| sebastian_dangerfield |
12-23-2014 12:43 PM |
Re: DeBlasio
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
(Post 492334)
This is true. But it's been the push for super-capitalism that has made it necessary for basic services to be provided by the government for most people.
I say it again and again and again to people who say, "Taxing the rich isn't the answer to our problems." That's correct. But since they have all the money and keep getting a larger share of it combined with the fact that they don't want to provide the working class an income they can live on, that's who has to pay.
That Ford decision which basically said that a company's sole purpose is to create wealth for its shareholders was probably the worst (maybe tied with Citizens) thing that ever happened to this country. With that one decision, labor could no longer be viewed as a possible partner in a business enterprise, but an expense to be crushed. Since then, we have become an ownership society in which those who own are worshipped and any decision they make to maximize their wealth (especially at the expense of those who do the actual work) is revered as brilliance. We cater to them in all things--taxes, lies about job creation, political influence, etc.--at the expense of normal people.
They tell us that they are job creators while hoarding cash and shipping jobs overseas. And we buy that shit. They use the country's infrastructure, but refuse to pay for it. Their goal to crush small business owners to try to achieve the closest thing to a monopoly that our stagnant antitrust laws permit is supported because the new "middle" class made up of poor service providers can't afford to shop at small businesses for anything.
Capitalism is a good thing. Super-capitalism makes no sense for anyone but those at the absolute top.
TM
|
I couldn't say this better myself. (Except I don't believe any thinking person buys the bullshit about the rich being job creators. That's a yarn for the paste eating crowd.)
Peter Thiel, whom I believe has been diagnosed with mild autism, and so can't help but say ugly things most hyper capitalists won't, has been pretty blunt: To get really rich today, you need to become a monopolist.
Remember grade school sports, where if one team was destroying the other, the referee would just call the game, to spare the losers a pointless slog through a hopeless remainder? Presently, in our economy, we have a little league game going in which one team is beating the other by 300 or so runs. Where there should be an umpire stepping in to end the game, and to force the winning team to disperse its players around the rest of the league to ensure greater competition, all we have is the weak team's third base coach demanding some of the winning team's runs be transferred onto the losing team's score.
We can't fix this with tax policy. We need greater competition. And this involves breaking up the Wal Marts, Monsantos, Microsofts, TBTF banks, etc. And it's not anti-capitalist to do this. In fact, it's capitalist preservation.
It's even arguably Libertarian. Because if we allow the economy to degrade and bifurcate further into a collection of massive monopolies and rentier investors and their serfs, our non-economic freedoms will be encumbered. Corporations seek power until legally precluded from acquiring it. And they are the only organizations on earth which loath and eradicate dissent more aggressively than governments. They also hate risk. Their dream world is a bought and paid for US Govt doing their bidding, and a docile, incurious population buying their products... a population that is entirely predictable, allowing them to invest and grow with minimal if any chance of losses. Sound a bit like what we're seeing today? |
