A very thought-provoking poll was released recently on Americans and their attitudes toward Christianity and capitalism. The survey found that more Americans believe that Christianity and the free market are in conflict (44 percent) than those think they are not (36 percent). This holds regardless of religious affiliation. Women, Democrats and those of low income are more likely to believe the two are incompatible. Meanwhile, Tea Party members, Republicans, college-educated and more affluent people were more likely to believe the two are not at odds.
White evangelicals are more likely than the general population to believe unregulated businesses would behave ethically. Meanwhile, Christians of color overwhelmingly (76 percent) want the church to speak out on social justice matters, and economic issues such as foreclosures devastating the community.
So what should we make of this? At first glance, it tells me that there is hope. Today's economic troubles are opening the eyes of Americans, perhaps. The inequality in this nation -- and the flagrant manner in which concentrated power flaunts its excesses -- is so perverse that it offends the moral sensibilities and belief systems of everyday folks. If there is any chance of reforming or changing our institutions, it all begins with asking if we expect -- or demand -- moral and ethical institutions that bend towards justice. Like the flailing, bankrupt Communist system in the final days of the USSR, American capitalism has revealed itself as a sham religion that promises much and operates under deceptive rhetoric, yet ultimately benefits a scant few. Right now, the system seems to be thriving perversely on the economic inequality that is eating society alive. Wall Street profits and executive bonuses are up, rewards for their plunder of the rest of us.
And yet, isn't this the way it was supposed to be? Did capitalism ever have a moral compass? And haven't capitalism and Christianity always operated in tandem for centuries?
Slavery has to be the ultimate example of unfettered, unregulated markets, laissez faire in its purest sense. The Church blessed slave ships and expeditions to rape and pillage indigenous peoples, and one slave ship was even named Jesus. Earlier forms of the Christian Right endorsed the economic exploitation of slavery and Jim Crow segregation and found justification in the Bible. Even today, some so-called Christians give their stamp of approval on cuts in crucial government programs that serve poor families, or the despoliation of the land by oil companies in the name of economic growth. They even compare the hand of the free market to the hand of God. After all, gun manufacturers have to make a buck, too, the way Jesus wanted it.
So, is capitalism at odds with Christianity? I suppose it all depends on which Christianity you use as your point of reference. The Christianity of the right wing is the imperial, status quo Christianity that helps prop up the rich and the powerful. Then there's the other side of the coin -- the Christianity that believes in social justice, liberation theology and caring for the least of these. This is the Christianity that believes it is easier for the camel to pass through an eye of a needle than it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, and is the Jesus who drove the money-changers, the Wall Street bankers of the day, out of the temple. Adherents to this school fought for the abolition of slavery and struggled for racial and economic equality in the civil rights movement. Like Martin Luther King, they fought for sanitation workers.
The early twenty-first century is not the first time that capitalism has run roughshod over the people's rights, nor, sadly, will it likely be the last. The problem is that the counterbalance to capitalism -- call it a social safety net, social welfare, the New Deal, socialism or what have you -- has eroded in the U.S. And while good people of faith (or no faith at all) struggle to restore it, other so-called people of faith welcome its demise, if they do not manipulate their religion to justify that demise. Sadly, that is as much a condemnation of religion and the way it is practiced as it is an indictment of capitalism.
It is easy for Americans to point to the oppression in certain Muslim nations and shake their heads in disbelief. It is quite another thing to look inward at the injustice, the poverty, the hunger and the unemployment that is tolerated in a nation where so many would preach to others about Jesus Christ.
Regardless of faith, Americans should be challenged to expect better from government and from society. Many followers of the cult of capitalism drank the kool-aid, believing in the virtues of chasing a dollar above all else. They were convinced, as some still are convinced despite the lack of evidence, that by redistributing the nation's money in an upward direction, it would trickle down. And why would you want to tax the rich when capitalism has convinced you that you will become rich someday? Of course, for most of us that won't happen in the land of opportunity, which is the least economically mobile society in the developed world. Moreover, the Tea Party-infused GOP has convinced its followers to vote against their own interests. The diehard followers of the right wing oppose healthcare and social programs that ameliorate the effects of capitalism on the grounds that blacks and Latinos will benefit the most.
Rather than blindly place our faith in institutions that are paving the way for our downfall -- yet we dare not touch them because we deem them sacrosanct -- America must strive to build systems that nurture us and make us whole. We can create whatever we want. The propped-up, broken structures need to be fixed or replaced. Capitalism as practiced in the U.S. -- under-regulated, unaccountable and based on winners and losers and short-term gain -- is a system of privatized profits and socialized risk. And it is killing us. But should an economic system be moral? I certainly hope so.
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
August 28, 2010
Capitalism Is Killing Us
The iPhone workers in China are jumping out of buildings on purpose, taking their own lives because they can't take it anymore. These are the deleterious effects of capitalism in the world's second largest economy.
Foxconn, the company that makes the ever-popular iPhone, apparently is a fascistic company that treats its employees like dogs. Hours are too long, management is too rigid, and the assembly line too fast. Capitalism is all about making money-- and for this company, profits have been made at the expense of labor rights. Foxconn has had twelve worker suicides this year, and they've installed safety nets--yes nets--on their buildings to catch those workers who just can't take it anymore. The company has even increased wages.
