Here is Why Our Elites are Not Fixing the Economy
When we had democracy, We, the People made the rules and we ran our country and our economy for our benefit. Now that we are a plutocracy things are different. The reason our elites are not doing anything to fix the economy is because from their viewpoint, things are just fine.
Merriam-Webster:
plu·toc·ra·cy noun \plü-ˈtä-krə-sē\
1: government by the wealthy
2: a controlling class of the wealthy
Our political leaders dance with the ones that bring them. Increasingly they are dancing with the billionaires and their giant corporations.
Our politicians are doing and saying increasingly incomprehensible things. The separation from regular people is unbelievable. But in politics you "dance with the one that brung ya," and these things become comprehensible and believable when you look at who is bringing them to the dance.
Our Benefit
In a democracy a successful business is the result of our investment in infrastructure, education, and a system that enables our businesses to thrive. A business can't deliver products except over the roads or ports or the Internet our government built. Our police and firefighters protect our businesses. Our schools and universities train and educate the inventors and managers and line workers. Our scientific research brings about the innovation that leads to new technologies and products.
"Entitlements" are the things We, the People are entitled to as citizens of a democracy. Those who do well as a result of our investment in our system pay back through taxes, good jobs and great products. When we were a democracy we wereentitled to a minimal level of retirement, and health care, education, protection if we lost our jobs, protection of our environment, protection from corporate fraud, and other things that are now disappearing.
Now that democracy is gone, a wealthy few are living off our past investment, and cutting back on the things we used to do for each other.
Why All The Cuts, No Jobs?
Here is the reason that our leaders are cutting back on the things our country does for We, the People, and are not working very hard to do anything about the high unemployment and economic troubles most of us are feeling:
2010: Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter
2011: Corporate Profits At All-Time High As Recovery Stumbles
2012: Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low
2012: Bank CEO pay rises. Corporate profit margins rise. Worker wages, not so much.
2012: Richest 1 Percent Account For Nearly All Of U.S. Recovery's Gains: Report
>The billionaires and their giant corporations are doing just fine, thank you.
The reason our leaders are not doing anything to fix the economy is because, from the viewpoint of our real leaders,the economy is working just fine.
Golden Oldie
A golden oldie (updated a bit): Democracy Or Plutocracy? A Chart
| DEMOCRACY | PLUTOCRACY |
| We, the People | Wealthy Few |
| One Person One Vote | One Dollar One Vote |
| Majorities | Markets |
| Government | Limited Government |
| Majority | Supermajority |
| Budgets | Budget Cuts |
| Taxes on the Wealthy | Tax Cuts for the Wealthy |
| Information | Propaganda |
| Public Schools | Private Schools |
| Education | Training |
| Studying the arts, literature, history, philosophy, etc. | Mocking people for studying the arts, literature, history, philosophy, etc. |
| Express Lanes for 2 or More People | Express Lanes for 2 or More Dollars |
| Security Lines at Airports | Special First-Class Security Lanes at Airports |
| Public Investment | Private Investment |
| Public Transportation | Private Jets |
| Accountability | Impunity |
| Rule Of Law | Above The Law |
| Justice | Just Us |
| Transparency | Secrecy |
| Sustainable growth | Polluter Growth |
| Medicare-For-All | Healthcare For Profit |
| Savings Accounts | Offshore Accounts |
| Credit Card Debt | Credit Default Swaps |
| Union members | Serfs |
| Layoffs | Payoffs |
| Homies | Cronies |
| Grassroots | Astroturf |
| Pensions | 401Ks |
| Honest Brokers | Self-Interest |
| Free Will | At Will |
| Citizen | Consumer |
| Citizen | Employee |
| Participant | Observer |
| Actor | Acted On |
| Doer | Done To |
| Healthy Communities | Gated Communities |
| Bedford Falls | Pottersville |
| George Baily | Henry F. Potter |
| Savings | Debt |
| America the Beautiful | America the Profitable |
| The Many | The Rich |
| People | Cogs |
| Humanity | Efficiency |
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20 comments on "Here is Why Our Elites are Not Fixing the Economy"
January 24, 2013 1:41am
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July 03, 2012 9:50pm
When were we EVER a Democracy?
We are supposed to be a Republic!
July 02, 2012 10:44am
Why should the America's Elite fix anything? If it's not broke don't fix it. Our corrupt form of American Democracy is working very well in the so called World Economy and for America's Elite (Oligarchy). Our do nothing legislators have formed a partnerships with the world's largest Corporations. These corporations have formed Super-Pac's working for a common goal of influence peddling that buy and sell Politicians, votes when the Spirit moves them. Our sorry judicial system sold the American voter down the river when they approved unlimited spending by these groups and by leaving so many loop holes in our current laws. The Oligarchs will never be held responsible nor accountable for their actions as long as they have the money to buy off our elected officials and influence our legal system. Money talks and BS walks.
