Predatory Capitalism is the Problem
What is Predatory Capitalism?
Capitalism is supposed to be the greatest economic system in the world. Competition and efficiency are supposed to lead to the best prices for the goods we want. It is supposed to “lift all boats.” Everyone is supposed to prosper. We should all have an abundance of food, resources, great medical care, and everyone should live at least a comfortable life.
But that’s not the reality of capitalism today. Just here in the US of A alone we see:
There are about 770 Billionaires today and another 9,600+ centi-millionaires (that’s a word for people with more than $100M)
The top 1% of households have a net worth starting at over $11M EACH
The Ascent: A Motley Fool Service
If you are in that TINY sliver of our population, capitalism is GOOD. By the way, that’s the top .000032% of the population.
Which leads us to the problem with our version of “predatory” capitalism. The bad news is HUGE for the vast majority of us, and TERRIBLE for the bottom 60% or more. What do we have?
Almost 34 million Americans (about 10%) live with food insecurity.
42.3 million live in poverty (over 11%)
Over 30% of Americans have a net wealth below zero
60% of adults live paycheck to paycheck.
45% have or had medical debt and more than 650,000 have to declare bankruptcy each year.
Nearly 50% of us have less than $500 in savings.
The average savings in the US is $4500, BUT that includes the billionaires who own HALF of that. 770 of them. The other 330,000,000 of us get the other half.
The Center for American Progress
All of these things are happening in the richest country in the world. This doesn't sound like "abundance" or "comfort" for the vast majority to me. But hey, as long as a few hundred of us can buy and sell all the rest, we’re good, right?
Btw, this isn’t about jealousy. There are just a lot of problems with billionaires, starting with “no one is WORTH” that much. And then there’s “where did that money come from and who did they rip off?” Oh and, isn’t having more wealth than one can spend in ten lifetimes immoral when others are starving?
The most important issue though isn’t the money. It’s the fact that the ultra rich use their money to buy power, and to buy our government. And then they make the government work for them, and do little or nothing for the rest of us. That’s the big thing we need to change- and it’s something we CAN change if we COME TOGETHER.
What’s wrong with Predatory Capitalism?
The problem is the particular kind of capitalism we practice, especially in the US: PREDATORY capitalism. In this form the system is rigged, with the ultra rich and big corporations using their wealth and power to take control of the government and fix it for their benefit.
Capitalism as described above is SUPPOSED to be a system where we ALL benefit. Business people compete with each other in a “free” market that is NOT fixed by and for the uber-wealthy. This competition then leads to efficiency - consumers vote with their dollars, pushing prices down, and competition among businesses leads to the lowest prices for the goods that WE want. And workers move freely between jobs, with employers competing for the best workers with better pay. At least that’s the way it’s SUPPOSED to work.
In reality, we have a small number of incredibly BIG businesses and their ultra-rich owners. These corporations and people use their money to gain political power, which lets them pass laws that benefit themselves. Competition is limited or eliminated whenever possible. Wages are pushed as low as possible, with laws that benefit owners and bosses over workers. The general term for this is “regulatory capture,” where the owning class literally “captures” the government and uses it for themselves. Consumers aren’t the goal. Fair treatment of workers isn’t the goal. The only goal is PROFIT.
In addition, the owning class has spent a long time taking over our culture in ways that benefit themselves - whether it is a focus on non-stop consumer consumption, the fact that we all think we’ll be rich one day, or even the idea that you get ahead if only you work hard enough. And then there is “trickle down” - an economic “theory” (based on nothing) that makes the strangest claim. If we set up a system where the money flows to the owners at the top, this will “trickle down” to the rest of us, and everyone will prosper. But guess what? It’s all complete B.S., since the greedy owners (capitalism says they are supposed to be greedy) have used this system to MASSIVELY increase their own wealth, while leaving the rest of us in the dust.
Our system of “capitalism” is not what we think it is. Right now we live in a world that was created, rigged and is owned by a tiny percentage of elites. The Owning Class.
What CAN capitalism be? We need People Centric Capitalism
What we need is to Come Together and CHANGE this. We need to move to PEOPLE Centric Capitalism. A system where our society, economy and government aren’t focused on making the rich richer, but rather on bringing ALL of us together as a community, and making ALL of our lives better. A rising tide really can lift all boats - so long as a few selfish plutocrats aren’t allowed to keep their thumbs on the scale and get all the benefits.
What does change look like?
What does change look like? The Come Together Project doesn’t claim to have all the answers, which is why we’re going to be going out soon to LISTEN to as many people as we can. We believe that Americans KNOW what they need, but instead of focusing on that, we’re encouraged to fight with each other over the crumbs left to us by the Owning Class.
That being said, there are some obvious things that we have in common and want. We need things like:
An education system that doesn’t make us go broke, but actually helps us succeed
Affordable child care as a societal priority
Health care that can’t be denied and that stays with you if you lose your job
Good jobs for all of us, and career training for people when technology makes some jobs obsolete
A living wage if you work a 40 hour week, and respect for people who work for a living, instead of making too many work 2 or 3 jobs just to feed their families
How do we do it?
We need to re-balance power in corporations to give workers a hand in corporation decision making. Right now the owners get to make all of the decisions because they also own the government, and thus they set up the system and make the laws. There is no “natural” reason that the people who provide the money for a business should have all of the control. Without the workers, that money just sits there doing nothing. Workers make the products. Workers provide the services. Workers do the WORK that generates profits. So why are workers paid a set rate (salary or per hour), while the owners get pretty much ALL of the profits after expenses?
Some might say that “owners risk the money(!)” when setting up and running a business. This is certainly true. But most workers risk their LIVES when taking a job. The rest of us NEED the money we work for to live our lives, feed our families, and put a roof over our heads. We NEED the health insurance provide by our jobs, because we can’t get it anywhere else. And while the economists may lie to us and tell us we can get another job anywhere, this simply isn’t true. Without their jobs, most workers starve. Without their business, most uber rich owners still own a few extra houses and/or yachts they can fall back on.
Democracy CAN change this. REAL democracy in our government. The most important starting place is to get money out of politics. We need a cultural revolution - a peaceful one - where the American people realize that we have been HAD and decide that it is our turn. We need people to understand the facts, because when they do, they can move from “fed up with our government” to TAKING ACTION.
This doesn’t just mean electing new politicians. Before we do that, we need social and cultural change. We need to understand that right now, there are almost no politicians working for us. We need a culture where politicians get elected to help OUR needs, not just the needs of the uber-rich.
And to pay for it, we can start with reforms to stop spending our money on corporate give-aways, We need to take away the unfair benefits the rich have given themselves. We need a tax system that doesn’t penalize the middle class, but recognizes that those who benefit the most from our society have the responsibility to help others get a fair chance. We need to recognize that we absolutely have “income redistribution” in our society, and for the past 40+ years that redistribution has sent a HUGE amount of money to the TOP of the pyramid. Taking it from the rest of us. We need to rebalance that.
We need to listen to each other. To stop the fighting that only benefits the owning class. And to create a system that is set up to benefit those of us who work for a living. To do that, we need to Come Together to make these changes real.