I have personally benefited a great deal from a capitalist system all my life. I was born into a poor lower-caste family in India. My father had studied up to the fourth grade and earned a living by running a small business selling lumber to feed his family and educate all his eight children. I came to America on a boat with $40 in my pocket in 1964 to get a PhD in physics. Later, I turned to electrical engineering because of its financial potential and started on a long journey building several tech businesses in the US. I love the capitalist system, with its freedom, flexibility, opportunities and innovations that meet the market’s changing needs and lead to design and development of new products to serve people at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
The relationship between capitalism and democracy, however, can be highly complex and nuanced. On the positive side, capitalism supports democracy by creating a financially secure middle class that can engage in political participation. It can also encourage innovation, leading to a higher standard of living for citizens and lifting people at the bottom of the economic pyramid out of poverty. However, since wealth and resources tend to…
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