(Capitalism or Socialism) Which is better???

Martin Luther King Jr. Once said "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz., to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes."(Martin Luther King Jr.) Which makes one think of many questions Is the good old U S of A considered to be capitalistic economy? Has it lived out its usefulness? Is a socialistic economy better?

Yes the United States is a capitalistic economy. The definition of capitalism is “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.” I personally do not like this economy because if one is not rich they are poor. Capitalism is driven firmly on the basis of greed, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because they are working for the “Big People”. I personally think that our capitalistic economy has out lived its usefulness, but I don’t think the country would have any other better forms of an economy to choose from.

One option for a different economy would be socialism. Socialism is a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies. I don’t really agree with the ideas of a socialistic economy. People want to do things on their own. People don’t want the government calling all of the shots, people are already complaining that the government already has too much pull when it comes to the economy, what would happen if we adopted a socialistic economy? People wouldn't know the difference between socialistic and communistic.I don’t think that a socialistic economy would be a whole lot different than a capitalist economy because most of the rich people are in the government so people wouldn't like it just as much as the capitalistic economy. Yes capitalism has outlived its usefulness but I think as of right now that it is the lesser of two evils and we have to take the lesser one.  

Source: page 36 in The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Clayborne Carson (1998). Grand Central Publishing.