Historians have long argued about the origin of the phrase in the Declaration of Independence but there is no arguing that whether “happiness” is analogous to safety or estate that a basic consideration for the founding fathers was the concept of property. Property begot safety. Property begot wealth and, in turn, enabled governments to assess and collect taxes.

America is built upon two pillars: one governmental and the other economic.  Our political pillar is a representative democracy and our economic pillar, capitalism.

What is capitalism? We give you Miriam-Webster dictionary’s definition:

“an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market ”

Lately though capitalism is getting some bad press. From the Washington Post and Pearlstein on a different kind of Capitalism we are shown some of the evils of a regulation free capitalism to the recent film “Dark Knight Rises” in which we see class warfare in the eyes of Batman & Politics. In the most recent Batman film we see a revolution against the 1% and you can balance that against the recent essay by Charles Murray on Capitalism where we are simply asked: Why don’t people defend the benefits of capitalism.

It’s not for us to tell you whether we think capitalism is evil or good since our mission at Votifi is to bring you various perspectives on issues and let you decide.  We do know that capitalism has been a core component of our nation’s prosperity and so we pose the question: 

How can politics and economics coexist in a way that pushes this country’s economic stability back to where we all feel a little better about things?  

In the face of recent anti-capitalist momentum, it makes sense to think about where we are now, how we got here, and where we want to go as a nation. To that end, we read an interesting article here on Capitalism defined and encourage you to read and share your thoughts.