But the real eye-opener was the contrived, half-baked, forced pep rally that it held in Shenzen, where 300,000 people work and most of the suicides took place. It's as if the company is telling its employees, "You'll be happy or else." Oh, what a piece of work they are.
Now, anyone can look at China's rapid economic growth and react with wonderment and awe. They have surpassed Japan, and are outranked only by the U.S.--for now. Plus, they are the largest owner of American debt at the better part of a trillion dollars. China shows what you can do with a little industrial planning, policy and guidance from the government.
But then again, many things are possible when you don't have those annoyances, those minor nuisances like environmental regulations, workplace safety, worker's rights, and democratic government. Chinese-style capitalism seems to be a purer form than its U.S. counterpart, and therefore a Republican nirvana, minus the part about government planning. And for now, we wait for a nascent labor movement to kick into gear and transform a country that responds to massive public unrest with military crackdowns.
While Chinese workers jump out of windows, Americans are dying as well. In the U.S., workers die on exploding oil rigs and in deathtrap coalmines because their regulation-hating employers want to maximize profits. And besides, they say, regulations are dumb. Consumers die from unsafe food because food companies want to cut corners. Just like the Great Depression days when people lacked a safety net, the unemployed, foreclosed and student debtor-prisoners of today are turning to suicide at an alarming rate, with an increase of calls to suicide prevention hotlines.
The jobless take their own lives at a rate two to three times higher than the general population. That could be a scary proposition in a nation that sanctions the corporate-sponsored proliferation of firearms. Meanwhile, all of this happens in a country where the chronically unemployed number as many as they ever did, yet the jobless are characterized by conservatives as lazy drug abusers that would rather have a welfare check than go to work. Let them work at McDonald's, as Glenn Beck would say.
In the face of predatory capitalism, totalitarian and other repressive regimes do not have to justify their oppressive policies to their public, and all dissidents face the barrel of a gun. But in the U.S.--which touts itself as the land of opportunity, yet ranks at the bottom of advanced nations in upward economic mobility--years of corporation-friendly policies have gutted the American middle class. The economy was transformed into a casino with no holds barred, and compulsive gamblers threw away the lives of hardworking Americans.
In the past eight years, black and Latino homeowners lost up to $93 billion and $98 billion respectively, the largest loss of wealth for people of color in this nation's history. And as 17 percent of Latino borrowers, 11 percent of blacks and 7 percent of whites either have lost their homes or are about to, there is scant distinction between poor and middle class, as we are all po' folks now. These days, it seems, everyone is having a black experience, save a relatively few lucky souls.
But there is a threat that too many of us have noticed the crisis already. So, the oligarch puppeteers just have to come up with something, anything, in order to obfuscate, change the subject, and hope that not too many people begin to truly understand the contradictions of a "free" and unequal America. Republican-owned media subsidiaries will have you fixated on the four "M"'s of Muslims, mosques, Mexicans and gay marriage as the source of all your woes.
In order to safeguard their financial interests and retain their wealth, right-wing billionaires become purveyors of ersatz populism, setting up phony-baloney Tea Parties and other front groups because "this right-wing, redneck stuff works for them."
And as the low-information voters with short attention spans fight over the trivialities and distractions--poor shlubs that they are, devoted to an Islamophobic "news" network whose Saudi co-owner funded the very mosque they repudiate- business lobbyists fight to keep those same folks poor and dumb and make the wealthy even wealthier.
Capitalism is killing us, with the exception of the handful of capitalists who thrive because they successfully pimped the system and bought the corrupt politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike. They own the system now, but it is time for new ownership.
Foxconn, the company that makes the ever-popular iPhone, apparently is a fascistic company that treats its employees like dogs. Hours are too long, management is too rigid, and the assembly line too fast. Capitalism is all about making money-- and for this company, profits have been made at the expense of labor rights. Foxconn has had twelve worker suicides this year, and they've installed safety nets--yes nets--on their buildings to catch those workers who just can't take it anymore. The company has even increased wages.
But the real eye-opener was the contrived, half-baked, forced pep rally that it held in Shenzen, where 300,000 people work and most of the suicides took place. It's as if the company is telling its employees, "You'll be happy or else." Oh, what a piece of work they are.
Now, anyone can look at China's rapid economic growth and react with wonderment and awe. They have surpassed Japan, and are outranked only by the U.S.--for now. Plus, they are the largest owner of American debt at the better part of a trillion dollars. China shows what you can do with a little industrial planning, policy and guidance from the government.
But then again, many things are possible when you don't have those annoyances, those minor nuisances like environmental regulations, workplace safety, worker's rights, and democratic government. Chinese-style capitalism seems to be a purer form than its U.S. counterpart, and therefore a Republican nirvana, minus the part about government planning. And for now, we wait for a nascent labor movement to kick into gear and transform a country that responds to massive public unrest with military crackdowns.
While Chinese workers jump out of windows, Americans are dying as well. In the U.S., workers die on exploding oil rigs and in deathtrap coalmines because their regulation-hating employers want to maximize profits. And besides, they say, regulations are dumb. Consumers die from unsafe food because food companies want to cut corners. Just like the Great Depression days when people lacked a safety net, the unemployed, foreclosed and student debtor-prisoners of today are turning to suicide at an alarming rate, with an increase of calls to suicide prevention hotlines.
