{"id":9833,"date":"2011-12-17T14:51:28","date_gmt":"2011-12-17T19:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=9833"},"modified":"2012-12-26T16:07:51","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T21:07:51","slug":"the-cannibalism-of-the-one-percent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/12\/17\/the-cannibalism-of-the-one-percent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cannibalism Of The One Percent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> The View From The 1 Percent<\/a> by Tom Ehrich in the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> Now that the financial industry and major corporations have successfully lobbied Congress to make more people poor and to keep them that way, they are discovering the downside of unbridled greed: people are too broke to buy their products.<\/p>\n

Heavy discounts were necessary to stimulate sales on Black Friday — a stimulus that lost steam as the big shopping weekend proceeded. Now further discounts will be required. That bodes ill for retailers, as well as for their suppliers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to own Congress, but it\u2019s something else when consumers refuse to buy. They\u2019re staying home, maybe shopping online; they\u2019re not investing, not saving, not selling their houses, not feeling confident about their own jobs.<\/p>\n

In a freer free-market economy, competitors would emerge to resolve these problems. But corporate giants do everything possible to stifle competition. Consider Verizon\u2019s bid to buy $3.6 billion of unused wireless spectrum to prevent anyone else from having it.<\/p>\n

Thus we see the demise of modern capitalism, brought down not by socialists or fringe elements, but by the capitalists themselves.<\/p>\n

Their self-defeating behavior \u2014 like that of any addict \u2014 has led them into the delusional belief that they can have it all. They can kill prosperity, stifle competition, rig capital creation into an insider game, undermine countervailing forces \u2014 and yet somehow the great market will continue to shower wealth on them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The problem is, when the only ones who have money are the ultra-wealthy, those who actually make the economy work \u2014 small business, merchants, job-creating employers, innovators, government agencies \u2014 are starved. Despite the relentless right-wing drumbeat on tax policy and government spending, the villain in that starvation drama is the greedy 1 percent.<\/p>\n

GOP strategists have concluded that the way to defame Occupy Wall Street is to brand them as \u201canti-capitalist.\u201d In fact, they\u2019re mostly job seekers who would be thrilled to see our free-market economy succeed and put them to work. Their protest isn\u2019t against capitalism; their protest is proof that capitalism isn\u2019t working, a victim of delusions in high places.<\/p>\n

The problem, you see, isn\u2019t the economic system as such. It\u2019s the shortsighted, avaricious people who are running the system.<\/p>\n

It began years ago when they decided to pad profits by squeezing labor costs, thus shrinking the middle class. Then they padded their own salaries by juicing stock prices at the expense of long-range thinking, thus discouraging innovation and capital investment. Next they crippled regulators, thus undermining confidence and inviting corruption; and finally demanded tax laws that benefit only them, thus diverting spendable money into their bank accounts.<\/p>\n

What did they think would happen? If no one wins except a very few, the economy stalls. With all the incremental wealth in a few pockets, who is left to buy $200,000 houses or $20,000 Chevrolets or even $200 lawn mowers?<\/p>\n

How did these leaders make it out of business school, law school and glossy colleges without any understanding of the fundamentals? The system has to work for everyone, or it won\u2019t work at all. The enemy of democracy is an entrenched elite, and the enemy of a free-market economy is greed.<\/p>\n

Where is God in this? Where God has always been: telling the rich to share, exposing delusions like bigger and better barns and Mammon-worship, standing with the poor and hungry, and demanding justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: The View From The 1 Percent by Tom Ehrich in the Washington Post. The Text: Now that the financial industry and major corporations have successfully lobbied Congress to make more people poor and to keep them that way, they are discovering the downside of unbridled greed: people are too broke to buy their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Cannibalism Of The One Percent - Prose Before Hos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Article: The View From The 1 Percent by Tom Ehrich in the Washington Post. 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