July 02, 2012 5:18am
And so the elite forgot what Marriner Eccles had realised- that the elites futures depended on having a middle class that can afford to buy the things the companies the elite own produce- and the empire began its inevitable collapse as history repeated its lesson...
July 01, 2012 10:27pm
"Mocking people for studying the arts, literature, history, philosophy, etc."
It is not just plutocrats who do this; Bill ('Real Time') Maher takes regular swipes at students who major in the arts, and philosophy, which makes me think that artists and philosophers are a real threat to the demagogic mouthpieces for the established.
July 01, 2012 6:52pm
Distasteful as it is to write and distasteful as it is to read ... we've never been a democracy ... unless it's spelled deMOCKracy.
Carry on.
July 01, 2012 5:49pm
Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men?
July 01, 2012 5:48pm
An easily overlooked fact:
The Depression was a period of opportunity for the few and a period of tremendous transfers of assets to the few. Some people are still hopeful of a repay.
July 01, 2012 2:05pm
It used to be known as "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave".
Now it's " Land of the Home, Free of the Brave".
This year, 2012, may very well be the last year of elections in the USA. There is only one way remaining for the citizens to disrupt and dispose of the approaching plutocratic tailspin and that is for every citizen to write in their own names for every elected office, Federal, State and Local. That will prevent any "elected" official the right to claim having received a mandate. You can't claim a mandate if you only receive 10% of the vote.
This Nation was founded on the single overriding principle of the limitation of power. No Monarchy. No inherited elitist monopoly, public or private. No religion in government. It has been a long slog to apply these limitation to every sector, to every one. It was almost accomplished but oil became the inflation trigger. Then came Reagan. Then Bush, Then Clinton and Gingrich's Contract on America, then Bush II--an inherited position if ever there was one, bought and paid for by the elite (and a host of tampered voting machines in Florida, never examined, only the cards those machines produced and the machines were destroyed to remove the evidence). And what were the results? Enron and the others, with nothing meaningful resulting. No balanced Budget. There's a biggie! Bush claimed he was going to treat the Executive Branch like a corporation. But when it came time to pay dividends, it wasn't divided evenly, as one share per citizen. No. It went to those who had the most***, at the same time removing the rules those elites had to operate by and hobbling the regulators with budget cuts for those things not repealed, and placing Carl Rovean Pre-screened anti-regulatory philosophied personnel into those same agencies, sworn to follow that philosophy, not the law. (Most are still in those agency jobs, too.)
***Dividends are paid evenly per share of stock owned, regardless of the price per share paid for any share. A $100.00 share of XYZ Corp. IN 2000 get the same dividend as the $25.00 share of XYZ Corp. IN 2001.
Like I said, it's our last chance to rescue this Nation without activating those 350 Million firearms as the last resort for Justice.
SPLF
July 03, 2012 10:01pm
Do we even have a chance this year?
The voting machines that will be used this year, belong to a company in SPAIN. Our votes will be tabulated in SPAIN. Who will over see the counting?
And the person who owns that company in Spain, gave money to Obama's 2008 campaign.
So tell me...HOW can this be a FAIR election.
Florida REFUSED to use this company in 2010 elections because of fear of fraud by the machines.
There will not be a FAIR election.
And one other thing...I know that a Presidential Candidate CANNOT legally take contributions for his campaign from foreigners.
Yet, Obama and George Clooney are in Switzerland and France having $30,000 a plate campaign dinners. HOW CAN THEY DO THIS when the law says you CANNOT? WHAT IS WRONG HERE?
And WHY does our President of the US of A, go on a campaign trip abroad when this Holiday is about our FREEDOM from a tyrannical England?
Hmmm! I think I just answered my question. He does not want to be reminded that we once fought for our FREEDOM and might again....soon
from a tyrannical government!
July 01, 2012 1:38pm
Each and every individual in the US can become a corporate owner , buy a share of stock. If you do not like the CEO salary vote your stock to cut it. If no action then vote the Board of Directors out.
Remember who owns the stock, pension funds, municipalities, banks, and many individuals. So the fireman who lives down the street has his pension money invested in a corp. so does the barber, grocer, and the saloon owner.
Wal Mart started as a single 5 and 10 cent store and grew on a idea, one man made a difference. Each of us can make a difference by being involved in a responsible way.
Remember we live in a REPUBLIC and not a Democracy , the will of the majority can not take away the rights of the minority.
July 03, 2012 10:13pm
To Coke...Your last sentence USED to work. Not anymore. We have given up, or had our rights taken away from us, over the past few years.
We the People are no longer in control. The Congress does not listen to us, anymore.
