> I think (and I may be wrong) you are assuming that "captialism" == the rules of the last 30ish years, that they are somehow optimal for productivity, and that therefore any change to them must yield something suboptimal. But they are just some options among very many (including the options before Reagan) and much of the U.S. economy isn't technically 'capitalism' anyway.

I'm defining capitalism as essentially private property rights + contract enforcement. I'm not a libertarian absolutist, I think there's room for quite a few regulations. But i'm, in general, skeptical of them by default. I think that externality pricing (e.g. if you damage public property such as the environment, you ought to pay at least enough to fix it) is extremely important, and I think that the way 'natural property' (such as land) has been distributed is highly unequitable, and we'd be much better off with a [Land Value Tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax) to replace most of the forms of taxation that we have now as a way of at least partially offsetting that inequitability, while maintaining ideal economic efficiency.

I'm also a believer in a strong social safety net, but one designed from an economic perspective, to minimize efficiency loss. I'm no expert, but I think it ought to have essentially two components: raise the minimum standard of living (via either a universal basic income, or a government jobs guarantee) and some form of "rare high cost variance smoothing insurance" (mostly thinking of health here, but other things too, potentially). That is, health insurance that pays only for extreme (cost-wise) events. Healthcare is a complicated issue though due to the fact that incentives get weird and misaligned with cost reduction in various places (it may be worthwhile to make checkups free, because it will reduce the probability of say, cancer progressing to a later stage where care will be more expensive, but if people pay for it themselves, they won't go as often, and it'll end up costing society more). So, I accept that there are quite good arguments for fully socialized healthcare, but I think there are also strong arguments on the other side, though they usually aren't very well articulated in the common media.

> That's not especially accurate; income distribution inequality was much lower for most of U.S. history than it is today. Also, if you look at the actual history, the U.S. was much more highly regulated, had much higher tax rates, and provided more benefits to its citizens (such as better education) during the period of its highest growth, roughly the 50s and 60s. The U.S. constantly expanded services to its citizens throughout the 20th century.

I'm not sure how that conflicts with the statement of mine that you quoted. We absolutely achieved what we have today by growing the economy. You are right that we also provided many social services. And i'm all for that. I'm not really sure why people focus so much on inequality. Inequality can increase simply because the top goes up. Does it make you worse off if someone else is richer? When Jeff Bezos' fortune increases by 10 billion, are you and I poorer? I suppose in some emotional sense, maybe, but that doesn't really seem relevant to policy. I see no problem with inequality, per se. It'd be easy to eliminate inequality: kill the rich and burn their money. But would anyone be better off for it?