"During slavery, "Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon," writes the historian Joshua Rothman in his 2012 book, "Flush Times and Fever Dreams." That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us the , the and the . It is the culture that has produced and undignified working conditions. If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a capitalism of poverty wages, and ; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; a racist capitalism that ignores the fact that slavery didn’t just deny black freedom but built white fortunes, originating the black-white wealth gap that annually grows wider — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
, "In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation." ' (August 14, 2019)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Economy of the United States
26 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Economy of the United States →
Related Quotes
"The blood, sweat, tears, and suffering of Black people are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United Stat…"
"Solving this issue is going to require cooperation between the private sector, including rail and trucking, ports and…"
"As institutions influence behavior and incentives in real life, they forge the success or failure of nations. Individ…"
"Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion."
"When the economy falls over, we won’t be jellyfish. We’ll still have backbones and teeth, white teeth, and double sta…"
"Only "America," of all national designations, took on the combined force of eschatology and chauvinism. Many forms of…"
"[T]he stakes for America are never small. If our country does not lead the cause of freedom, it will not be led. If w…"
"The story of neoliberalism is quite familiar to the millions across the USA whose lives have been ravaged by the "," …"
"[T]he chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, sellin…"
"The U.S. economy was organized differently from the New Deal until 1973. As incomplete, uneven, and racist as it was,…"