wal-mart is larger than norway: exposing the myth of capital competition.

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/wal-mart-larger-norway-exposing-myth-capital-competition-1322835390

Any epoch of cap­i­tal­ism al­legedly premised on com­pe­ti­tion is vis­i­ble only from the rearview mir­ror. It is a left­ist tru­ism that in the process of com­pe­ti­tion, cap­i­tal­ism de­stroys com­pe­ti­tion. Com­pe­ti­tion, there­fore, is trans­formed into its op­po­site: mo­nop­oly. Cap­i­tal­ism no longer sur­vives by en­larg­ing com­pe­ti­tion, but rather through its re­duc­tion.

The supreme out­come of the con­tem­po­rary glob­al­iza­tion of mo­nop­oly cap­i­tal has been an am­pli­fi­ca­tion of world ex­ploita­tion, poverty rates, wealth dis­par­i­ties, and food in­se­cu­ri­ties. Since the mid-1970s the rate of world growth has stalled by nearly 70%. And one con­se­quence of de­cel­er­at­ing rates of growth has been a turn to fi­nan­cial­iza­tion since about 1980 by giant firms un­able to find suf­fi­cient high re­turn in­vest­ment out­lets in pro­duc­tion. Large cor­po­ra­tions grad­u­ally began to rely on spec­u­la­tive in­vest­ments made pos­si­ble by highly lever­aged as­sets and as a re­sult have fo­mented fi­nan­cial crises of un­fath­omable pro­por­tions at a time when state sys­tems every­where are in­creas­ingly sub­ject to the va­garies of the “mar­ket” and are forced to sub­si­dize the fail­ures of cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism through tax­payer spon­sored “bailouts.” Lead­ers at na­tional, re­gional, and mu­nic­i­pal lev­els have begun to ame­lio­rate the re­sult­ing fis­cal crises by dis­in­vest­ing in so­cial ser­vices and cre­at­ing more re­gres­sive tax sys­tems, thereby in­ten­si­fy­ing the ef­fec­tive level of ex­ploita­tion. Hence, the in­ter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of mo­nop­oly cap­i­tal, rather than con­tribut­ing to the sta­bi­liza­tion of global sys­tems, is ag­gran­diz­ing crises in both the scarcely in­dis­tinct pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors.

In­equal­ity, in all its re­pug­nance, has be­come deeper and more en­trenched. Today the rich­est 2% of adult in­di­vid­u­als own more than half of global wealth, with the rich­est 1% ac­count­ing for 40% of total global as­sets. Al­though the gap in per capita in­come be­tween the rich­est and poor­est re­gions of the world fell from 15:1 to 13:1dur­ing the golden age of Key­ne­sian­ism, it in­creased by 19:1 by 2002. And from 1970 to 2009 the per capita GDP of de­vel­op­ing coun­tries (ex­clud­ing China) av­er­aged a mere 6.3% of the per capita GDP of the G8 coun­tries (the United States, Japan, Ger­many, France, the United King­dom, Italy, Canada, and Rus­sia).

[sam11111]

1. quibble- the word breaks are distracting

Good essay tho

[phantom power]

2. Monopolies will always emerge from market economies without certain kinds of regulation

This ought to be completely uncontroversial. Kind of like the demand-side economics ought to be completely uncontroversial, and yet here we are...

[xchrom]

4. indeed. nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. Thank you for posting this. I've long thought that capitalism was a form of propaganda

meant to benefit those in big business.

[femrap]

5. The Walton family

has more money than the bottom third of our citizens. Yes, that one family has more money than 100 million US citizens.

Let them eat food stamps and get health care from the taxpayers! The Walton family disgusts me....to call them pigs is an insult to the pig.

[kemah]

6. Wal Mart Employees are subsidized by tax payers

Most Wal Mart employees work part-time jobs and get minimum wage. At that rate most of them qualify for food stamps and medicaid. That's how Wal Mart gets people to work for such low wages.