Parade of Giants

I found the reading by Schweickart to be interesting as he explains his opinions on capitalism and how it affects society. He begins the article by stating that there is no preferable alternative to capitalism that is as efficient in allocation of existing resources, as dynamic in innovative growth, or as compatible with liberty and democracy. At first he gives you the idea that he is a supporter of capitalism, until he introduces his six major negatives about capitalism. The first problem which seemed to be a big one was inequality. He explains that the balance of income and wealth are so unreasonable unbalanced that the top one percent of the richest people in the US own almost 50 percent of the nations wealth. He does an incredible job drawing a picture of this by talking about the parade of giants. The giants are the richest people who stand at tens of thousands of miles tall, while the poorest people (in the front of the parade) stand at under a foot tall. I did not know the magnitude of the desperately poor people in the country. Yet I do not know if this is all because of capitalism. I feel that the author contradicts himself at times. He states that the rich are removing legal barriers to equality making poverty unbearable. But he also speaks of the importance unemployment is to capitalism. He says that capitalism cannot be a full employment economy. If employment drops too low then wage demands are made and this essentially cuts into profits. He then tries to justify the illegal crimes committed in this country by the people who suffer from poverty, saying that they have no other choices but to turn to gangs, drugs, alcohol and crime. I did not agree that we can just blame all of our problems in this country on capitalism and its apparent inequality. I found much of the article interesting, but I constantly found myself agreeing and disagreeing with the author.