The jobless take their own lives at a rate two to three times higher than the general population. That could be a scary proposition in a nation that sanctions the corporate-sponsored proliferation of firearms. Meanwhile, all of this happens in a country where the chronically unemployed number as many as they ever did, yet the jobless are characterized by conservatives as lazy drug abusers that would rather have a welfare check than go to work. Let them work at McDonald's, as Glenn Beck would say.
In the face of predatory capitalism, totalitarian and other repressive regimes do not have to justify their oppressive policies to their public, and all dissidents face the barrel of a gun. But in the U.S.--which touts itself as the land of opportunity, yet ranks at the bottom of advanced nations in upward economic mobility--years of corporation-friendly policies have gutted the American middle class. The economy was transformed into a casino with no holds barred, and compulsive gamblers threw away the lives of hardworking Americans.
In the past eight years, black and Latino homeowners lost up to $93 billion and $98 billion respectively, the largest loss of wealth for people of color in this nation's history. And as 17 percent of Latino borrowers, 11 percent of blacks and 7 percent of whites either have lost their homes or are about to, there is scant distinction between poor and middle class, as we are all po' folks now. These days, it seems, everyone is having a black experience, save a relatively few lucky souls.
But there is a threat that too many of us have noticed the crisis already. So, the oligarch puppeteers just have to come up with something, anything, in order to obfuscate, change the subject, and hope that not too many people begin to truly understand the contradictions of a "free" and unequal America. Republican-owned media subsidiaries will have you fixated on the four "M"'s of Muslims, mosques, Mexicans and gay marriage as the source of all your woes.
In order to safeguard their financial interests and retain their wealth, right-wing billionaires become purveyors of ersatz populism, setting up phony-baloney Tea Parties and other front groups because "this right-wing, redneck stuff works for them."
And as the low-information voters with short attention spans fight over the trivialities and distractions--poor shlubs that they are, devoted to an Islamophobic "news" network whose Saudi co-owner funded the very mosque they repudiate- business lobbyists fight to keep those same folks poor and dumb and make the wealthy even wealthier.
Capitalism is killing us, with the exception of the handful of capitalists who thrive because they successfully pimped the system and bought the corrupt politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike. They own the system now, but it is time for new ownership.
July 22, 2010
Dysfunctional Politics Begets Suicidal Policies
America is in a whole lotta trouble, but I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.
We unleash the so-called free market, and then once that free market has destroyed millions of lives and livelihoods, government must come to the rescue to save the system from itself. And once the oil company despoils the oceans with millions of gallons of black goop, or the criminally greedy mining company allows its workers to perish in an unsafe mine, government must intervene to restore a regulatory framework and rein in corporate excess.
And yet, the guardians of the status quo would seemingly fight reform, even if it meant bringing down the entire country.
The standoff in the Senate over the extension of unemployment benefits is a perfect example of the depths of the problem. To be sure, they did pass unemployment benefits for the 2.5 million people whose checks ran out in May. But there will be another standoff in the months to come. And the fundamentals of the political dysfunction will be the same.
In a normal world, helping out distressed families in a virtual depression is a no-brainer. It is the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, but it also makes good sense to use unemployment benefits to help stimulate an anemic economy.
But Congress, particularly in the Senate side, is being held hostage by a minority party that clings to a failed economic philosophy known as trickle-down economics. This is the theory that if you give the wealthy more money in the form of tax cuts, subsidies, corporate welfare and the like, those benefits will trickle down to the lower rungs of the population, and everyone will be happy and prosper in the end. Remember the Reagan years? In simpler lay terms, trickle down is also known as theft.
That is what the $1.6 trillion in Bush tax cuts have amounted to--theft of the middle and working classes, the poor, and everyone else at the bottom. The top 1 percent now owns about 35 percent of America's wealth, and the top 20 percent owns 85 percent.
This gross disparity was exacerbated by horrendous policies such as the Bush tax cuts, of which half went to the top 5 percent of U.S. households, while the bottom 60 percent of Americans received a mere 15 percent of the leftovers. No investment, no economic growth, no jobs--just highway robbery, the way it was meant to be in the first place.
The Republican party faithful care little about the lives of everyday people. But they do care about their corporate benefactors. They claim to care so much about deficit reduction that they do not want to extend unemployment benefits, yet they want to extend the very tax cuts that wrecked the U.S. economy. Three GOP-inspired policies-- financial ruin, the senseless yet costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tax cuts for the rich--put us in this mess that turned a Clinton-era surplus into a $1.4 trillion deficit.
And yet, we're in a recession, a Great Recession, and perhaps even for another ten years. This year, foreclosures could reach one million or more. Still, conservatives are on the deficit reduction bandwagon. The Obama administration, having learned nothing from the lessons of history, is drinking the Hooverade as well, saying there is "no great appetite" for aid to the states.
Now that's just dumb. Stressing deficits over job creation is suicidal in a broke economy. This strategy speaks to an administration that, however brilliant and accomplished, expends too much energy appeasing its adversaries and protecting those of its advisors who rate in the mediocre-to-incompetent range, even as it throws good people under the bus amidst right-wing smear campaigns.
