Capitalism Doesn’t Sell

The Chamber of Commerce has discovered that the average citizen isn’t too keen on the term capitalism :

“‘Capitalism’ was universally problematic,” says Chamber spokeswoman Tita Freeman. Adds Rich Thau, president of New York-based Presentation Testing, which ran the focus groups: “There were those who associated ‘capitalism’ with greed and with the powerful dominating the vulnerable.” But those negatives, he says, didn’t apply at all to “free enterprise.” . . . To test the various terms, Thau convened separate focus groups of Obama voters, McCain voters, and small business owners. The responses were quite similar across all three categories, he says. What surprised him most? “The number of people who associated ‘capitalism’ with increased government involvement in business. I’m still puzzling over that one.”

What’s to puzzle over? The connection has been made rather clear over the past year: In America, capitalism = Big Business = “too big to fail” = bailouts = increased government involvement in business.

(Via: The Corner )