In the United States of America today, the people have become less powerful than the corporations. There are seemingly no checks and balances on the enormously powerful and completely self-interested corporations. Corporations are like psychopaths with a singular focus on profits. They maximize the exploitation of the peoples resources, they take control of them and exploit them for maximum gains at the exclusion of the benefit of the people. These corporations have mirrored our government and use the money that our laws allow them to gain from our resources in order to influence our government, write corporate friendly laws and exploit even further the tax dollars we pay into the commonwealth to their advantage.
Think about that for a moment, we have not only become business friendly we have become people unfriendly. We the people have allowed this to happen and we are at a distinct disadvantage to undoing it. Maybe that is why people often feel powerless.
The corporations are destroying the planet we live in. The people were fed lies and instead of acting in our own people friendly interests we have acted in the interests of business and the corporations because we were told that what is good for business is good for people. We were told that a strong business economy is ultimately a strong people economy. We were told that resources given to the elite and the business communities would trickle down to the people. We were told that less regulation was better. We were told that if we privatized the activities run by the government that it would be more efficient and that the people would prosper.
Trickle down economics was an incredible lie to the people. We were told that resources put into the private sector would make the people wealthier. The money put into their hands through tax breaks and the privatization of government services would provide increased efficiency and the people would flourish and prosper. Our economy would grow to record levels and the people would thrive.
Then why is the opposite happening?
Yes, there is enormous wealth being generated and it is going where we were told it would, to the corporations and the rich but instead of trickling down, it is allowing them to become enormously wealthy at the peoples expense. The poor as a class in our society are growing at an alarming rate. Middle class earning potential has declined below that of a generation ago and continues to decline in real dollars. The rich are becoming richer and the superrich are becoming mega rich.
Much of what we were told by our leaders covered up and sugar coated legislative lies. The blue skies and clean air acts gave us neither. The Leave No Child Behind Act continues to leave children behind, weaken our public schools and has created an enormous multi-billion dollar private testing industry. Our students are focused on test passing, indoctrinated training.
We have been told to deregulate and privatize, that government is bad and inefficient. We were told that corporations were more efficient and the less we intervened the better things would be for the people. We created Free Trade agreements that allowed our good paying jobs to be traded and the peoples economy to be gutted. Yes, there are record corporate profits, records CEO pay and stagnating and declining real wages. The auto industry is being rebuilt in other countries and our purchasing power continues to decline. Our budget surplus is a budget deficit and growing at such an alarming rate that we might soon be economically bankrupt.
Henry Fords greatest accomplishment was not building a car it was building a middle class. He paid his workers wages a living wage sufficient enough to one day own vehicles themselves. Those real wages transferred to manufacturers supplying his industry and expanded to the economy as a whole, the middle class in America was born.
The declining purchase power and real earnings of the average American are no accident. They were made by design. The weakening of America is a design by the wealthy and there is only one thing powerful enough to check them. That is the people.
We were told that under the trickle down theory of economics that money would eventually trickle down to the people if the purse strings were loosened enough. We allowed the experiment to continue. The corporatons, through deregulation, were allowed to stick their hands right into the peoples coffers and take our hard earned tax dollars for themselves in the form of privatized contracts.
The Enron scandal is a result of deregulation of the energy industry. The Halliburton no-bid contracts are a result of deregulation and manipulation within the highest branches of our government. We privatized government functions including the military and public utilities. We deregulated and we allowed private industry to perform formerly government functions. The result has been highly compensated private contractors ripping off the American People and depleating our common government funding, our tax dollars.
Instead of trickling down to the people these changes have created a giant vacuum cleaner. The sounds we hear when the economy is roaring is our pocket books purchasing power declining and our personal assets shrinking. We have become less and less secure. Yes, the economy is growing if you are looking at the amount of money being generated on wall street. But for most of the American people that is a phenomina that we just get to watch as bystanders.
Our democracy is being steered and run by major corporate interests. It is no longer a democracy, a government that is of by and for the people. It has become a government run by the corporations and the people need to expel them from our government, there is no place for them in the people’s government.
Is there a conspiracy? No. There is no conspiracy necessary. The wealthy and elite and the large corporations meet in the open. They meet in boardrooms and meeting rooms on retreats and in peoples homes. There are not three people in a back room somewhere planning the demise of the American population. The structure itself is designed to weaken the people to the benefit of the powerful. The corporations and the financial elite.
The founders went to great lengths to put checks and balances into the constitution. There are checks on the Executive, on Congress and on our Judicial branch of government.
I hope this article was read by many and that our schools are teaching this factual account how our democracy has been hijacked. instead of learning how to compete in a global economy the youth of America need to learn how to take back their country from the greedy multinationals who will destroy it if allowed to continue unchecked.
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Gary Denson (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 208 comments)
on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 5:52:04 PM
Todays political process is largely about divide and rule in order to divide up the spoils. Keep people competeing and squabling amoungst themselves so they will need a patron/protector who they will need to reward somehow (by votes and contibutions). Such a process need enemies, often factions in the same political party. We need to see the creation of enemies for what it is, an instrument of control. We need to unite and work together for the common good.
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kwalsh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 186 comments)
on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 7:30:38 PM
Excellent article but we know that democratic politics, particularly the American type was never designed to address such questions. But there might be another way. As a psychologist, you would understand that so long as accumulated wealth is held up by any culture as the primary measure of human success, there are going to be problems; so what is needed is an alternative measure or identity for humanity that makes such values redundant. That is essentially a religious 'spiritual' ideal, but religion having failed to accomplish it, where does one go from here? Check the links:
You make a good point, "so long as accumulated wealth is held up by any culture as the primary measure of human success". I don't think the accumulation of some savings, a "lifetimes" worth, is necessarily a bad thing. It's the dynastic, generational wealth - when savings becomes "greed" that values are bankrupted.
I would also agree that "an alternative measure or identity for humanity" is necessary. We don't value those that add the most value to our society. Nurses, teachers, laborers - the people that make life easier for each of us.
I checked out the link - like the spiritual components - there needs to be some way of transitioning from our current culture of greed to one in which people and the planet matter.
I think we need to start by checking corporate power - and focusing on people and the planet instead of profits at the expense of people and profits.
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August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 430 comments)
on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 6:29:55 PM