Speaking of good people, it is speculated that the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will use his authority under the newly-minted financial reform and block Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Perhaps he doesn't want anyone to learn where the bodies are buried, in a metaphorical sense, and he knows the Harvard law professor will protect consumers and not allow banks to continue their abusive practices. For an administration that has backtracked and settled for second best when faced with the prospects of great reform (i.e., single payer and the public option in the healthcare debate) this would be the last straw. But time will tell.
In the meantime, when presented with viable options to fix our problems, there is this tendency for America to take the road to ruin. You have no choice but to come to this conclusion when you look at this country's military spending. While other nations seek to achieve economic and technological superiority, the United States aspires to win the Cold War.
Expensive, deadly and pointless, America's exploits in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a price tag of $1 trillion, have amounted to the second most expensive military action after World War II. And with hundreds of military bases around the world, the U.S. spends far more on its military than any other nation, and about as much as all other nations combined, for that matter.
Slaves to our dysfunctional politics, America treats a dysfunctional and racist movement as legitimate. We walk a fine line when dealing with the Tea Party--pay too much attention and we give them more publicity than they deserve, but ignore them and we fail to learn the lessons of our troubled racial history. But in any case we must "refudiate" them.
Not actually a movement, the Tea Party is little more than a corporate lobbyist-supported project of the GOP, with a pseudo-populist overlay. Their aversion to taxes, to government spending, social programs such as universal healthcare, and their visceral hatred of a black president, have their origins in the Republican Southern Strategy.
Lee Atwater taught them well, though he repented on his deathbed. Taxes, big government, social programs, all of these were code words for fear of black people, when it was no longer acceptable to use the "N" word. Atwater was able to finesse the racist sensibilities of the Dixiecrat legacy in order to secure Republican victories. The strategy worked, but the moderates left the policy and the base remained. Some of the base has aligned with white supremacists, militias and jingoists, with a hate group helping to write Arizona's anti-immigrant law, and white supremacists donating money to defend the law. These are the folks who are providing the energy in the Republican Party today, and some conservative politicians hope to harness this energy, racism and all.
So, the question is, why does America allow dysfunctional politics to result in horrible, even suicidal policies? The question is not rhetorical, I really want to know.
We unleash the so-called free market, and then once that free market has destroyed millions of lives and livelihoods, government must come to the rescue to save the system from itself. And once the oil company despoils the oceans with millions of gallons of black goop, or the criminally greedy mining company allows its workers to perish in an unsafe mine, government must intervene to restore a regulatory framework and rein in corporate excess.
And yet, the guardians of the status quo would seemingly fight reform, even if it meant bringing down the entire country.
The standoff in the Senate over the extension of unemployment benefits is a perfect example of the depths of the problem. To be sure, they did pass unemployment benefits for the 2.5 million people whose checks ran out in May. But there will be another standoff in the months to come. And the fundamentals of the political dysfunction will be the same.
In a normal world, helping out distressed families in a virtual depression is a no-brainer. It is the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, but it also makes good sense to use unemployment benefits to help stimulate an anemic economy.
But Congress, particularly in the Senate side, is being held hostage by a minority party that clings to a failed economic philosophy known as trickle-down economics. This is the theory that if you give the wealthy more money in the form of tax cuts, subsidies, corporate welfare and the like, those benefits will trickle down to the lower rungs of the population, and everyone will be happy and prosper in the end. Remember the Reagan years? In simpler lay terms, trickle down is also known as theft.
That is what the $1.6 trillion in Bush tax cuts have amounted to--theft of the middle and working classes, the poor, and everyone else at the bottom. The top 1 percent now owns about 35 percent of America's wealth, and the top 20 percent owns 85 percent.
This gross disparity was exacerbated by horrendous policies such as the Bush tax cuts, of which half went to the top 5 percent of U.S. households, while the bottom 60 percent of Americans received a mere 15 percent of the leftovers. No investment, no economic growth, no jobs--just highway robbery, the way it was meant to be in the first place.
The Republican party faithful care little about the lives of everyday people. But they do care about their corporate benefactors. They claim to care so much about deficit reduction that they do not want to extend unemployment benefits, yet they want to extend the very tax cuts that wrecked the U.S. economy. Three GOP-inspired policies-- financial ruin, the senseless yet costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tax cuts for the rich--put us in this mess that turned a Clinton-era surplus into a $1.4 trillion deficit.
And yet, we're in a recession, a Great Recession, and perhaps even for another ten years. This year, foreclosures could reach one million or more. Still, conservatives are on the deficit reduction bandwagon. The Obama administration, having learned nothing from the lessons of history, is drinking the Hooverade as well, saying there is "no great appetite" for aid to the states.
Now that's just dumb. Stressing deficits over job creation is suicidal in a broke economy. This strategy speaks to an administration that, however brilliant and accomplished, expends too much energy appeasing its adversaries and protecting those of its advisors who rate in the mediocre-to-incompetent range, even as it throws good people under the bus amidst right-wing smear campaigns.
Speaking of good people, it is speculated that the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will use his authority under the newly-minted financial reform and block Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Perhaps he doesn't want anyone to learn where the bodies are buried, in a metaphorical sense, and he knows the Harvard law professor will protect consumers and not allow banks to continue their abusive practices. For an administration that has backtracked and settled for second best when faced with the prospects of great reform (i.e., single payer and the public option in the healthcare debate) this would be the last straw. But time will tell.
