[Peace-discuss] "Between the idea/And the reality...Falls theShadow"

[E.Wayne Johnson]

the lettered view is that capitalism seems to favour the upper cases and 
oppress (unpress) the lower case.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "peace discuss" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 9:54 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] "Between the idea/And the reality...Falls 
theShadow"


`Capitalism' Not So Sacred to Americans as Mood Sours
By Mark Drajem - Jul 13, 2010

Capitalism, the bedrock of the U.S. economic system, isn’t a
favorite term these days among American citizens, opinion surveys
show.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a poll today showing that 57
percent of Americans say they support capitalism, compared with
more than 70 percent who back free enterprise and free markets.
Polls by the Gallup Organization and the Pew Research Center for
the People & the Press earlier this year found similar lower
levels of enthusiasm for the term.

“There’s been an erosion of support for capitalism,” Steve
Lombardo, president of the Lombardo Consulting Group, which
conducted the poll for the Chamber of Commerce, said in an
interview. “It hasn’t become a bad word, but it’s less positive
than it has been.”

The Chamber’s poll found 20 percent of those polled were neutral
toward capitalism and 19 percent held negative views.

For the Chamber, corporate America’s biggest lobbying force in
Washington, that lack of support is a cause for worry, said Stan
Anderson, managing director of its Campaign for Free Enterprise.

“We need to do a better job of explaining the economic system in
the United States and how it is working,” Anderson said in an
interview. “We have been looking at anecdotal information that
there was a misunderstanding of capitalism.”

‘Big Business, Big Government’

Anderson said Americans’ support for the term “free enterprise,”
which was viewed positively by 78 percent of the respondents, may
show that they just oppose any “-isms.”

Charles Derber, a sociologist at Boston College, says the results
show the public’s unhappiness with the ties between “big business
and big government,” exemplified by the multi- billion dollar
bailout of banks in 2008.

“When people say they are down on capitalism, they mean they are
down on corporate capitalism,” Derber, author of books including,
“People Before Profit,” said in an interview. “They see capitalism
as it exists here as anything but a free market.”

‘Corporate Excesses’

A Gallup poll in April found that 52 percent of those surveyed had
a positive assessment of capitalism and 37 percent a negative
view. Socialism had a 29 percent positive assessment.

“Reaction to ‘capitalism’ is lukewarm among many demographic
groups,” Gallup editor Frank Newport wrote May 4. “Fewer than half
of young people, women, people with lower incomes and those with
less education react positively” to the term, he wrote.

“It is a reasonable hypothesis that in the midst of the current
downturn and the visibility of the corporate excesses that
negative assessments of capitalism have increased,” Newport said
today in an interview. Gallup hadn’t polled about the term before,
he said.

In addition to the findings on capitalism, the Chamber’s poll
found that 43 percent of those surveyed said the Obama
administration’s policies are making the economy worse compared
with 23 percent believing it is making it better.

“There is a major trust deficit,” Lombardo said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-13/-capitalism-not-so-sacred-to-americans-as-downturn-sours-mood-polls-show.html
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