The U.S. Is Not Capitalist

Source: AP Photo/Russell Contreras

Is the US the vanguard of capitalism for the world? Is the US even capitalist? For most media pundits the answer is obvious: Yes! Everyone knows that! After all, the U.S. has always ranked high on the indexes of economic freedom.

At least one conservative writer suggests that the US may not be the capitalist champion that people think it is. In The American Economy Is Already Too Far Left for Comfort — or Prosperity, Martin Hutchinson wrote, “Americans already are living in a socialist society.” As evidence, he points to the size of the government: “First, the state sector is unimaginably larger than in Marx’s day, around 40 percent of GDP in the United States, when federal, state, and local governments are included, even if that number is smaller than many other economies elsewhere in the West.”

Hutchinson doesn’t mention it, but the US tax system is more socialist than those of Europe because the US taxes the middle class and poor at lower rates than European nations. Economists tend to underestimate the financial benefits of not being taxed. (finish the article at Townhall Finance)