In the meantime, when presented with viable options to fix our problems, there is this tendency for America to take the road to ruin. You have no choice but to come to this conclusion when you look at this country's military spending. While other nations seek to achieve economic and technological superiority, the United States aspires to win the Cold War.
Expensive, deadly and pointless, America's exploits in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a price tag of $1 trillion, have amounted to the second most expensive military action after World War II. And with hundreds of military bases around the world, the U.S. spends far more on its military than any other nation, and about as much as all other nations combined, for that matter.
Slaves to our dysfunctional politics, America treats a dysfunctional and racist movement as legitimate. We walk a fine line when dealing with the Tea Party--pay too much attention and we give them more publicity than they deserve, but ignore them and we fail to learn the lessons of our troubled racial history. But in any case we must "refudiate" them.
Not actually a movement, the Tea Party is little more than a corporate lobbyist-supported project of the GOP, with a pseudo-populist overlay. Their aversion to taxes, to government spending, social programs such as universal healthcare, and their visceral hatred of a black president, have their origins in the Republican Southern Strategy.
Lee Atwater taught them well, though he repented on his deathbed. Taxes, big government, social programs, all of these were code words for fear of black people, when it was no longer acceptable to use the "N" word. Atwater was able to finesse the racist sensibilities of the Dixiecrat legacy in order to secure Republican victories. The strategy worked, but the moderates left the policy and the base remained. Some of the base has aligned with white supremacists, militias and jingoists, with a hate group helping to write Arizona's anti-immigrant law, and white supremacists donating money to defend the law. These are the folks who are providing the energy in the Republican Party today, and some conservative politicians hope to harness this energy, racism and all.
So, the question is, why does America allow dysfunctional politics to result in horrible, even suicidal policies? The question is not rhetorical, I really want to know.
October 15, 2009
Will Obama Save America From Capitalism?
Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story looked and sounded a lot like a huge conspiracy theory. Too bad all of it was true.
Missing this time around were the legions of corporate shills employed to discredit this film, the way they tried to do with Moore’s previous film about the healthcare industry, Sicko. Maybe they just gave up. There comes a time when no amount of spin will cover up the truth. You can sprinkle sugar on a turd and call it candy, but in that moment of reckoning, the truth becomes self-evident.
American-style capitalism is the system that gives you airline pilots buying groceries with food stamps; sheriffs and robber barons throwing families out of their homes and into the street; corporations taking out insurance policies on their own employees; corporations slashing jobs to earn record profits; college loans the size of mortgages, and people dying because they have a pre-existing condition, or can’t afford to get sick.
For a number of years, the boosters, the sales representatives, the pimps and prostitutes of this deeply flawed system did a great job of convincing the rest of us that no one else in the world had it better. This is the land of opportunity, they told us. The reality is that for all of its rhetoric, America is more unequal in terms of wealth and income than other industrial democracies. Far more economic mobility is to be found in those “socialist” European nations that conservatives are so loathe to emulate.
America is a nation of sharecroppers. Not in the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps sort of way, either. The few at the top now have more than ever because they stole it from the many, typically by highway robbery. And every day, they continue to dupe the many into giving more. Many at the bottom actually believe that they will emerge at the top someday, so they don’t make a fuss. Capitalism, American-style, is that great big Ponzi scheme. And apparently, we was had. This is what they do, unfettered, unaccountable, and unconcerned.
Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee that is investigating the $700 billion bank bailout giveaway, a.k.a., Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), told the Washington Post that “the middle class is under terrific assault.” Middle class families are actually earning about $800 less than a generation ago. This reality precipitated the need to have two wage earners in each family, and to borrow more and save less just to stay above water. But people are drowning by the millions.
Meanwhile, the economic puppeteers seem to gloat over the fact that they are stealing an ever-increasing part of the economic pie at the expense of the multitude. On March 5, 2006, Citibank—a TARP welfare recipient of late— issued a memo to investors entitled Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer. Plutnomy is defined as “An economy that is driven by or that disproportionately benefits wealthy people, or one where the creation of wealth is the principal goal.” The Citibank memo proclaimed that
The latest Survey of Consumer Finances, for 2004, has been released by the Federal Reserve. It shows the rich continue to account for a disproportionately large share of income and wealth in the US economy: the richest 10% of Americans account for 43% of income, and 57% of net worth. The net worth to income ratio for the richest 10% of Americans increased from 7.4x in 2001, to 8.4x in the 2004 survey. The rich are in great shape, financially.
Perhaps the most invidious part of the report warns that electoral democracy threatens to disrupt the wonderful party the rich are having:
Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks. For example, a policy error leading to asset deflation, would likely damage plutonomy. Furthermore, the rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement remains as was – one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation (on the rich or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation) or through trying to protect indigenous laborers, in a push-back on globalization – either anti-immigration, or protectionism. We don’t see this happening yet, though there are signs of rising political tensions. However we are keeping a close eye on developments.
Capitalism is as capitalism does. Maximization of profit above all else— to the exclusion of ethics, morality and the public good—is the mark of a vulture society. And this arrogant, coldhearted endeavor has been a bipartisan effort. Beginning with Reagan, Republican administrations have championed drastic cuts to the social safety net and massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Meanwhile, the Clinton years ushered in deregulation of the financial markets, and an end to welfare as we know it. Corporations have far more power than a free society can tolerate. And both major political parties are the water carriers of this plutonomy. They are the field hands for the financial interests that currently run the show and drive public policy—and are driving this nation into the ground.
