USA - The dysfunction of America : The rule of greed - by Peter Blaikie

The U.S. economy remains the most powerful, creative and dynamic in the world, but it faces major difficulties. No longer is it a true capitalist free-market system. It has become a gigantic welfare state whose prime beneficiaries are the rich and major corporations.

Think of the legions of millionaire lobbyists in Washington; the shuttle-bus-type ferrying of people back and forth between senior Washington positions and executive suites in the business world; the enormous subsidies paid to myriad industries, including agriculture; the complex loopholes that render the tax code incomprehensible to all but the beneficiaries; the deregulation of the financial system that led to the crisis of 2007 and 2008, followed by the trillion-dollar bailouts; and that's to say nothing of the dramatically increasing inequality of income distribution.

Greed may be good, as Gordon Gekko famously declared in Wall Street, but it is good only for the rich. Almost without exception, independent experts and analysts (a group that, sadly, excludes all active politicians), know that to put America's financial house in order requires both tax increases and spending cuts. President Barack Obama's proposed tax increase for Americans earning $1 million a year, which will never become law, is an almost invisible drop in the deficit bucket. The chances of anyone who advocates serious tax increases, in whatever form, being elected are not merely slim; they are zero.

For more: The dysfunction of America (i): The rule of greed