I voted false because I'm here with the International Assembly for Migrants and Refugees.
And in that assembly we had over 200 participants, grassroots migrants and refugees from over
30 countries from all over the world, testifying to how capitalism or the global capitalism
today is commodifying people.
People are being traded like any good or commodity.
People are, our migrants' labor is being used, taken advantage of.
I voted yes because I am, I guess, the perfect example of capitalism, working a straight
commission's job, no salary.
I get paid exactly what I deserve by how I earn my commissions.
What type of sales do I do?
Or did you want to know if I was in sales?
I'm in sales.
I'm in insurance sales for a Fortune 200 company you probably heard of before called
Affleck, The Duck.
I voted that it doesn't work.
I don't think it works.
I'm the kind of person that you'd work for, self-employed, got an LLC with my wife, got
investments, got money, it doesn't work.
Investments go down, the Congress screws around and makes them go down even further.
The healthcare is a disaster.
Any other country has healthcare.
This one, you know, it hit by a bus, wipes you out.
I mean, really.
I voted false because I think that capitalism is going for making rich people more rich
and poor people making them more poor.
And it's just opening the gap between them.
And that's not going anywhere because that was the case in Egypt.
The capitalism was going really hard.
So because the 1% was going really hard because they got like 80% of the whole wealth.
And I think whatever happened in USA right now is whatever happened in Egypt, like before
the revolution.
I voted that capitalism does work.
I think it works for me and I think it works for everyone.
Capitalism works, in my opinion, it works for me because it is opportunity.
I just think that equal opportunity is everybody's equality if we all have the same opportunity
and the same opportunities to excel.
What we do with those opportunities, that is our equality.
It works for me because the opportunities are endless in a capitalist society, like
the United States.
And it's the greatest society yet to date on the planet.
You have the ability to do just about whatever you want to do.
I mean, do others start a business, work for someone until you retire, which is kind of
dying itself, or do your own thing, basically, self-employed.
Well, I voted yes because I believe in the free market.
Now, I do have quite a number of qualms with the way that the free market is being run
currently in the United States.
But I absolutely support the fact that if a person has a good idea or is able to put
forth the effort, would be able to pursue their own interests and it has market value
and they're able to demonstrate that it does have market value, that they should have the
liberty to be able to pursue that.
It works and it doesn't.
If you have money, it works.
If you don't have money, it doesn't work.
Well, in the end, I voted that it doesn't work for me, that it's a false statement,
that capitalism doesn't work for me.
It depends where you draw your circle of responsibility, like what me is.
And if you define me as your individual self, then you can quite easily answer the question
yes or no based on your experiences.
If it relates to you and your family and the people that you've met and you can see, then
it becomes slightly more complicated.
But I guess the version of the world that I'm hoping to be a part of and want to see
come to fruition is a world where the me that we draw, the circle around me is actually
one that includes everybody.
Well, I changed my mind about four times in life.
My first impulse was to take the question very literally in terms of what it means for
me.
And I work in finance and finance has been very good to me economically and my life and
what I've been able to do is good because of that.
But while I was in line and thinking about it and thinking beyond me and things that
I've had to deal with because of how capitalism has treated my sister and most importantly
my significant other, the thing that didn't work for me about capitalism is he's had
cancer and he's had health care and then he wasn't able to work post-cancer and didn't
have health care and the health care system in America does not work.
It's horrible.
Capitalism doesn't work in health care.
No, absolutely not.
It does not work for me.
Why does it not work for you?
Well, I am a teacher and I teach currently at two different schools plus I do tutoring
on the side because none of those jobs pays enough for me to live and so I have to work
a bunch of different jobs in order to just pay the bills and to try to have health care
and that kind of stuff.
It comes from being an educator and not just in terms of what's happened in education where
especially on the college level they're getting rid of full-time teachers and putting in part-time
teachers everywhere and that's at the state colleges, at the community colleges, but also
the students are trading now for jobs that don't exist because what used to be the case
40, 50 years ago is we realized that it was important to invest in people and the reason
capitalism worked for years in this country is because we knew that people were our most
valuable asset and educated populace is what created wealth.
But now we've gotten to the point where we think people are expendable, our young people
are not being taught, we're not paying teachers and the result is going to be disastrous in
my view because buildings and bombs and factories and stuff like that do not make a nation.
Nations are made out of people and educated populace from the day this country founded
was one of the strengths of this country.