The U.S. economy is worse than at any time since the Great Depression. In fact, as Simon Johnson of MIT recently told Bill Moyers, we are currently experiencing elements of a depression.
But in this jobless recovery, where there is one job for every six job seekers, Wall Street is doing well because its fate is not dependent upon the employment of everyday working people. Rather, its fate is dependent upon government handouts, paper shuffling, and the exotic hustling instruments to which they have grown accustomed.
But we have been here before. Eighty years ago, on October 24-29, 1929, the stock market collapsed. It was a testament to an economic system run amok, unregulated and unrestrained, for the benefit of concentrated, monopolistic power. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in the New Deal— a series of economic programs and initiatives based on relief to the unemployed and farmers, reform of business, banking and finance, and economic recovery. The New Deal meant public works and infrastructure programs, economic planning by the government, social security, and labor standards that favored union growth. There was a sense that workers, consumers and farmers should have influence with the government, not just corporations.
Today— with the erosion of the New Deal legacy creating the huge mess that is early twenty-first-century America—President Obama has a golden opportunity to make things right. But will his administration step up to the plate and bring in the necessary reforms? Just as F.D.R. saved capitalism from itself, will Obama save America from capitalism? Or is the game already too fixed?
These times scream out for a “new” New Deal. Jobs are sorely needed by millions, but will not appear out of thin air. The foreclosed and unemployed middle class are joining the ranks of the poor and the homeless. The national infrastructure is crumbling. And the cartels and monopolies of old have returned. A paltry and ineffectual stimulus package, accompanied by some tweaking at the edges of a carnivorous, predatory system, will not make a difference.
If the Obama administration wants to be a truly transformational force in American history, rather than a slightly-better-than-average, one-term presidency with good intentions, it will give America the new New Deal. The Obama administration will find the intestinal fortitude to take on the banking system, and divest itself of Wall Street enablers and Goldman Sachs cronies. It will cast out such underwhelming individuals as Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, and seek the advice of Nobel laureates such as Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia, and Paul Krugman of Princeton. It will go beyond its laudable plans for a consumer protection agency, and either reform the current economic system, or replace it entirely with one that reduces the status of corporations, and brings economic fairness and justice to the people.
In other words, President Obama will do what the people voted for in November.
(From BlackCommentator.com.)
September 25, 2008
What’s Good for Wall Street Is Only Good for Wall Street
By David A. LoveBlackCommentator.com
Color of Law
September 25, 2008
One trillion dollars. Now that’s some money. When all is said and done, that is roughly the amount it will take to save that shining beacon for all the world to follow, American predatory capitalism.
What could $1 trillion buy you? Well, you could buy a failed war in Iraq for about that much. In contrast, it would cost $55 billion a year to wipe out child poverty in the U.S. And not doing anything about child poverty costs us $500 billion a year.
Some experts are telling us that this bailout of Wall Street by the taxpayers - with no oversight, no strings attached, no obligations for those who seek the bailout - is necessary to prevent a total collapse of the economy. As for this, I say don’t give it to them. After all, we were always told that the free market, the invisible hand, unencumbered by government regulation, will take care of itself. The Wall Street robber barons would never find such charity in their hearts for the common folk. They would tell us that we can’t depend on government handouts, that we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and play by the rules.
And what’s in it for us?
We certainly don’t need a 9-11-style commission to state the obvious, that this financial meltdown is the result of greed. It has finally put to rest a number of fallacies:
- The first fallacy is that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street, and that increases in worker productivity lead to wage increases. If that were true, then as Wall Street boomed, the average family would not have witnessed a stagnation or decline in their standard of living. Capitalism depends on making a profit, so they say, and if that means cutting wages, then so be it.
- The second is that Wall Street hates socialism. Not true. Apparently, they love socialism for the few, socialism for themselves, and to hell with everyone else.
- The third is that deregulated free market capitalism, served up for public consumption, is the best thing since shrimp and cheese grits. The reality, however, is pretty clear. Deregulation is a proxy for greed and excess, allowing the hustlers to run their hustle unencumbered, in the light of day, and with the sales receipt in hand for the government they just bought and paid for, and these swindlers have the sales receipt to prove it. Unregulated markets give you mortgage scams, a polluted environment, and now a wrecked economy.
So, why should we bail out companies that have been run into the ground, with jobs slashed or outsourced, while the heads of these ruined enterprises are rewarded for their failure with $40 million golden parachutes? Why should we throw good money after bad, and feed a fundamentally broken system that has no accountability to the public? And who is going to bail out the common, everyday people? The money always seems to be there for certain things, such as war profiteering and corporate bailouts, and of course, that massive upward redistribution of wealth that is eviscerating the poor, the working class and middle class. If we are going to have a good old-fashioned, socialist-style bailout for some, why can’t we have it for all?
Those of you who read the Color of Law column regularly know that I often refer back to Dr. King, and I think he has provided some words that are perfect for the situation in which America finds itself. He said that we, this nation, needs a “shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society,” and a “radical redistribution” of wealth and power. Sounds good to me. Perhaps there is no better time than the present.
