“Capital will always go where it’s welcome and stay where it’s well treated. Capital is not just money. It’s also talent and ideas. They, too, will go where they’re welcome and stay where they are well treated.”

This explains very well the term "Made in China".

Automatically equating simple possession of "capital" with "talent and ideas" is absurd. It's much truer to say capital infers 'status quo', which, like any other successful-in-the-meantime organism, fights ceaselessly to maintain itself first and foremost - no matter how destructive it may be.

Mann, WHAT ? How, where, or under what circumstance does capital, infer status quo ? When the USA was friendly to capital, talent and ideas, freedom rang and the world was benefited. An organism of money and profit at any cost is a possible directing force of where capital, talent and ideas may go but they are not an equivalent.

Capital is substance and can be found in many forms. Unfortunately, substance has been replaced with a promise for substance. The ability to promise does not equate to an ability to produce. The economic mess we are in is due to treating promises as the real thing, when in fact they cannot be kept and thus those holding the promises are left holding the bag of thin air. Capitalism has been replaced with a monetary system that is nothing but empty promises (i.e. interest-bearing federal reserve promissory notes in lieu of real tangible capital). Mann seems to routinely provide knee-jerk responses to anything promoting 'capitalism'. The corruption Mann should address is the ultimate corporate cronyism: the banking monopoly of issuing debt as currency.

Mann, Some people'll never get it. Which one are you, Ananias or Saphira?

Norwalk: You are correct. I erred in saying capital (wealth) inferred status quo. It's much more correct to say capital sets, no, personifies/is the preferred status quo. Even so, I'd suggest that since there's 40+% more capital per person in the U.S. now than when the Middle Class was at its height in 1973, your assessment that the nation has somehow become unfriendly to capital is flawed. NYC: You've forgotten my 7/12/12 response to a Tolstoi quote, where I wrote, "Today's cash isn't "money" at all. It's created out of the ISSUANCE OF DEBT by central bankers. This means your cash is essentially nothing but a handful of IOUs from somebody else's poker game." Perhaps I need to be a little more clear in my meaning when I comment. Often enough my intention is to provide expository commentary about vulture capitalism dispossessing the Middle and Working Classes, a practice increasing by leaps and bounds, right now, in my country. Princeton: It's odd and it's interesting that you should compare me to a pair of history's most noted liars - without a citing a supposed lie of mine. How come none of you are taking on my primary premise: that "... automatically equating simple possession of "capital" with "talent and ideas" is absurd."

Mann, the issuance of debt as currency IS a plank of communism, and socialism is but the vehicle for bankrupting a nation into a totalitarian state, whether it be fascist, socialist, or communist -- in any case, it is the destruction of the individual and a free market -- otherwise known as free choice. Capitalism has not really been in effect for over 100 years. I think you should reconsider that 'monopolies' and a corrupt monetary system are what you are calling 'capitalism' -- it isn't. It is the centralization of government and the 'state' that has brought us to the desperate situation we are in today -- not capitalism.

For proof of this concept, see any state that has gone too far in taxation, regulation and spending the public's wealth.

California, Detroit, Chicago, France, etc

All of them are losing capitalists. Which is not only material wealth, but the creativity that helped create it.

Humans, similar to life in general go where they have too. Life is actually not usually welcomed in a environment where death has always ruled, but nonetheless life is not a waste.