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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCapitalism is eating our future
Stagnation aggravates all the great historic problems associated with capitalism. Economic inequality mushrooms, poverty increases, public services are slashed, there is tremendous downward pressure on wages. And at the same time, corporations and wealthy investors successfully demand ever greater concessions from governments and communities as the quid pro quo for their investment. Capital generally struggles to find profitable investment outlets, but today the problem is particularly acute. In 2014 there is by some accounts as much as $2 trillion in capital sitting on the sidelines while there are tens of millions of workers unemployed or only partially employed. It has been this way for years. By any objective measure, this is socially absurd.
The current pattern for capital is to zero in on public services like a heat-seeking missile and to take over those government operations and convert them into profit-centers for corporations. Many government activities have been, or are in the process of being, privatized or outsourced, from the military to surveillance to prisons to education. The evidence demonstrates these privatizations and outsourcings basically benefit the investors, who often reap monopoly profits, but degrade the quality and cost efficiency of the services otherwise. They are corrosive to effective democratic governance.(7) Likewise, government regulations to protect workers, consumers, and the environment have to be jettisoned to encourage the "job creators" to get off their butts and swing into action. These have proven to be palliative measures for ravenous investors, but a disaster for everyone else. To stay alive today, capitalism is eating our future...
Many liberals who wish to reform and humanize capitalism are uncomfortable with seemingly radical movements, and often work to distance themselves from them, lest respectable people in power cast a withering eye at them. "Shhh," they say to people like me. "If we antagonize or scare those in power we will lose our seat at the table and not be able to win any reforms." Yet these same liberal reformers often are dismayed at how they are politically ineffectual. Therein lies a great irony, because to enact significant reforms requires a mass movement (or the credible prospect of a mass movement) that does indeed threaten the powerful. The influence of mild reformers rises greatly when people in power look out the window and see a million people demonstrating. If there is an iron law of politics, this is it.
People in power certainly know this. Nothing frightens them like popular uprisings they do not and cannot control. For that reason, cynicism and political apathy are generally encouraged in the United States. It is not a fluke that voter turnout in the United States is well below that of nearly every other nation in the world. In the 1970s, on the heels of the popular uprisings of that era, people in power spoke candidly (to each other) about the need to have young people and the dispossessed return to apathy. Much of their work since then has been to achieve that goal. When we tune out politics, when we abandon hope, we aren't being cool or hip or ironic or even realisticwe are being played.
This elite fear of genuine democracy should encourage all those dedicated to building a more humane and sustainable post-capitalist democracy. Those atop the system know we have the numbers on our side. They know the system is rigged for them, and they want to keep it that way. They know they cannot win a fair fight. Hence billionaires' energy goes to matters like wholesale voter suppression and flooding election campaigns with unlimited secretive spending. They must feed the machinery of pessimism and despair because they know they cannot defeat an aroused citizenry. That tells me that if we do effective organizing it will be like planting a seed in rich Iowa topsoil. Put this way, I like our chances. I like them a lot.
http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/28273-robert-w-mcchesney-capitalism-as-we-know-it-has-got-to-go
daleanime
(17,796 posts)pansypoo53219
(21,090 posts)craigmatic
(4,510 posts)silverweb
(16,402 posts)Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)RichGirl
(4,119 posts)We have pure GREED. George Seros was asked on Charlie Rose which is better Socialism or Capitalism. His answer was that either one would work out perfectly if THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE AT THE BOTTOM. That's the key.
Capitalism is kind of like a 3 legged stool. The legs would be 1) owner/CEO 2) employee 3) customer. Each leg has to do well...if not, the stool collapses. All three are necessary and entertwined. For example: I read recently that stores like Walmart are not doing well and just realizing that their employees, who are underpaid, are also their customers.
Greed is mental illness. The stupidity of it is that these high flying businesses don't realize that if people don't have money they can't buy the crap they are selling.
If we had real Capitalism...people at the top caring about people at the bottom....then everyone would be well-paid, get health benefits, etc. Customers would get good product for a fair price. It would cut back on the need for government programs.
It use to be that welfare was primarily for children, old people and handicap. It's greed that has made it hard for able bodied people to get jobs and full time employees to be paid minimum wage.
ashling
(25,771 posts)"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."
Confucius
"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business."
Henry Ford
"Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service."
Henry Ford
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."
Plutarch
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)You are imputing human characteristics onto a political-economic-social system with it's own internal rules and laws. It's not "greed". That's a human failing. The system doesn't give a rat's ass if you're greedy or not. It does, however, work BETTER for you if you are greedy.
And this "If we had real Capitalism...". This IS "real capitalism". The more unfettered and unregulated that capitalism IS, the more it defaults to it's basic internal rules and regulations. In this I agree with the Freidmanistas and the neo-liberals. "Real capitalism" doesn't care about "people at the top caring about people at the bottom". Real capitalism cares about one thing and one thing ONLY. To make as much profit as possible. Anything else is an accidental byproduct.
The only times when capitalism can work for "everybody" is when there is plenty of room to expand and plenty of resources to use for that expansion. Then the value of an individual's labor power goes up because there's plenty of jobs and, by the laws of the system, capital MUST PAY FOR THAT LABOR POWER. Or lose potential profit. The days of plentiful resources to fuel plentiful expansion are over. In today's world the only way to expand for capitalists is for them to take over OTHER capitalist holdings. And resources are running out which also provides a check on any growth potential.
The age of capital is over, it just doesn't want to admit it. Capitalism WILL fall relatively soon in an historical perspective. It's just a question of how many it takes with it WHEN it falls. We are rapidly approaching the "socialism or barbarism" stage. I know which side I've chosen.
NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)appalachiablue
(41,399 posts)socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)their money won't mean much. That's if it falls without a plan for taking it down and saving the rest of us.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)"If we had real Capitalism...people at the top caring about people at the bottom"
I've never heard any economist define it this way.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Initech
(100,381 posts)As Chris Rock said "Minimum wage is corporations'way of saying if we could pay you less, we would."
Meanwhile the Koch Bros are bankrupting entire continents.