This is my very uneducated opinion, focused in one particular area:

The connection between large companies and the stock market is broken. I always thought that the stock market was a way for companies to raise capital and people to give that capital with the promise of a dividend if the company uses the capital wisely. You would choose which companies to 'loan' money to, based on the performance of the company. (I could be totally missing the point here - it's just how I see it.)

It seems that now the stock market is not working that way. Numbers are massaged by companies to appear more attractive to investors, investors choose to 'loan' those companies capital, the cost of doing so increases, and the companies then have 'stockholders' they must satisfy...and they do so by massaging the numbers. It's a cycle, one that rewards upper management for managing not the company, but the numbers, and rewards stockholders with mirage money.

The drawback to capitalism is that it encourages the concept of 'more'. More, more, more. And legitimatizes the idea that one's worth is not connected to one's work, but rather to one's ability to justify 'more'. The CEOs of major corporation are a perfect example. (As well as many professional athletes.) Nobody 'earns' $10 million dollars a year. I'm sorry - they don't. What happens is that they do what they do to pacify the 'board of directors' (made up of people just like them) and are rewarded by those who have the same expectation at their own companies. It is an exercise in ego and greed, wrapped up in lies.

I don't have an answer, or an alternative. Other than the wish that human beings could genuinely understand that we sink or swim together. That doesn't mean that I should make the same amount of money for what I contribute to my employer as the person who runs the company. But I do believe the people who run the company should not be allowed to literally 'rape' it, simply because they can.

At it's base, the issue is this. Fear. The fear that giving to another means not getting one's 'due'. That it lessens the self. I think the people that 'earn' the most money are the ones that are most afraid. Until we can let go of the ingrained belief that it's every man for himself, we will continue to measure ourselves against others based upon money and possessions. And that is truly a shame.