Brief Response to 'Twilight of Capitalism'

This is highly unorthodox! It was my turn to start a new debate topic! :)

I don't blame you, TOM. (Short for The Old Man). I should have made a post by now.

Brief response:

The fact that the U.S. has the highest GDP (aside from exceptional cases of small, resource-rich nations) is indeed interesting. The fact that many important inventions have come from the U.S. is also interesting. Nevertheless, what I said about European systems in terms of healthcare, education, and the middle class remains true. It's not clear to me how the adoption of better public healthcare or education practices would have prevented such triumphs as the Moon-landing, for example. And surely the two world wars which devastated all the major powers, sparing only the U.S. and its massive global military, with its bases in the oil-rich Middle East (replacing the British ones), contributed to the 1900's being an "American century".

As for Cuba...who said anything about Cuba? I wasn't advocating Cuban-style policy or economics. But I will concede that the continuing, half-century-long trade embargo against Cuba is a great example of how restrictions on free trade can devastate a nation economically and socially. In this case, those were the intended effects. (See the American Society for Internal Medicine for a report on how the U.S. embargo has affected healthcare in Cuba)