Most Americans believe that capitalism is a system of the production and distribution of preferred goods and services in return for what consumers are willing to pay for them, and that this system is the bedrock on which the United States is built and upon which the country should function. This system may have functioned well in the United States in the post World War II era when there was little global competition and which truly established the middle class. However capitalism as seen in the United States today, which truly took hold in the Reagan era, is more about the want of the wealthy to get wealthier at the expense of all others. The country at that time started to be run more like a business than like a traditional government. Since, there has been a manipulation by the power brokers on Wall Street of government for their benefit, often at the expense of the the dwindling middle class and working class, and often without that production of a good or service demanded by society. The system continues to operate as most Americans strive to be among the wealthy and see capitalism as a system where becoming wealthy is at least possible. Capitalism is often associated with the ideals of Christianity and the concurrent American ideal of democracy, the latter which is increasingly not the case, where economic power is held in the hands of the few. Corporate America's biggest fear is democracy where in a one person/one vote system, a wealthy person has as much power as a poor person. With the poor increasingly outnumbering the wealthy, the poor banding together may show capitalism for what it is, at least in today's global system.—Huggo