In a story appearing in the April 9, 2012 issue of The Nation, Robert Reich writes:
“Conservatives love to rail against ‘big government.’ But the surge of cynicism engulfing the nation isn’t about government’s size. It flows from a growing perception that government doesn’t work for average people but for big business, Wall Street and the very rich—who, in effect, have bought it. In a recent Pew poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.”
The reason for “Big Money’s” corruption of Washington is the sinful concentration of wealth expressed in the productive capital assets held by corporations operating in America. Ordinary non- or -undercapitalized people do not have the disposable income to contribute to and influence politicians, but the capitalized rich do.
Not a day goes by without Republicans decrying the budget deficit, which is necessary when ALL our leaders and economists continue to think in terms of one-factor economics embodied in the labor worker. The economic reality is that there are two factors of input in the production of products and services––labor workers and productive capital workers (who own the non-human factor of production embodied in machines, buildings, automated factories, computerized operations, etc). Using increasingly sophisticated technologies, whose function is to “save” labor (eliminate or reduce), business corporations see the role of physical productive capital as a means to do ever more of the work, which produces income. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
The majority of Americans, dependent on labor worker wages, no longer think that jobs and labor wages will return suddenly—if at all—and at a livable earnings level, that the value of their homes will rebound, or that their limited retirement funds will soon be fully restored. Americans are scared but attribute their worsening finances to job losses, reduced hours, wage givebacks, and overall reduced earnings. They do not understand the role of productive capital driven by technological innovation and science and the requirement for them to become capital workers, as well as labor workers, to earn a viable economic future. And until we, as a society, understand how wealth is produced, how consumers earn the money to buy products and services and the nature of capital ownership, we will not be able to set a course to obtain an affluent quality of life for middle and working class citizens where everyone “can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.”
As long as the rich continue to hoard the ownership of new productive capital investment, they will continue to control our government.
While Americans believe in political democracy, political democracy will not work without a property-based free market system of economic democracy. The system is the problem, but it can and must be overhauled. The two prerequisites are political power, which is the power to make, interpret, administer, and enforce laws, and economic power, the power to produce products and services, whether through labor power or productive capital.
As long as “Big Money” is allowed to wield its influence, government will do” fewer of the things most of us want it to do—providing good public schools and affordable access to college, improving infrastructure, maintaining safety nets and protecting the public from dangers—and more of the things big corporations, Wall Street and wealthy plutocrats want it to do.”
Binary economist Louis Kelso wrote: “In the distribution of social power, whether it be political power or economic power, all things are relative. The essence of economic democracy lies in the elimination of differences of earning power resulting from denial of equality of economic opportunity, particularly equal access to capital credit. Differences of economic status resulting from differences in advantages taken and uses made of differences based on inequality of economic opportunity, particularly those that give access to capital credit to the already capitalized and deny it to the non- or -undercapitalized, are flagrant violations of the constitutional rights of citizens in a democracy.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/166969/big-government-isnt-problem-big-money
