Ruthless Economy Treats Workers and Consumers as Food

My opinion is that the reason most people are dissatisfied with the status of business and politics is that we have all bought into the myth or at least tolerated the myth that capitalism IS democracy. It isn’t.

Capitalism is an economic system whose basic premise is to make as much money as possible. Democracy is a political system whose basic premise in our country is to regulate imbalance, injustice and over-reaching by the rich and powerful.

We have reached another tipping point in which capitalism is affecting our political decision making and voting. It should be the other way around. Democracy (or in our case a democratic republic) should be affecting  capitalism such that the country benefits from capitalism, not just a few successful people who come to dominate our laws.

They are both good systems and a healthy debate between the two is what our founders intended. But capitalism is a vehicle of democracy as it was intended. Democracy is not a vehicle of capitalism. Democracy is the antithesis of capitalism. Only democracy can preserve a free market system with relatively equal access and opportunity. No capitalist wants that. Once they get in they want only to preserve, control and enlarge their share of the market. So it’s up to government, not business, to make the necessary corrections.

Capitalists attempt to equate, with some success, the requirements of democracy with the imposition of a totally new economic system — like Marxism or Socialism — to scare people into voting for people who will preserve “america’s greatness.” What they’re really doing is using their considerable influence to preserve their power and their never ending quest to make more money.

see Why Are Workers getting Paid Less

The American economy has become more ruthless, as declining unionization, increasingly demanding and empowered shareholders, decreasing real minimum wages, reduced worker protections, and the increases in outsourcing domestically and abroad have disempowered workers — with profound consequences for the labor market and the broader economy.

The reason for this imbalance is really very simple, Business owners did it because they could. Business owners did it because stockholders think they should. And that is fine in a capitalist system. And such imbalances would never have worked but for the availability of and the marketing of credit options in lieu of salary and other compensation to workers. Debt replaced wages.

And now the businesses that supply credit are inventing ever more abundant ways to sell us on more credit, which results in a playground of “investing” and gambling in the securities markets. In the end only the intermediary securities brokerage firm make any money. Don’t blame them. That is what they are supposed to be doing.

Fundamentally the problem is that as long as we cling to the view that capitalism is the government system rather than just an economic vehicle for our democracy, we will accept the party line from Wall Street which sees consumers, workers and homeowners not as victims, which they are, but as worthless individuals who are demanding undue benefits.

Take a step back. With some entrepreneurs reaching the trillionaire mark, who is getting undue benefits? We have people now that could purchase, without any help, more than 4 million homes in America at at an average of $250,000 each.

It is not an undue benefit to seek the opportunity to bargain for a fair share of American Prosperity. That opportunity does not exist with laws and policies that discourage worker unions, consumer unions and a judicial system that virtually hands the control over to the mega rich companies who are torturing consumers and especially homeowners with forfeitures and losses while the banks, as intermediaries, are making a fortune.

American law is based upon the proposition that nobody should be able to even ask for a remedy in court without there being pleading and evidence to show that that the object of their attack has done something wrong to them and that the claimant suffered injury. In the current world of securitization no such injury exists and yet we continue to pile profits onto the intermediaries that created this system. Don’t blame the banks. Hold your government accountable and wake up to the reality of a government system that is tipping toward corporate ownership and control.

All politics is local (quoting former Speaker of the US House of Representatives). This November vote for people who are committed to making your life better in concrete ways.

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