WHO KILLED U.S. CAPITALISM?

As we watch and experience the death of American capitalism, there is a general finger-pointing exercise that aims at creeping socialism.  But the U.S. is much farther from socialism than ever, and there is no remnant of it if there ever was one.  In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted some economic plans that put the brakes on run-away capitalistic greed in order to save the United States from total disaster.  Since then there has been a steady march toward greed capitalism.

Greed capitalism is not really capitalism at all.  It has been a carefully crafted scheme to bilk Americans into thinking they were engaged in a never-ending economic spiral upward.  We were made into spending and buying robots.  We became such good puppets that we never blinked when the American dream cost us two, instead of one, adult workers in each family unit in order to afford to make ends meet.  That meant doubling the work force in order to meet mediocrity in America.

Hints of danger in the future began to appear when corporate greed was not satisfied with immoral profits and organized to kill labor unions and big labor contracts.  Among the many schemes to do this was to ship good paying jobs overseas to underdeveloped nations where labor was grateful and grossly underpaid.  Slave shops that were outlawed in the U.S. became commonplace for U.S. companies in Asia, South America, Mexico, and elsewhere.  The U.S. economic engine kept going as citizens continued to spend, send even their children out to work just to stay even, and were told the future was rosy because home prices would escalate forever.  Everybody would have a bundle in later life.

The ship was kept afloat by social laws that were passed in the 1930s and 1940s, and more and more people who had lived high off the hog then were now struggling with menial jobs and took on second jobs just to stay afloat.  Corporate profits in America went through the roof.  The biggest (and most immoral) profits were protected in health care, pharmaceuticals, and especially war-related industries.  The "protection money" was what was purchased in Washington, DC where both Democrats and Republicans were in the hip-pockets of these industrial behemoths.  The huge corporate benefactors saw to it that they were needed in the political life of each elected politician because election campaigns became more and more expensive.  Therefore more and more "protection money" was handed out for favors to big corporations.

This meant sweeter and sweeter deals for health and war-related industries.  To hell with those corporations that weren't in on the deal!  We needed war and sweetheart deals to keep us going.  And so the U.S., wanted or not, became the policeman to the world...even where we weren't wanted.  And more and more the health-related industries fixed the system so they had exclusive monopolies with no-compete clauses to escape free-market competition in drugs and services.  Health costs everywhere else in the world were far, far cheaper than the U.S.  We no longer had a capitalistic system, we had corporate socialism guaranteed by the federal government.

That was not enough.  There is no end to corporate greed.  It will always seek more.  And so the straw that broke the camel's back was the gross economic greed of the financial industry along with other industries.  And when the entire house of corporate socialism came tumbling down and there was loathing to blame any right-winger, enter a black man who runs for president against a campaigner [McCain], already discredited by then-current President George W. Bush when he lied and lambasted John McCain in a South Carolina primary.  Throw this black man to the wolves.  Get McCain to select without proper inspection a dizzy Governor of Alaska as his running mate.  That should guaranty the election of a black Democrat to blame when the house of cards comes tumbling down.

That's still not enough.  The financial industries and banking giants had so mismanaged their money that they began collapsing from sheer greed and ignorance.  Save these immense, mismanaged giants and throw a trillion federal dollars at them.  Why not?  In corpoate socialism the federal government has a role to play [for greed capitalists, not the majority of Americans].  This now means that it would be like you or I going to Las Vegas with a plan to score big.  We gamble, and when we lose all of our money [as U.S. corporations and financial institutions did], the federal government simply gives us more to play with.  Eventually we might hit a jackpot.  But instead of quiting gambling, we give ourself a huge bonus.

So we have experienced the death of American capitalism, once the envy of the world.  It has been replaced by corporate socialism here.  Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for the U.S.  Meanwhile the social democracies of Western Europe have removed the fear of getting sick with universal health care, and have lessened the fear of job loss with guarantees for all citizens, and have not had to ship their industrial labor jobs to underdeveloped nations as the U.S. has done.  Time will tell if Europe can survive the death of American capitalism.  China is rising with a different economic plan.

Say goodbye to American capitalism.  It was a good run.  Hello corporate socialism, and the death of the American middle-class.