into here; e.g., many potential GTx curatives can serve as modular platforms, so after curing one disease, they can be refitted to target other diseases with high synergy and lower costs, but it really does present a fundamental barrier.
Even worse is probably antibiotics, and I'm just expecting half of humanity to get wiped out before we ever get the willpower to actually address the fundamental issues preventing effective antibiotic commercialization 🤷♀️
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u/acemedic 8d ago edited 8d ago
So free market means no government intervention or support at all, right?
Like how somewhere between 30-50% of Walmart employees are on gov subsides (official number not released). I’m paying from my tax dollars to further Walmart’s profit derived from anti-competitive prices. The mom and pop store down the street can’t compare.
Or Amazon, same issue.
Or these multi billion dollar contracts for Space X… or the Trump family owned companies getting these 1.6 billion dollar no bid contracts from the DoD for “drone technology” when the company has never produced a drone before?
Or how this pool company got a 12 million dollar no bid contract to fix the reflecting pool?
Or the fact that the government owns 10% of Intel? Or how the government is making Nvidia give them more in profits?
Or how the US now has “golden shares” of US steel and can decide what happens there?
Or stopping privately financed wind projects and paying the companies 2.5 billion dollars to close two projects? Or the federal subsidies for coal?
Or using lawfare against private lawfirms? Hemming them up with cases that end up getting dropped?
Or the use of the FCC relative to private media and individual reporters?
Yea… we are far from capitalism. Would love it if we did, but the government is too busy picking and choosing winners and supporting failing business models because idiots cling on to dying industries.