The means by which we discuss our economy halt any change of poor practices. The words and our understandings of capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive ideas are poisoning American exceptionalism.

Politicians have convinced us that capitalism is good for the middle class, that unchecked free enterprise create a better chance to move upward. They have said it enough times, so we believe them.

But when has this historically been true?

Big tax cuts for the top one percent do not mean they will tickle that wealth down to you or me. Why is this true?

Well, I beg you to reference the Great Depression, or more in our lifetimes, the Great Recession when the banks failed and taxpayers had to pay for it. Few people got very, very rich by exploiting the middle class, and people everywhere in every country lost the homes they lived in all their lives. This is not because they were not working, or that they were not working hard enough. These people had degrees and trades and were forced out of their livelihoods due to massive layoffs created by greedy rich men who wanted more money.

There is a reason that Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the Koch Brothers idolize capitalism – it helps them get even richer, forcing the average American to work longer and harder for a smaller piece of the pie.

This is an abuse of democracy.

When you have 15 percent of the population below the poverty line, you must re-evaluate how well your economy is actually doing. When something is not working, we fix it, but we have not fixed this system because the people disproportionately benefitting from it tell you that it is working and that you just are not working hard enough.

And look at healthcare.

There is no reason our system should be the way that it is. People with insurance are rejected from life-saving procedures because insurance companies do not want to do what is in their job descriptions and pay for the surgeries.

Medications cost thousands of dollars here. In countries we like to call less developed, the same drugs cost literal cents to our thousand-dollar prices.

This is unacceptable. The people at the top won’t even let us entertain a fight for national healthcare system because the rich people will have to have only one Bentley, instead of five.

As a nation, we must evaluate the way by which we treat our own people to determine our success as a developed nation. We are being superseded in every category in every field because we cannot get over the concept of capitalism.

The only thing we are best at is spending the most money on our military. If a government can stabilize prices because privatized CEOs will not, I do not have a problem; I am not scared that the government will go rogue and charge even higher prices.

Why? They have to get elected and keep their jobs, whereas CEOs only care about their profits.

Wake up. The state that we are in isn’t working for you, and it won’t suddenly start to.

Madison Newingham is a columnist, contact her at [email protected].