I remember my father telling me about laying his body down in the street to prevent scrap shipments to Japan and Germany in 1936, because all the sellers thought about was profit. He told me he stated to the press and anyone who would listen that that steel was going to come back as Japanese and German bullets in his brother’s bodies. He said that one brother died in Germany, and two others took bullets. He was right.
My father is 98 now, and very tired, and says that none of what is going on is new, but that the working man has been sold as a wage slave. Excessive short term shareholder and owner profits destroy democracy – that is not “capitalism” as Adam Smith described it, but rather a class hierarchy of owners and owned. Such profits are not invested, not used to hire, and not used in any productive manner that will improve the economy; they are and will be hoarded.
Oh – and my poll is a multiple vote poll.
I participated in marches, sit down strikes, was tear gassed in my youth, even the occassionally billy club.
And I thought then progress had been made. This is now, and with the “Hyattization” of jobs being busted down to minimum wage, I have seen working folk sold out, one company and law at a time so that the owning class could climb ever higher, and have thousands of times more than they could ever spend. That accumulated capital does not create jobs; the neobarons wallow in it like dragons upon their hoards with no concern for anyone else, mostly. In contrast, in the city of Springfield 44% of its children live in poverty, so the Globe said this morning.
Corporatists spout the language of capitolism but it is really greed. They accuse folks like me of being socialists, when what I have is compassion and a long view for what makes democracy work.
I can understand if you or others feel a calling to help humanity and help others. Some people skip working and join the Peace Corps and God love them if that’s what they want to do. But if a person decides to start a company and they want to be rich, then why is that wrong?
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p>As for the “corporatists”, we have the opportunity to invest in companies which we like just as I said we can follow a personal dream/vocation. If similar minded people like yourself chose company “X” because of their humanitarianism, then invest in them. I may have said this before but I worked with a guy who would almost in the same breadth would complain about our company benefits while he checked how well his stock market investments were doing, cheering on corporate profits and stock price increases. He wanted companies to make huge profits but “our” company should pay more, give better benefits, matching 401K… Can’t have it both ways.
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p>I like to invest in companies which pay high dividends and/or steady stock price increases. I also think people deserve the companies we have just like the politicians we have. You vote for politicians and you shop at places which you want to survive. Wal-Mart is the biggest private employer in the US for a reason, Americans love to shop there. We just voted in a big Republican majority in the House. We just elected Democrats to every statewide office in MA. We are getting what we want.
My father ran his own business – but was satisfied with a modest profit and ensured stable employment and better than living wages to his employees. His motto was “enough is enough”.
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p>Rich in his eyes was owning his home, and a summer home, and never having to worry about his children taking care of him when he got old. He never went into debt and tried to teach us not to do so.
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p>Rich – where you have so much money you could not possibly spend it, and use your power to push those who work you down into the mud of poverty, like the “Hyatization” we saw in Boston is, in my view, greed.
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p>While “enough is enough”, too much corrupts and degrades both the plutocrat and the wage slave.
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p>Hester’s example of Koch industries is a perfect example of the difference between merely being rich, and being bloated with greed into a kind of massive social blood sucker.
Adam Smith’s idea,
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p>(From Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.)
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p>For just one example of the truth of Niebuhr’s statement, look at Koch Industries, ranked by Forbes as the second largest company in the country. It’s not their “success” I object to, it’s the environmental depredation, among other ills, that has made their success possible.
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p>From The New Yorker, August 30, 2010 (sub. req.)
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p>You can have all the success you want — just don’t trash our planet.
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There was a time when a business owners care of his employees was as important as his care for his business. Some are still like that; I have nothing against a person running a successful business and making money but believe that the more you are and have, the more responsible you are with regard to your impact on others.
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p>Taking as much as possible from those who are less powerful and intelligent is, in my eyes, dispicable and morally indefensible.
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p>It is not getting rich I mind, but getting drunk on money, so that you vomit on the society where you live.
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p>We are one another’s keepers, and the lust for every greater wealth is an addiction and not laudable.
And when winning is defined as accumulating wealth, any activity that increases one’s wealth is a good game. It may involve exploiting slave labor, financial scamming, receiving payouts of taxpayer monies and debt. All considered legitimate winnings. The shortsighted view is that any method of increasing wealth is proper. A more farsighted look is that a nation of paupers helps no one.
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p>The prognosis doesn’t look good for the country. In the recent elections it seemed the corporatist Republicans and Democrats easily won against their more populist rivals. Particularly hurtful was the defeat of Alan Grayson of Florida. He was a great needle in the side of the banksters and their bureaucrats.