Knowledge about the economy ideas about capitalism and government the future of the world and geopolitics were things I was never really interested in.

The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism economic inequality is real and growing.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

And if you look at the reality in the United States where you have more than 40 million people below the poverty line and 42 million on food stamps and then you look at poverty around the world clearly the way we're running the engine of capitalism is not serving us well.

Sharia has become an increasingly significant force in American capitalism thanks to the embrace by Wall Street and the U.S. government of so-called Sharia-Compliant Finance. Indeed this country's taxpayers now own the largest purveyor of sharia-compliant insurance products in the world: AIG.

Under capitalism each individual engages in economic planning.

Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's just the opposite.

It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family.

In the Europe which was created by the Second World War divided into two blocks each in need of a revolution that would end the abuses and injustices of capitalism and the privileges of a bureaucratic caste collective faith does not exist.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory if not practice the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or at least we used to.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa Asia and Latin America?

The idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker living in Flint Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.

Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism which we don't want to admit the loss of the empire of the United States and American exceptionalism. In fact American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories from education to infrastructure.

My memories are of my dad taking me to football on Saturday mornings and my mum taking me swimming. Those are the things I remember from my childhood not sitting around the table debating capitalism and the profit squeeze.

From computers to information technology to airplanes it has been America's unique blend of republican government and free-market capitalism that has allowed us to surpass all other nations in history.

I think we've been dulled by capitalism. We're just blobs now - we're so worried about how we can keep paying the lease on the car the mortgage the lease on the toaster and all that. You can't really think about much else. If you lose that you lose the whole lot.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got bringing all these new inventions into the works before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

In the coming years if not sooner social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility - and I suggest move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism.

Thanks to capitalism the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved happy or valuable unless we have the body the face the hair even the personality that will apparently be ours if only we buy their products.

I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that even within that there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once kind of humming and sublime.

It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero Andy Warhol who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned.

I believe in capitalism for everybody not necessarily high finance but capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country who are out there paddling alone in America right now.