Capitalism vs Communism

*Capitalism isn't about capital. Capitalism is about private ownership of capital.*
Capitalism claims to be a system where companies compete with each other and this competition pushes prices down to the minimum. In reality there has never been and probably never will be a true Capitalist state anywhere on Earth.

Communism claims to be some sort of workers paradise where everyone is "on the same team" and everyone works for the common good and everyone is equal to everyone else. In reality there has never been and probably never will be a true Communist state anywhere on Earth. The states that call themselves communist states are in reality nothing more than ordinary military states. Every country that feels itself threatened by powerful and hostile neighbors invariably transforms into a military state.

Whether a country calls itself capitalist or communist or socialist or anything else the underlying power system is always the same. A core group of elite controlling everything and channeling as much wealth as possible into their own pockets. Only the coat of paint on the outside changes.

## Capitalism

*Privatizing profits and socializing losses*
*Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor*
From Wikipedia:Corporate welfare:

Subsidies considered excessive, unwarranted, wasteful, unfair, inefficient, or bought by lobbying are often called corporate welfare. Corporations want to reserve financial gains for themselves and pass along losses to the rest of society, by lobbying the government for assistance.

Some economists consider the 2008 bank bailouts in the United States to be corporate welfare. U.S. politicians have also contended that zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve System to financial institutions during the global financial crisis were a hidden, backdoor form of corporate welfare.

Policy analysis conducted by the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank, argued that United States fiscal policy allocated approximately US$92 billion in the 2006 federal budget toward programs that the authors considered to be corporate welfare. Subsequent analysis by the institute estimated that number to be US$100 billion in the 2012 federal budget.

Daniel D. Huff, professor emeritus of social work at Boise State University, published a comprehensive analysis of corporate welfare in 1993. Huff reasoned that a very conservative estimate of corporate welfare expenditures in the United States would have been at least US$170 billion in 1990.

## Communism

From Wikipedia:Privatization in Russia:

In the later years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed restrictions on private property and introduced initial market reforms. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality and a collapse in GDP and industrial output.

Privatization facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of business oligarchs and New Russians, particularly natural gas and oil executives.

From Wikipedia:Russian oligarch:

By the end of the Soviet era in 1991 and during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, many Russian businessmen imported or smuggled goods such as personal computers and jeans into the country and sold them, often on the black market, for a hefty profit.

During the 1990s, once Boris Yeltsin became President of Russia in 1991, the oligarchs emerged as well-connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and became rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt, but elected, government of Russia during the state's transition to a market-based economy. The so-called voucher-privatization program enabled a handful of young men to become billionaires, specifically by arbitraging the vast difference between old domestic prices for Russian commodities (e.g. gas, oil) and the prices prevailing on the world market.

Between 2000 and 2004, Putin apparently engaged in a power struggle with some oligarchs, reaching a "grand bargain" with them. This bargain allowed the oligarchs to maintain their powers, in exchange for their explicit support of – and alignment with – Putin's government. Many more business people have become oligarchs during Putin's time in power, and often due to personal relations with Putin.

During Putin's presidency, a number of oligarchs came under fire for various illegal activities, particularly tax evasion in the businesses they acquired. However, it is widely speculated and believed that the charges were also politically motivated.

In 2004, Forbes listed 36 billionaires of Russian citizenship, with a note: "this list includes businessmen of Russian citizenship who acquired the major share of their wealth privately, while not holding a governmental position".

A 2013 report by Credit Suisse found that 35% of the wealth of Russia was owned by the wealthiest 110 individuals.