Socialism and Capitalism

Although pure capitalism and pure socialism don’t exist in the real world, those two economic systems are on complete opposite sides of the spectrum. The basic philosophy of capitalism is that capital is owned, operated, and traded for generating profits for private owners or shareholders. There’s a particular emphasis put on individual profit rather than society as a whole; socialism is essentially the opposite. According to socialism, each person must contribute something to society according to their ability, and profit is distributed among the society or workforce to complement individual wages/salaries.
Pure capitalism promotes a laissez-faire kind of free market, because it was believed that government intervention would cause inefficiencies and unfairness. However, nowadays it is more common for it to be a regulated market, where certain rules are in place to prevent unwanted or unfair occurrences in the economy. Capitalism also tended to rely on the markets themselves to determine investment as well as production and distribution decisions. Socialism, on the other hand, thought all individuals should have access to basic needs and public goods to allow for a kind of self-fulfillment or realization of their own potential. Large-scale industries were supposed to be collective efforts, and therefore the returns from those industries must benefit society as a whole. Government played a much larger hand in socialist economic systems, which relied primarily on either centralized or decentralized planning to determine investment and production decisions. The idea that property ownership should be in the hands of the government was because socialists thought that the government could produce a larger amount of better qu...

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...lism, mercantilism was promoted and for socialism, prices and wages were controlled by the government. The ultimate purpose of education within both systems is to train people to get jobs, therefore becoming able to give back to the economy and generate income.
Capitalism and socialism are essentially opposing schools of thought in economics. Socialists believe social and economic inequality is bad for society and that the government is responsible for reducing it through programs that benefit the poor. On the other hand, capitalists believe that the government does not use economic resources as efficiently as private enterprises, and therefore society is better off with a free market. Each economic system has had its high and low points in history, but both capitalism and socialism, if applied correctly, have the potential to be extremely successful and prosperous.