Burgess Owens: “We have traded places with Great Britain where the gap between the rich and poor used to be the greatest. We are now…”

“We have traded places with Great Britain where the gap between the rich and poor used to be the greatest. We are now, democratic America has now the greatest gap between the rich and the poor. It is the phenomenon that has taken place. It has nothing to do with capitalism per se. The argument about capitalism and what it does to an economy is an argument, I think, that is just about over. It appears that humankind prefers a capitalist system. It seems to be compatible with the way human beings are built. We are not talking about capitalism automatically creating this kind of condition. Capitalism can be compassionate. Capitalism can be more creative. They have a capitalist system in Sweden. They have a capitalist system in a number of other places. Norwegian workers do very well. There are a number of places where they choose to use their resources in certain ways and they choose to throttle the runaway spirit of greed which creates more and more billionaires and multibillionaires. We ought to see ourselves differently. Mr. Speaker, President Clinton has said that America is the indispensable Nation in today's global society. I agree. I think capitalism has, in fact, demonstrated that perhaps capitalism is an indispensable economic system of humankind. There are all kinds of capitalism. Chinese capitalism uses slave labor in prisons, and we are buying into a system with China where we are willing to buy the products of slave labor.”