Capitalism Hits the Fan (2009) Real wages stopped rising after the 1970s but productivity didn't thanks to the use of computers, leading to incredible profits for businesses. Deposited in banks, the profits were lent to the same workers facing flattened out real wages at high interest, and they used that to go on a spending binge. Meanwhile, businesses opened lending facilities because a lot of money could be made with that, which in turn led to even more money created. This contributed to heavy financial speculation leading to booms and busts, starting with the dot-com crash of the 1990s, followed with the real estate bubble popping during the late 2000s. Finally, some related points: Capitalism is an economic process that uses capital to obtain the means of production and hire workers to produce things, which are in turn sold to pay for what was obtained and workers hired, with the remainder--the profit--going to the owners of businesses. With that, if businesses are owned by private individuals who aren't workers in the same businesses, then it's private capitalism. If they are owned by workers, then they are cooperatives, and are part of socialism. The same goes for businesses owned by the public via the state: that's state capitalism, which consists of public corporations. Most economies are mixed, having private and public corporations. I don't think there's any economy on earth that has only private corporations, as it's impractical to use them for public services, such as security using the military, legal systems, etc. Also, there are cases where it's illogical to have for-profit corporations due to the absence of competition, as seen in utilities and single-franchise public transport. That means socialism is inherent in capitalist systems as the latter require things like legal systems and fiat currencies in order to operate effectively. I think the only countries that have only state corporations, and thus promote state capitalism, are North Korea and Cuba, although the latter probably has one corporation that has a private partner. In terms of performance, from what I remember, the ave. per capita GDP growth rate of North Korea is similar to that of the U.S. for the last few decades: around 2 pct. Meanwhile, the growth rate of Cuba is around 10 pct: its economy grew from $25 billion in 1998 to around $100 trillion in 2018. In Asia, countries that promoted the East Asian Miracle--Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, HK (SAR), Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia--employed socialist policies: authoritarian regimes, centralized planning, protectionism, infrastructure development needed for industrialization, and export orientation. They only opened up their economies later when they were strong enough to compete with others. They also promoted policies that favored them, such as compulsory licensing. Because of this, they experienced high growth rates: around 4.5 to 6 pct per annum. One country--the Philippines--did the opposite during most decades: it followed U.S. neoliberal models plus a liberal democracy. The result is that across more than five decades, it experienced a growth rate of less than 1.6 pct per annum. Starting in 2016, it started going against that. Because of this, it experienced a growth rate of more than 7 pct the last two quarters, and is expected to finish with 6.5 pct by the end of the year, which isn't that bad because it's growing the fastest in the region even during a pandemic and a war. Finally, what's not mentioned in the lecture shared above is that the U.S. has reached late capitalism, and other industrialized countries will face the same. For example, Japan fell apart after a real estate bubble popped in 1991, and it has not recovered since. The same will happen to any country that becomes very prosperous: its prices will be too expensive for other countries, so it will end up going on a borrowing and spending binge until it falls apart. This might explain why debt levels are very high among wealthy countries.