Some people say that the New Deal saved capitalism from communism. Others say it saved America from capitalism. Still others say it saved capitalism from itself. What is certain, however, is that conservatives have done everything in their power to remove the last traces of the New Deal. And it is that very assault on the vestiges of the New Deal - with its relief for the unemployed, economic recovery and reform of the financial system, and greater acceptance of trade unionism as a counterbalance to corporate power - that helped create today’s hot mess in the financial sector. It will undoubtedly take a move as dramatic as the New Deal, if not bolder, to make things right.
But if the entire system is not reformed, with an eye toward bringing economic justice, changing the configuration of the economic pie and removing the stranglehold that corporations have on this society, then we have a problem.
May 23, 2008
A Book Review of Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration, By Tara Herivel and Paul Wright
By David A. Love
Black Commentator
May 22, 2008
Incarceration is perhaps America’s leading method of social control. With 2.5 million in the nation’s jails and prisons - 7 million people when you include people on probation and parole - the U.S. accounts for a quarter of the world’s prisoners, the world’s largest prison population.
An important factor which is fuelling the alarming growth rate of America’s prisons is the profit motive. Making money, rather than deterring crime or promoting rehabilitation, is a guiding factor which determines why and how many prisons are built. In a book published by The New Press, Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration
Punishment for profit is a sordid, unethical and immoral enterprise, and no other nation places more prisoners in the custody of private corporations than America. Consequently, this system produces winners and losers:
Primary winners include the politicians and prison corporations who benefit from the construction of new prisons, while Wall Street banks benefit from private prison funding schemes that lie outside of the public purview.
The private entities that administer and supply the prison industry attempt to evade public accountability.
Telephone companies benefit from an unregulated marketplace and charge exorbitant rates for prisoner calls, making it prohibitive for inmates to communicate with their families and thereby stifling the rehabilitation process.
Badly needed educational, rehabilitation and drug treatment programs are cut or eliminated in the prisons in order to realize cost savings.
Correctional officers’ unions advocate for more draconian sentencing that will fill prison cells and maintain their livelihoods. Meanwhile, as the book rightly argues, there is no relationship between crime and incarceration rates.
Often, prisoners - predominantly poor, of color, and unable to vote - are counted for census purposes in the mostly white and rural districts in which they are incarcerated. These prison towns receive more clout, more influence and more than their fair share of public resources in the process. Meanwhile, the inner city neighborhoods that produce these inmates suffer not only from a depletion of their population as a result of the exodus of men and women to the prisons, but a smaller share of government resources. This is similar to the three-fifths compromise of 1787, in which slave states were able to count three-fifths of their enslaved population, who could not vote, for purposes of determining distribution of taxes and representation in Congress. This compromise was codified in Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution.
Depressed rural communities clamor to attract prisons to their town. Yet, they do not receive the benefits they believed the prison would create. Prison economies may stifle other forms of economic activity, and in any case, the true beneficiaries of are corporations, shareholders and executives. Besides, many industries are eager to use prison laborers, earning pennies a day, thereby displacing high-paying union jobs.
Prison growth, fuelled by Corporate America, has created the phenomenon of “one million dollar blocks.” In some inner city neighborhoods, so many residents of the same city block have been incarcerated that it costs up to $1 million each year to imprison them.
In an effort to shift the prohibitive cost of prisons away from taxpayers, some localities and states charge prisoners for their own incarceration, including room and board, healthcare, food and other necessities. Inmates, usually lacking resources and hailing from low socioeconomic backgrounds, are further punished through the imposition of court and administrative fees they cannot afford. Probation may be conditioned on the ability to pay restitution and fees, and failure to pay could result in a “go to jail card.” Thus, Neo-Dickensian debtors’ prisons are created.
And Prison, Inc. is particularly cruel towards the young and the ill. Private youth facilities, staffed with undereducated, untrained and underpaid staff in order to maximize corporate profit and executive pay, are rife with child abuse. Meanwhile, private prison healthcare providers, indifferent to human suffering, purposely deny medical care for the sake of the bottom line. The book provides accounts of particularly unconscionable acts of medical neglect and malpractice, in which babies are born and die in jailhouse toilets, and prisoners needlessly suffer and die from horrific infections.
Although an increasing number of Americans are going to prison, few Americans care to fully understand what actually happens in these institutions. Out of sight, out of mind, lock them up and throw away the key. Yet, the derivation of profit from the suffering and captivity of others is made more socially acceptable through conflicting images in the mass media. One set of image depicts and glorifies prisons as chic, fashionable, luxurious places where prisoners are coddled. Another image depicts prisons as horrible places, where male rape is viewed as a fitting, acceptable and even humorous form of punishment for violent lawbreakers.
Prison Profiteers provides the reader with a thoughtful, comprehensive and accessible analysis of the money trail behind the prison-industrial-complex. It is required reading for students of the criminal justice system, civil rights and civil liberties advocates, and those who desire a greater understanding of the underbelly of our nation’s prisons-for-profit system.
September 25, 2007
The Unbridled Free Market Suffocates Democracy
Industrial Workers of the World, 1911
By David A. Love
Published in The Black Commentator
September 20, 2007
The recent decision by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee to hold an investigation into the collapse of a Utah coal mine, amid allegations that six miners were buried alive due to a desire by the mining company to maximize profits, not to mention lax federal regulators and an administration that was rewarded handsomely by the mining industry, is further proof that corporate greed is hurting the country. The pursuit of profit above all else, including the interests of people, unbridled, unchecked and unregulated, is an internal threat to democracy. Corporations have a stranglehold on America. They are sucking all the air out of democracy, or what is left of it, making it difficult for the rest of us to breathe freely.
