by Patricia M. McClane
American Thinker
A recent Fox News poll reported that 59% of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism compared with 49% who have a favorable view of capitalism. A few weeks ago, Nancy Pelosi, while speaking at an event in London, commented that capitalism has not served our country as well as it should.
Why all the ill will for capitalism? Conventional wisdom seems to be that the widening gap between the haves and have-nots is driving the shift away from capitalism and toward socialism. The gap is wide and getting wider, but the problem is not with capitalism itself; it is that we no longer have a capitalist economy. We have faux capitalism or a watered-down version.
Capitalism is typically defined by the following characteristics.