Does capitalism lead to greed?

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A lot of people argue that capitalism is the reason why there is so much disparity between the rich and the poor. They say that capitalism allows corporations to raise prices on things as much as they want. They are also allowed to pay workers as little as they want. It is also argued that there are no regulations with capitalism and corporations can do whatever they want even if it is harmful to the environment or other living things. Has capitalism gotten out of control? I'm no expert on economics, but hasn't the United States been using capitalism since the beginning? What has caused the greed among capitalism? I'm no fan of socialism either, but isn't there a way that we can make a system that works for everyone instead of having this huge disparity between the rich and the poor? It used to be that if you work hard you will have nice things. Today in the United States, most people are living from paycheck to paycheck, college graduates are in hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, and more than 50% of Americans do not own a home. Many young people do not have a lot of hope for the future because they have been lied to by being told that you can achieve big things of you work hard. It is also being predicted that the majority of jobs will be replaced by robots and automation in the future. Corporations don't want to pay human workers when they can have robots do all the work for free.

It's human nature.

I'd debate the way a lot of the OP is framed but generally speaking yes - over time inequality grows. To some degree it's the luck of 'who got there first' at the start and had the capacity to make money from various opportunities. An even bigger inequality creator seems to be Pareto distributions of capability, talent, etc. in that while yes a person can squander talent and that's tragic it's doubtful whether a person without talent or capability can gain it.

If our economy is particularly jacked up in one way I'd say it's the way we seem to have let Wall Street and the 401k's be the arbiters of how companies prioritize their goals (in this case quarterly gain and mergers over innovation). I like that there are more employee-owned coops and IMHO there need to be a lot more of them. We do need to think of ways for small business to flourish, and maybe if we're going to encourage big business we should be looking at forms of big business that provide services to small business and make a better environment that way more obtainable.

The other big blunder we made in the last 30 years and only now seem to be waking up from is the neoconservative/neoliberal nation building game. It's difficult to argue now that we aren't really bad at it or that we didn't end up causing more chaos in most cases than anything else. The reason I bring that up - trillions of dollars that could have otherwise gone to infrastructure, education, etc..

Unless there are mechanisms to control it , without a doubt.

Does capitalism lead to greed, or does greed lead to capitalism?

Keep in mind that there are greedy people in every kind of economic environment.

Does socialism lead to poverty or does poverty lead to socialism?

So much to unpack in this comment to begin with:

1. No, capitalism does not lead to greed, greed is a human condition that exists in all socio-political systems.

2. "Isn't there a system that works for everyone instead of having such a disparity between rich and poor?" Unlikely. The best human kind has achieved thus far is a system where the overall economy is strong, and the poor are less poor because of it. That is capitalism.

3. "Today in the United States, most people are living paycheck to paycheck." Same as it ever was. No economic data supports real wages being lower now than they were in the past.

4. "More than 50% of americans do not own a home." This has a lot more to do with the shortage of housing in big cities due to regulations, than it does with an actual decrease in economic power.

5. "It is also predicted that the majority of jobs will be replaced by robots." In the history of automation, automation has never net decreased the number of jobs. However, there is an argument that this time is different.

6. "College graduates are in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt." A college degree pays out a million dollars more over a high school diploma in lifetime earnings. Most college graduates are debt free by age 30. Furthermore most of the "college debt" is held by med students and law students who do get high paying jobs to pay back their debt.

7. "Many young people do not have a lot of hope for the future, because they have been lied to by being told you can achieve big things if you work hard."
When everyone is special, no one is.

People like the Russian First Secretary of the Communist Party (e.g., Breznev, Khruschev), were really rather greedy people.

Homeownership in the US is actually 64.8%. And how does socialism control greed any better than capitalism?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184902/homeownership-rate-in-the-us-since-2003/

Capitalism was born out of greed.
Liberalism was born out of greed, too.
Both were invented by people who were involved in colonialism and slave trade, and didn't want to pay taxes to their king(s).

But it got a lot better. There are likely fewer slaves than ever on the planet, and obesity kills more people than starvation. Traffic and your own home (let's face it, it's a death trap) are more dangerous than terrorism.

That's all very new to humans.

Also new: we're running low on resources, and the byproducts of our civilization are killing everything else on the planet.

To sum up: we can do better. History is not over yet, and the current state of neoliberal globalized capitalism is not final, and unlikely to stay.
Automation and pollution, and yes, inequality, will force some change in some way or another.

what if khrushchyov had the automatons from the 2050s and both had millennials and gen z s