{"id":4980,"date":"2009-05-01T08:33:27","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T13:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=4980"},"modified":"2009-05-01T10:10:38","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T15:10:38","slug":"capitalism-on-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/05\/capitalism-on-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitalism on Sale?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I am very excited to undertake my duties as Faculty Blogger for the month of May. <\/span>My colleagues have done an outstanding job in making the Marquette University Law School Blog a \u201cgo to\u201d destination for ideas and information about law, politics and society. <\/span>They have demonstrated an inspired vision of how technology can bring the Marquette community together, and the inaugural year of the blog has been an unqualified success. <\/span>This makes their apparent lapse in judgment in inviting me to serve as Faculty Blogger for this month all the more surprising. <\/span>I will try my best not to embarrass anyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute had an interesting op ed in the Wall Street Journal on April 30 entitled \u201cThe Real Culture War is Over Capitalism.\u201d <\/span>You can find it on the Journal\u2019s website<\/a>. <\/span>His key quote: \u201cAdvocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests [like the \u201ctea parties\u201d], and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship.\u201d <\/span>I agree with his central point, which is that free market conservatives have made the mistake of assuming that capitalism is a good in and of itself, and have failed to make the case that free markets have moral ends. <\/span>Is it in fact demonstrable that free market capitalism leads to the greatest economic benefit to the greatest number of Americans, a utilitarian standard with its roots in the classical Greek conception of government? <\/span>Alternatively, can free market advocates demonstrate that the best way to preserve and promote the dignity of human beings is through a marketplace unfettered by regulation or government oversight, a standard that comes from Catholic social teaching? <\/span>Shouting \u201cSocialism!\u201d at every government intervention in the market is not enough.<\/p>\n

The last several years have seen increasing disparity in the distribution of wealth among the population, the accumulation of crushing debt by many households (often from medical expenses), and a domestic labor force that has gotten the message that it is replaceable with overseas and undocumented workers. <\/span>For many Americans, faith in the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d of Adam Smith has not been rewarded. <\/span>They are willing to try something else. <\/span>They want to see the economic gains from a growing economy shared in a more equitable fashion, they want the cost of their health care to stop eating an ever growing proportion of their income, and they want a measure of job security.<\/span><\/p>\n

In political terms, the Republican Party has created its own \u201cbrand\u201d as a no tax-small government party. T<\/span>hey have succeeded in differentiating their product just as sure as Crest has differentiated itself from Colgate as a brand of toothpaste. <\/span>But voters are like consumers in the supermarket. <\/span>If they don\u2019t think your product is working, they will try a different brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am very excited to undertake my duties as Faculty Blogger for the month of May. My colleagues have done an outstanding job in making the Marquette University Law School Blog a \u201cgo to\u201d destination for ideas and information about law, politics and society. They have demonstrated an inspired vision of how technology can bring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-processes-rhetoric","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}