@ 19: “It hardly needs to be emphasized that “financial capitalism” – the appropriation of the gains from industrial capitalism by a horde of locust-like lawyers, bankers and bean-counting pixel shufflers – has been utterly discredited by the GFC.”

“But “industrial capitalism” – the provision of goods by distributed intelligence proprietorships – is still as useful as ever, witness iPhone!”

@ 27: “With financial capitalism Ponzi schemes its the financial middleman that gets the lions share with investors and tax-payers getting fleeced…”

“I have no specific figures on the average size of the financial sector in the US for the post-WWII (1940-75) era. But my guess it would have been no more than 1/3 of this…”

It is hard to believe the blindness of thinking that national wealth can be created by an economy full of rent-takers, unless they are taking their rents from other nations…

It reminds me of the poor maggot-infested dogs in Indonesia. The maggots probably live a life of idle luxury, until there are too many of them and the poor dog dies. Then they are stuffed. Unless they can find a new dog.

Don’t forget to get some live yoghurt into you as well. Antibiotics play merry hell with your gut bacteria.

The word ‘capitalism’ was not used by Adam Smith (he died in 1790), nor by Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, nor, interestingly, by Marx.

Adam Smith referred to his ‘4th Age of Man’ as commerce, the earlier three being “1st, the Age of Hunters; 2dly, the Age of Shepherds; 3dly, the Age of Agricluture” (A. Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p 14, [1762-63]).

We definitely are at cross-purposes if you thought I was taking a swing at you. It never occurred to me that you would have been making such claims. The claim you initially made was one with which I was familiar and is commonly raised on my side of the argument.

I was merely adding further context to my response.