The evidence of this crisis abounds:
- Foreclosures are on the rise, as unscrupulous, predatory lenders, who took advantage of average citizens of meager means, seek a bailout, now that the subprime mortgage market has bottomed out.
- Hard-earned pensions are eviscerated.
- College students cannot afford an education, and amass prohibitive amounts of debt, as tuition rises far above the inflation rate.
- The $85 billion student loan industry makes inside deals with college officials.
One of the main points of Michael Moore's film, Sicko, is that the collusion between politicians and the healthcare industry is a barrier to having a free and universal health system. Moore's exposé on the crisis of health insurance in America is an indictment of the healthcare corporations that deny medical treatment to the ill, and allow people to die, all for the sake of profits.
Meanwhile, the world's most advanced nation has a crumbling infrastructure. The deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis, and the breaking of the levees in New Orleans two years earlier, occurred in the midst of a war in Iraq that could cost the taxpayers as much as $1.5 trillion.
That unpopular war has been promulgated by an administration with more than tenuous ties to the oil and defense industries, and war profiteers such as Halliburton. The president, an oil man in tune with the financial interests of that business, repudiated the Kyoto Protocol and the scientific realities of global warming, and allowed the clock to tick on climate change.
Overcrowded prisons are bursting at the seams and prison spending exceeds funding for education in state budgets throughout the country. Encouraging economic development through the captivity of others is an unseemly activity. The for-profit prison industry trades on Wall Street, as did, years earlier, businesses involved in the slave trade. With factory jobs exported overseas, spanking new prisons built in predominantly white communities — filled disproportionately with men of color from the inner cities — are the new company town.
During the Jim Crow era, a collusion of lawmakers, law enforcement and industry resulted in the convict lease system. Unjust and arbitrary laws resulted in incarceration and forced labor for poor former slaves, and profits for industry. Similarly, today's special interests favor draconian get-tough-on-crime drug policies that target and warehouse African Americans and Latinos. These policies fail to address rehabilitation and the root causes of society's ills, but fuel the burgeoning $60 billion a year prison engine.
Meanwhile, Bush's pro-business Supreme Court has made it more difficult for employees to sue for discrimination, has overturned a century-old antitrust precedent that barred price-fixing collusion between manufacturers and retailers, and tossed out damages awarded to the widow of a smoker, against Philip Morris. Globalization has meant a downward shift in wages, outsourcing, poisonous food imports and lead toys from China.
Something is wrong in the self-described land of opportunity. Although Americans are the hardest working people on the planet, the American Dream, it appears, is elusive. As the Pew Charitable Trusts recently reported, there is far less economic mobility in the United States than was previously thought. In fact, America is less economically mobile than many other nations, including Canada, France, the Scandinavian countries, and Germany. As the United States is experiencing the most dramatic shift in wealth in the nation's history, exacerbated and hastened by Bush's regressive policies, never have so few owned so much. And never has an administration manipulated the apparatus of government to such an extent for its own financial and political gain.
Median household income has declined over the past three decades, and the present generation is worse off than the generation that preceded it. Between 1972 and 2001, the income of people in the top 1 percent grew by 87 percent. For people at the very top - the 99.99th percentile - the income gain was 181 percent. By contrast, the bottom 20 percent grew by only 3 percent.
The top 1 percent of households owns almost twice as much of the nation's corporate wealth as they did 15 years ago. Between 1978 and 2005, CEO pay increased from 35 times an average worker's pay to 262 times, making more in an hour than a worker makes in a month. Meanwhile, in 2004, 23 million people used food stamps, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 17 million in 2000.
The top 1 percent of households owns almost twice as much of the nation's corporate wealth as they did 15 years ago. Between 1978 and 2005, CEO pay increased from 35 times an average worker's pay to 262 times, making more in an hour than a worker makes in a month. Meanwhile, in 2004, 23 million people used food stamps, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 17 million in 2000.
Perhaps the most troubling and most significant chapter of the G.O.P. legacy has been the attempt to erase all traces of the New Deal and the Civil Rights era. Denigrated and dismissed by conservatives as archaic and part of the bloated welfare state, the New Deal provided the nation with Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, relief for the poor and unemployed, and public works and jobs programs. This represented government intervention that served to balance the power relationship among business, labor and agriculture. The New Deal provided relief, recovery and reform for an economic system run amok. It saved Americans from capitalism and the effects of an unfettered and unregulated free market, and saved capitalism from itself.
But nowadays, who will save the people, and democracy, from capitalism? For all of its lofty democratic rhetoric, the U.S. is turning into an oligarchy, and the concerns of people are taking a back seat to the needs of corporations. Surely, there are higher values than profit for profit's sake, in a nation that has profited from just about everything, including human bondage, war and misery. Morality dictates a higher standard.
On April 4, 1967, at a meeting at Riverside Church in New York, Dr. Martin Luther King said, "we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." Although America has failed to heed Dr. King's words 40 years later, perhaps it is not too late.
Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)