The man who became my Representative in Congress has turned on We the People.
He has voted for an extension of the Patriot Act, for NDAA, and for the Cyber Security law. All THREE of these laws take away our fundamental rights.
The UN, with the help of Clinton, are trying their best, to take away our 2nd Amendment rights to protect ourselves.
The Law of the SEA Treaty will take away our sovereignty and put us in the hands of the Elite of the World...We will no longer even be allowed to have our Submarines in the oceans of the world, if they have nuclear devices in them. Nor any ship with a nuclear reactor. Shrimpers will have to have the OK from the UN to work, and you know they will have to pay fees and fines. The UN will have control of our rivers, lakes, oceans...all of it. Do you really think we are FREE? Only the Senate can stop this treaty. Are you going to contact your Senators and tell them to vote NO?
Will it even matter? Will they listen to you? One of my Senators listens to NO ONE but himself. And he is stupid enough to vote for this treaty.
Do you NOT see that we have very few, if NO rights left?
We are no longer FREE.
July 01, 2012 1:32pm
The House can sock it to students, reduce or cancel your Medicare, your Social Security check, no more COLAs, eliminate the EPA, the SEC, the Department of Education, the banking commission, food stamps, Medicaid, Student Aid, the Post Office, Health Care and dozens others; lay off police, firemen, teachers, park rangers to pay for the deep cuts to the 1% and corporations proposed by Romney and Paul Ryan, but it won’t reduce the deficits and the Debt. More years of Bush’s tax cuts to the rich will create more Romney-like billionaires but ruin the nation.
July 01, 2012 12:12pm
Sad but true,and it is not getting better!
July 01, 2012 11:28am
If the elite fixed the economy, where are they going to get easy money? Every crisis is the result of elites making a killing, then the wounded commoners lick their wounds, build flesh for their next bite... If we talked about the structure of society and how the wage earners are kept at a disadvantage, do you think the elite could continue to rule with such impunity? Adam Smith never thought of corporations being persons. His view was pretty simple: competition improves product and services. He never thought that government would be hijacked by moneybags to side with the corporate thieves every turn of the events and rob decent people out of their hard earned money. Do you remember the dot.com era when CEOs/board members colluded with banksters and stock analysts to sell bricks at gold prices? When the public was outraged, Mr. Dubya and his Dick declared marshal law under his god and terror policy and directed all that anger towards imaginary global terrorists the nucleus of which was funded by DOD/CIA. No one will ever go to the original documents and that is why no one was prosecuted for 911 in public courts. Everything remains hush, hush and will never see the light of day. Crisis is the best time for the elite to make a killing. They have to create it in order to maintain their grip over society/economy/government.
July 03, 2012 10:18pm
"Never let a crisis go to waste"... stated by Rham Emmanuel, under Obama.
It is a Marxist ideology. A Cass Sunstine and Saul Alinsky ideology.
July 01, 2012 12:35pm
"Crisis is the best time to make a killing." Well said. And if no crisis exists...create one. The Project for a New American Century makes that point quite clear as well as Naomi Klein's excellent book, "Shock Doctrine" "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." That's the "beauty/horror" of the whole paradigm. We'll now ALWAYS be in a "war on terror." National security will of course "demand" that any and all secrets be kept so, negating the possibility of bringing perpetrators of injustice to pay for their acts. Obama has clearly stated that he doesn't want to "look back." He is simply protecting the actions of empire...as ALL U.S. Presidents have done to one extant or another. Is he "better" than "Dubya?" Yes, but he "is" a part of the system that is taking us towards an inevitable rendezvous with Fascism; one that Adam Smith, or even William F. Buckley Jr. would not condone or recognize.
July 01, 2012 10:18am
There are 2 ways to get wealthy:
1). Earn tons of money.
2). Prevent everyone else from earning any money.
July 01, 2012 11:16am
"Earn"! tons of money? How many of the wealthy in this country have been "born" into their riches? How many have made their booty on the backs of others efforts? How many simply "make" money off the money they already have. I emphatically agree with your second point. I just thought some perspective on the term "earn" was worth noting. On another point in the article; our legislators need to be adorned in "NASCAR" type outfits, replete with "patches, insignias, buttons,etc" so that every citizen knows "exactly" who a particular "representative represents. Televise the proceedings each night on ALL news outlets. "Lockheed-Martin, brought to you from the "honorable" gentlemen from...
July 03, 2012 10:20pm
There is a question that comes to mind.....Who will you work for? A poor man? Or a rich man?
I would not mind working for a rich man...as long as he was a moral man.
But no one will hire a 61 year old, disabled woman. With all the experience, wisdom and discernment that I have acquired ..and they will not even look at me. They see words on a computer monitor..and click to the next page.