by Frank Thomas
What’s happening in the U.S. with its completely out-of-balance social-economic model sensitizes me to the systemically destructive way capitalism is working in America. When profit and wealth in the hands of a few define a culture, when firms consider labor an obstructive cost to be optimally reduced, when there is an incredible indifference to do the best for all Americans, when we fail to speak to the question of the human condition and state of society as we know it … then all things are vulnerable, including our democracy.
What kind of world do you see under the paradigm of a compound 3-4% GDP growth each year over the next 25-50 years? The effects on already scarce resources and on the environment will be worse than disastrous unless serious changes in how we live emerge. GDP per capita does not differentiate between transactions that add to the well-being of a country and those that diminish it. A dollar spent on sending a teenager to prison adds as much to GDP as a dollar spent on sending him to college … and we have 685 prisoners per 100,000 people (compared to 87 per 100,000 in Europe)! A GDP growth statistic doesn’t measure quality-of -life factors like poverty level, life expectancy, access to health care, income disparity, working hours, culture and leisure time, etc.
We need a broad grass-roots political movement that fosters a conversation around alternatives to the standard recipe of ad infinitum 4% GDP growth rates and laissez-faire capitalism leading to: intensifying concentration of power and wealth; two billion poor worldwide falling faster into a no-man’s land existence; natural resources being plundered , the environment increasingly polluted; unemployment insurance compensation and social-nets in general being cynically attacked as Big Government robbing individual freedom and self-initiative; an enriching oligarchic-power-capitalism and democracy steered by huge transnational corporations whose mission is global profits, before people.
I’m not optimistic about our capability to have this conversation, to explore new perspectives and rhythms of what constitutes a healthy, honorable, happy lifestyle. A lifestyle filled with different kinds of cultural innovations and material values in place of just producing and consuming more “modern” gismo, trivial, conspicuous products; a lifestyle where the public education process is not dumbed down by wasting +- $250 billion annually on the ‘military economy,’ playing the unaffordable role of being the world’s social-engineering protector and enforcer; a lifestyle not buried in a kind of cultural, spiritual death from overflowing narcotic TV commercials, flashy and superficial news, warped ego-centric ideological propagandism; a lifestyle where you can dream to see the world and educate yourself in what interests you without going into a prolonged penurious state; in short, a lifestyle where Hype and Reckless Debt is NOT Life … where households are not being debt drowned with 5 or 6 credit cards at banker robber-baron usury rates.
Is ethical, productive, socially conscious capitalism possible? Can progress and social justice go hand-in-hand in America as in Europe? Yes, in theory, but I don’t see it happening until a disciplined “people’s movement” arises that addresses head-on the question: “Can we continue to do things the way we have been doing them?” If not, what fundamental changes are necessary to enjoy life on this planet and in our homeland while keeping both intact for future generations?
Human beings can be very creative, resourceful but sadly squander these gifts when it comes to admitting to – and coming together to correct – obvious social-economic breakdowns and antiquated ways ultimately carrying everyone down. The waters get muddled with the same old phoney, narrow, dogmatic cliches, “The business of America is business. Business should be uninhibited and government regulators off our backs. Profit is the goal. Maximum Profit and Trickle Down economics are the only things that work.”
Unfortunately, lower-middle-class working Americans are not part of the conversation nor the short-term cultural profit equation applied globally. Following summary data on U.S. structural jobless situation vividly portrays the incredible level of human pain being inflicted by a culture of indifference that sits deep:
• Normal unemployment level at 5% rate: 7 million
• Great recesssion caused unemployment: 8 million
• Officially unreported unemployment and 8 - 15 million underemployment:
GRAND TOTAL UNEMPLOYED TODAY 23 to 30 million!
Minimum monthly net private-sector jobs required just to recover 8 million recession and 8 million unreported unemployed plus cover 1 million labor force growth is … 175,000. Wasn´t the August report a resounding ±60,000 net new private-sector jobs and a fabulous 85,000 average monthly performance during 2002/07, a so-called economic expansion period in Bush´s term?
We Americans seem destined to await the next crisis of all crises to have that thoughtful conversation … about how to do the best we can for all Americans. Exerting what´s right comes when the rest of us acknowledge with respect that `dignity matters´ when people fall through the cracks by forces not entirely of their own doing or control.
