The US as it exists today simply is not capitalist. The Great Depression and 19th-century industrial slums can reasonably be blamed on capitalism. American prob

The US as it exists today simply is not capitalist. The Great Depression and 19th-century industrial slums can reasonably be blamed on capitalism. American problems today cannot. This isn't the fallacy of "no true Scotsman". It's just simple arithmetic. Look at a pie chart of GDP. About 40% of it is outright owned by the government (public spending). Another 40% of it is nominally private, but is extremely heavily regulated License-Raj-style, like real estate and medicine. For example, if you want to build a new apartment tower, this is almost everywhere illegal because of zoning codes. The government has to give you permission to build anything, and then once you get permission, they dictate what you can build, how high you can build, what the building can be used for, how much parking there will be, how much of the land has to be building vs. landscaping, how far your building is away from the street, etc. etc. etc. It's literal central planning - a government committee takes out a map and draws lines, and then dictates at each spot exactly what kind of buildings there will be. None of this existed prior to the mid 20th century.