Americans enslaved by entitled wealthy’s economic system
Americans are used to being told how to think and what to think. Freedom of choice is cherished yet never really demanded. Americans have allowed the real dependent class, the wealthy, license to enslave.
Those opposed to a truly egalitarian society where government, ’we the people’ play a prominent role in deciding what is best for us all claim that government should not pick winners and losers. They claim the ‘free market’ is the best arbiter of the most efficient distribution of capital.
What does that even mean? Potholes, medical needs, alimentary needs, shelter needs, and clothing needs exist irrespective of the economic system. If these needs cannot be satisfied within the confines of the economic system it means the economic system is flawed.
The economic system is manmade. Needs, for the most part, are not. As such it is the economic system that must adapt to a society and not the other way around. Those that practice unfettered capitalism are no different than the ideological clergy who attempt to fit their ancient scripture driven ideologies into today’s realities. The authors of those scriptures likely neither had the tools nor the mental maturity to extrapolate into the future that is now today. But just like many have blind faith and believe in the absoluteness of ancient scriptures, so do those that believe in unfettered capitalism.
It is all about the effectiveness of the tools. No amount of prayer will change the outcome of one who has Lou Gehrig’s disease. No amount of bloviating will change the mathematical certainty that unfettered capitalism destroys the middle-class and provides no pathway for the poor in the aggregate. The mathematics required to illustrate that fact is simple. The narrative necessary to maintain the status quo creates a complexity that gives plausibility to fallacies.
Here are some common sense realities. The income and wealth of the rich are growing at a faster rate than the economy at large. That means income and wealth must be skimmed from the masses to satisfy that growth. That is exactly what has happened. The manifestation of this is lower wages, outsourced jobs to less expensive job markets, followed by the re-importation of jobs at a reduced wage.
How was this accomplished without notice? Economist/Professor Richard Wolff’s Capitalism Hits the Fan lays it out perfectly. He showed how Americans were enslaved by the semblance of prosperity pre-2008 Great Recession.
Why did the middle-class and poor not react as the pilfering was occurring? Detroit activist and Netroots Nation 2014 panelist Maureen Taylor’s frog story explains it best. Very gradual changes go virtually unnoticed in the short term but are profound over time.
Now that the profound has occurred and is noticed, why don’t the masses revolt? There are several answers.
Salt Lake City Move to Amend performed a skit called Bread and Circus that illustrates one component. “There is an old theory of how empires used to control their populous,” Ashley Sanders said. “They feed them just enough bread to survive and sedate them with entertainment.” Today you get cheap processed food, reality TV, and a plethora of pointless addicting forms of entertainment.
Another component is the manipulation of our actions through manufactured hate. The gays will destroy your marriage. The Muslims will blow you up or cut your head off. The Liberals will give your hard earned dollars to the lazy Black and Brown people. Liberated women are baby killers. Black and Brown men, are to be feared. And on and on. Everyone is fighting each other while keeping their eyes off the real culprit causing them harm.
The most devastating component is the chained American mind. One of the most effective commercials of yesteryears showed a slave liberated from the steel chains. It questions if the mind was also liberated. Unfortunately, if the mind is still enslaved, one is still a slave. That is the new slavery in America. A slavery not based on race anymore though race and subclasses are used to feed it. Americans have lost their sense of worth.
Americans have been programmed into believing that capital takes preeminence over humanity. Americans have been programmed to believe that those with capital are entitled to be the arbiters of everyone’s success or failure. Americans have been programmed to believe that capital determines one’s worth.
Every week on Shark Tank a few capitalist flushed with money decide if they will use someone else’s idea to increase their fortune. Americans are mesmerized. These guys, generally devoid of scientific training, numerical analysis, and other skills will make one of the beggars rich based on their hunch.
Americans accept that because these capitalists are risking their capital it is OK to make a fortune that is cumulative based on the knowledge of others while in the aggregate the actual worthy ones get pennies. Americans accept that the risk of the capitalists’ fortune is worth more than the risk of the construction worker losing a limb or life. Americans make many other sacrifices of self to ensure the capitalist is comfortable and his risk is virtually risk-free. Donald Trump can be bankrupt one year and in full recovery, two years after, Yet middle-class Americans are still unrecovered after 7+ years of crisis and 30 years of decline.
What is true? The average American is in the driver’s seat. Americans can live without capital with basic skills. The average American gives worth to capital, not the other way around. One of these days that light will go off and enough Americans will realize that truth. That is the biggest fear of the wealthy capitalist.
The 47% many of them talk about is a psychological number. In their game, 47% are takers — almost half. The other 52% are makers. That 52% are mad. They are working hard while those loafers take their money. The 52% fight for policies that really benefits the 1% under the false belief that they are sticking it to the 47%. Sadly the 47% that are the ‘takers’ are just as important in making the economy run like everyone else. They are not takers at all. Their worth is just discounted in order to create the conflict between the masses to ensure the 1% is not the target as they should be.
The most dependent class in our society is the wealthy class. The masses take care of them. The masses keep their factories producing. The masses invent the technologies that make them profits. The masses buy the goods they sell. And on and on.
To move forward the masses must remove the chains from their minds, discount the lies, educate themselves, and demand what is theirs. They must remove the corrosive nature of money out of politics. They must abolish corporate personhood and the tenet that money is speech likely through a constitutional amendment.
Americans must demand the return of ill-gotten gains by structural defects within our fraudulent economy through taxation. Americans must demand unfettered voting rights. They must demand that all employers pay a living wage. If a business cannot pay a living wage it is not a viable business and just an extender of indentured servitude. Preferential treatment of capital appreciation over working income must end. Social Security taxes must be charged on all income. Health care must be declared a right with basic healthcare paid out of general revenue through taxation of us all. Higher education based on merit must be free. Every working American will pay it forward. A large inheritance tax must be reinstituted to ensure cumulative wealth cannot be extractive of middle-class wealth.
America needs President Obama’s middle-class economics on steroids. That is how emancipation begins.