--- title: TIME 100 Roundtable: The Future of Capitalism | TIME description: Seven influential honorees on this year's TIME 100 list debate the future of capitalism with the magazine's Managing Editor Rick Stengel canonical: https://time.com/video/IuO0ty0d/ og:title: TIME 100 Roundtable: The Future of Capitalism og:description: Seven influential honorees on this year's TIME 100 list debate the future of capitalism with the magazine's Managing Editor Rick Stengel og:url: https://time.com/video/IuO0ty0d/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/IuO0ty0d/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: TIME 100 Roundtable: The Future of Capitalism twitter:description: Seven influential honorees on this year's TIME 100 list debate the future of capitalism with the magazine's Managing Editor Rick Stengel twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/IuO0ty0d/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # TIME 100 Roundtable: The Future of Capitalism > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: TIME 100 Roundtable: The Future of Capitalism [Watch (HLS stream): TIME 100 Roundtable: The Future of Capitalism](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/IuO0ty0d.m3u8) (7:48)  _Published 2009-05-14. Seven influential honorees on this year's TIME 100 list debate the future of capitalism with the magazine's Managing Editor Rick Stengel_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:09 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Rick Stengel on TIME Magazine's special Wireless Issue](/video/mN8uLZ2A/) ### Rick Stengel on TIME Magazine's special Wireless Issue [The TIME 100 Green Roundtable](/video/vf27HoVE/) ### The TIME 100 Green Roundtable [The TIME 100: Who's Most Influential?](/video/U0pu3XKb/) ### The TIME 100: Who's Most Influential? --- ## Transcript >> It was very clear, among many of the founders of capitalism that they had to be a moral foundation to capitalism. I think what is happening is that gradual this was forgotten and capitalism was reduced to the [ unk ] virtue of selfishness. >> Uh- hmm. >> And really what we need to recapture now is this original principle of capitalism which is that you do well. But in the process of doing well, you give back. >> I believe that there is a role for the government to play in kind of evening in the playing field in investing and development-- investing in things that are better for society. We need to do things to invest in the future, invest in the global good. And I think one of the things that's important for us to do is to fight poverty. It's gonna be better for the globe. It's gonna be better for capitalism itself if we don't have a billion people living on less than a dollar a day. >> For capitalism to have a future. It needs to survive. >> Uh- hmm. >> What are the regulatory mechanisms that we can be sure that in a hundred years, five hundred years. There still is a system. >> Let me do what I do best as a talk show host whatever that is, which is t ask additional questions. I think that what we have to rest with so let me answer your questions with three questions if I might very quickly. What we have to-- >> You can take over by the way, okay. >> I know. >> Okay. >> I think capitalism is what we're stuck with. This is it. It's not a question of whether-- it's a question of what. What kind of capitalism are we going to have? We gotta debate that damn in relationship and just to position to the democracy. >> A very short time ago, I think it would have been unthinkable that we would be able to, you know, break apart our healthcare system in ways that it needs to be broken apart. So here's an opportunity to rethink the whole thing. Somali mom, there's a crisis, a world crisis with sexual slavery and prostitution and it's one of the bad sides of globalization, right? Because it's all around the world, I mean, is that a function of capitalism not working and what can we do about it? >> Capitalism, I think they are far away to understand you guys here, I'm far away to understand that. So [ unk ] sexual exploitation is around the world. It's not just in Cambodia, in the poor country. The children and the women, if they don't have educations, they can be exploited everywhere. >> If someone had said 20 years ago, that 15 percent, for instance senior class would apply and teach in our highest poverty community. People wouldn't believe it and there's something truly profound about that. >> All the decision- making is being made on quarterly reports, any reports. National decision- makers are being re- elected on four- year cycles, 6- year cycles. You cannot plan a long- term future, a robust resilient future if all the decisions that you made have paid back into timeframe. That you as person would benefit from. One of the tenants of capitalism is that it is meant to be self- correcting, right? I mean, you could argue that what's going on now is an actual correction. >> My concern is that we are looking at the stock market as an indicator of self- correction and I think that's a tremendous [ unk ] and they still in illusion among many of this country that you can just quickly get back to where we were. And I believe, A. we cannot and B. we should not. >> Let's be clear. Everybody in this room now is a stockholder and companies that we did not intend to be stockholders in. If I wanted stock in these companies, I would have bought it. As an American, I'd be asked to own stock in these things. I'm a stock holder now by chance and not by choice. We have to talk now in ways that we never have about the relationship between stock holders and citizens. >> I think what is really fascinating right now is that the agreement among serious economists that we're doing their wrong thing in terms of saving capitalism by trying to save and solving banks and protecting a one street oligarchy. We're continuing down this path of basically spending hundreds of billions of dollars of tax-- >> What's the alternative? >> You can restrict the [ unk ] by converting bonds to equity. You don't have to keep basically having the taxpayer propping up basically and solve an institution. So, what is amazing is that we are not having a [ unk ] of populist outrage about that, which is the only way I think that we can turn things around. >> We've been talking about converting bonds into equity. And so maybe we need to go all the way and we let people convert the equity that they now got into alters, and those alters can be for education. >> That's an idea. >> You have a voucher and it's worth something. It's worth something that the government will guarantee. >> I think the American people are all okay with which people doing okay. There's no war against rich in this country. The question is, when do we balance the conversation and start talking about how to lift everybody else up out of poverty. That's not what's happening. That's the other part of this conversation. >> But-- is not acceptable for education system to be as poor as it is. It just not acceptable and I feel like that will make such a big difference. We know we can raise people's I. Qs significantly based on just better environment, better parenting techniques and better schools. We know we can do these things and I think getting our human capital right is gonna make a big difference in everything else we do. >> Yeah, we are seen just hardcore evidence in communities all over the country that actually when we build our schools in a certain way, when we teach kids in a certain way, we can take kids who face so many extra challenges of poverty and racism and all of the things that play out in kids of color and kids who grew up in a low income communities lives and we can actually put them on a level playing field so that they do, in fact, have the chance to retain a truly excellence education. >> Recently, President Obama was asked about his opinion about drugs, the President of our country said something that, you know, anybody who works on this field knows intimately that we need a new paradigm, he says we have to treat addiction, we have to treat drugs, we have to treat mental illness for what it is, a healthcare crisis. >> We can solve educational inequity. we can certainly reached the point where every kind in our country gets an excellent education. There is nothing keeping us from that other than enough tremendous leaders, tremendous talent channeling their energy in that direction and I think if we can get our future leaders channeling their energy against our most serious problems early enough, education but healthcare and problems around the world, not just here in the US. I think we'll have a different society. >> A rising tide does left our boat. But if you're in a yacht and I'm in a [ unk ], we still got a problem here and that's not counted for who were into the water. We don't have a yacht or a [ unk ]. >> Young people going into the workplace have to be more supple or more, you know, dynamic in the sense that we might not stay in the job for 30, 40 years like our parent. We won't stay in a job for 30, 40 years like our parents did. My Dad worked at a truck factory from the day he got out of the National Guard to when he retired, the same factory. Those jobs will not be there. We just assume that they won't and just know that you're gonna have to be versatile. >> I'm very, very optimistic that people will not have the problem. In other areas in the world like in Europe the crisis is about finding qualified people. It is not about finding jobs. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME 100 Roundtable: The Future of Capitalism","description":"Seven influential honorees on this year's TIME 100 list debate the future of capitalism with the magazine's Managing Editor Rick Stengel","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/IuO0ty0d/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2009-05-14T19:58:34.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/IuO0ty0d.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/IuO0ty0d/","duration":"PT7M48S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/IuO0ty0d/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```