Remember when Main street bailed out Wall Street? Remember how many people lost their jobs, or their homes, or their future in the Great Recession caused by greedy strategy games from Goldman Sachs and other big banks?
We’re all about to get a reminder.
Inflation is back. Many explanations are offered: COVID or container ships parked off the coast or checks sent to people not willing to work. It’s all just so complicated, much like the weather, and who can do anything about the weather?
Yeah, okay. But here’s another idea: inflation is being caused via profiteering by America’s one percent. Corporations saw those checks go out to ordinary people and said, “we want some of that!” They raised prices, took profits, got rich.
Take a look at the annual statements of public corporations for last year. Profits were up — way up — even as companies complained about not being able to produce what America needed.
It’s called “price gouging.”
Take a look at how wealth was even more unfairly distributed during COVID. “Global billionaire wealth grew by $4.4 trillion between 2020 and 2021, and at the same time more than 100 million people fell below the poverty line,” according to Scientific American.
To add insult to injury, many of those corporations raising prices much faster than their costs, in a philosophy of “them that grabs, gets,” are gloating about it, chuckling in their statements to shareholders. Some can’t hide it, others don’t care.
And here’s the kicker: to “tame” inflation, those who manage the financial system will cause pain for everyone who isn’t a millionaire capitalist. Regulators will need to make people price conscious, unwilling or unable to pay higher prices for hamburger or insurance or a pair of shoes. That’s how they “cure” inflation: make it harder for ordinary people to pay for what they want or need.
Cause a recession.
Which, of course, results in layoffs, reduces demand, with even more ordinary people experiencing impotence in their dual role as makers and buyers in a system in which they have almost no say in the process or the outcome.
Capitalism has given us the greatest advancements in standard of living the world has ever known. At its extreme, it also has ruined communities, destroyed people’s lives, poisoned their water, hidden what’s in food or lied about how it affects us, or even directly killed as the corporate culture of Boeing has reminded us.
And now that capitalists own the senate and congress, writing laws that make it easier to further subjugate Americans financially, it’s not going to change, though life is about to become a lot more chaotic.
Buckle up.
The only solution to the excesses of capitalism that I'm aware of is The Nordic Solution. Almost daily I remember the interview I saw with a member of the Norwegian National Parliament. She said, "We have capitalism in Norway, but we control it."
The Nordic nations have capitalism for mostly discretionary commodities and services. AND, they control them by limiting, e.g., vast differences/gaps in compensation between front line workers and upper management. Most workers are unionized, and therefore have power to negotiate with empoyers for fair wages and benefits. And, of course, the Nordic nations have a large public sector that provides affordable medical care, childcare, education, pubic services. And that public sector is fueled by progressive taxes which also have the effect of limiting any massive economic gaps between regular citizens and capitalists.
Since Americans as a culture believe in the myth that if you work hard you'll become rich, American voters will not elect politicians who will enact the kinds of limits to capitalism's excesses as the voters in the Nordic nations do.
I fear this is spot on.