Did you vote Obama?

Charley Sullivan Ann Arbor

What you see depends on where you sit, of course. "Mediocre and sclerotic" according to whom? "Efficient and dynamic" for whose benefit? Many of those businesses that the investor class found to be mediocre were in fact making profits, albeit perhaps modest ones, while providing decent wages and benefits to workers.

Very few of the "efficient and dynamic" companies continued to be able to do so, their efficiencies coming from slashing compensation, and their "dynamism" from the increased centralization of power that put decision making into fewer and fewer hands, who were also more highly compensated for such power. There is not just one way of imagining the fundamental purpose of capitalist structures, Mr. Brooks.

Serving investors over workers is only one model. Perhaps it would be more honest of you not simply to assume that they way you look at this is the only way to see capitalism

charles san francisco

The debate is not about capitalism. Nothing has changed in Obama's (and my) admiration for capitalists like Steve Jobs, who added far more than they destroyed. The problem is the rise of a class of "capitalists" who use financial engineering to harvest value, without actually planting anything. Steve Jobs planted more than he harvested. So did Carnegie, Ford and countless others who built the wealth that the financial engineers are now harvesting, without shame or remorse.

During the rise of the industrial age in America, banking accounted for about 2% of the country's total economic activity. It was a facilitator. In 2008, it accounted for about 40% of the economy, ie., it is now the main event. No amount of sophistry on your part can hide the fact that there is something wrong with this picture. Moving zeros around on spreadsheets may make some people very rich, but at 40% of the economy, it can not and does not produce anything for the rest of society. Obama has done a poor job of explaining this, but that doesn't make it any less true. You should be ashamed of yourself for not acknowledging the distinction.

--A California entrepreneur and former Republican

"Here's how it usually goes when Mitt and his buddies arrive at a failing company: Workers initially cheer because finally someone has a plan.

Consultants go behind closed doors for months, never mind talking to the people who actually make the product.

Well, maybe at least these folks will finally get rid of the dead weight around here, the workers think. Then they notice the dead weight are actually being promoted.

Pink slips go out usually to the oldest and most experienced who get paid the most. Cheaper people are hired who know less than nothing.

The few who remain are expected to do the work of three people and never take a vacation.

The execs and consultants institute all sorts of new metrics that take all the fun out of what you were doing and creates new paperwork.

They cut your pay then at the end of the quarter, you find they've all taken huge fees and bonuses for meeting savings targets"

That, in a nutshell, is the vision of capitalism you expect Mitt Romney to defend to the American people who've lived it for the past two decades. You expect him to be able to sell them on the idea that there is something noble in all this? I'd like to see him try

geez this guy is as dumb as his running mate Mittwit