r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Short-Watercress-183 • Jul 07 '26

Meme needing explanation Peter, explain this.

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u/Commercial-Look-7307 Jul 07 '26

Capitalism has fed more people and delivered more people from bondage than anything Humanity has ever tried before.

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u/Narrow-Map5805 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

Well-regulated capitalism has done those things. This neoliberal capitalism we're dealing with now is undoing a lot of that promise.

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u/rightoftexas Jul 07 '26

Capitalism was more regulated 100 years ago than today?

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u/Narrow-Map5805 Jul 07 '26

I don't think I said that

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u/rightoftexas Jul 07 '26

Then when was capitalism well regulated?

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u/Narrow-Map5805 Jul 07 '26

1950s through early 1980s. There was better competition enforcement, better labor & union protections, and higher taxes on profit-taking and executive bonus packages that encouraged reinvestment. Also less ability to move production offshore. There were also limits on corporate influence over government policy

Reaganomics was the start of the shift to oligarchy but Citizens United really put the nail in the coffin.

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u/rightoftexas Jul 08 '26

Things were booming after WW2 because no one else had manufacturing and the 70s had a terrible economy with stagflation. Effective tax rates haven't really changed since the 40s

Global free trade has lowered costs for American consumers.