Wage Slaves and Feudalism

The purpose of government is to protect and benefit the citizenry. Liberals see this duty as extending to all necessary aspects of life including food, shelter, healthcare, education and the like. Conservatives, especially the "Con"-servatives currently in power, see government protection as concerning only the military and, when linked with our military-commerce-industrial complex, the uber-rich and the corporations they run. Most everyone is aware of this and we see it when the GOP marches out its utterly disproved rhetoric and tells us that tax breaks for the wealthy spur the economy and a minimum wage costs us jobs. They are preaching flat-earth economics, a.k.a.......Hoover-style bunk.

The business of the U.S. government is not corporate monopoly or plutocracy and, contrary to right-wing rhetoristorians, it never has been. (The East India Co. cured the framers of that nonsense.) This can be easily shown. A republic functions by the will of the people in a bottom-up fashion. Corporations are hierarchical systems founded upon an authoritarian model reminiscent of feudal baronies. They are inherently anti-democratic. So why does the Right insist on their American-ness and if someone runs our government on this model, have they not performed a de facto coup? Moreover, big corporations receive so much "welfare" in the form of subsidies and tax breaks that the Right has fostered the very Socialism it vilifies. Think of a big box store. Americans believe they are getting more for less. But in actuality, if we factor in subsidies and tax breaks (not to mention aid for their underpaid employees), Americans are paying exponentially more for such a great "deal." A $1 product could really cost $10.

It is realistic to picture big corporations as gluttonous barons and everyone else as serfs, "freemen", etc.; the Right's idea of America. Sounds a lot like what the Founders wanted to avoid, doesn't it? The corporations will claim that business operates on a Smithian capitalist "free" market system, as they regulary do. Bosh! They know very well that Smithian economics requires both robust competition and a high level of redistribution. They abandoned this anathema long ago in favor of the Robber Baron model, where they take what belongs to us all and sell it back to us, in one way or another, while the government, who they own, looks the other way.

The patriotic economic system of the U.S. is the liberal version and, while the Right decries it as Communist or Socialist, it is truer capitalism. Here's why. If you have a higher income it is because you exploit more resources, either directly or indirectly. This includes labor. Since resources originate in the common pool, one must pay for their use. In the U.S, one pays for resources used by......paying taxes. Corporations and much of the wealthy are using the vast bulk of our resources and, by so doing, are depriving the rest of us of them. Simply put, in good capitalist fashion, the more you take, the more you owe. Hence, the problem with our tax system is that those who take the most are not paying for it in proportion to use.

The corporate socialists will, of course, balk and claim that they create jobs. That would be nice if it were true and the few jobs that are created were worth anything. Maximization of profits demands lousy jobs. But even if it was true, they create jobs in order to exploit labor and, thereby, increase profit. Corporatists will also claim that the poor take advantage and, as the rich do, take without paying. It never occurs to them that to have haves there have to be have nots. They also neglect to consider that, in a post-industrial society, self-made men are a myth as the rich proverbially stand on the shoulders of the poor. But moreover, if our society paid the so-called unproductive to stay out of the workforce, the nation's productivity could only increase as only the ambitious would be involved. Sound crazy? You're brainwashed. The business world knows this is true as it knows that higher wages and more time off increase worker productivity. Unfortunately, the truly "ambitious" or, shall we say, greedy, seem to enjoy inflicting unhappiness.

Now we can hopefully see how ludicrous our economic system has become and how un-American it really is. Unrestricted monopolized-market capitalism has a nasty M.O. and it will eventually eat itself out of existence.