The Death of the Consumer

[McCamy Taylor]

Q: What does voodoo economics have in common with French philosopher and critic Roland Barthes?

A: Barthes celebrated the death of the author. Voodoo economists celebrate the death of the consumer.

If you take supply side economics to its logical conclusion you reach corporate fascism, a form of government in which the state reimburses businesses that can not generate a profit selling their product or service in the so called free market. Businesses like Wall Street and Halliburton and Enron, also known as Corporate Welfare Queens (see my old journal here: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/460).

If you take voodoo economics beyond its logical conclusion, the consumer becomes an obstacle to business profits. The “living wage” which allows workers to pay for food, shelter and health care is money that could be better spent on CEO bonuses. Good health through disease prevention is bad for hospitals, drug companies and medical goods manufacturers which make their biggest profit providing futile care to the dying. Environmental protection aimed at saving lives is “unhealthy” for business. Peace is the worst possible state of affairs, since companies like Halliburton and Lockheed can only make money if people are dying. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, famine, pestilence, war and death are big money makers for Big Business. So, they hire thugs, Tea Baggers, to declare that disease prevention is bad (“No death panels!”), war against Muslims is good (“No Mosque at Ground Zero!”), unions are dangerous (“Fire teachers!”) and clean air is un-American (“No Cap and Trade!”).

Even our misery is profitable for the death merchants. They hire lobbyists like Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff to bribe politicians like John Boehner, Tom Delay and Bob Ney to sell us cigarettes, booze and gambling in place of the health, home, food and peace which they have stolen from us.

Our eggs are contaminated with salmonella---deliberately, because better sanitation would cut into profits. Our ozone layer is destroyed----deliberately, because oil companies need to make a quick profit now before the world’s dwindling oil reserves force us to invest in energy alternatives. Our medications are unsafe---deliberately, because there must be a return on the investment, even if the product turns out to be pure poison. Our clothes are produced by children in third world sweat shops---deliberately, because the unemployed, underpaid American worker would not be able to afford to shop at Walmart if prices were not kept low.

In Bophal, India, 18000 people died and half a million were injured, because an Indian subsidiary of a U.S. company deliberately ignored its own safety rules. Union Carbide’s settlement was paid by its insurance company and amounted to less than $1 per person injured. “Justice” in the case included a total of 14 year in prison, divided among seven Indian defendants and asylum in the US for the company’s Chairman and CEO, Warren Anderson. That is 7 hours in jail for each person killed divided 7 ways or one hour per death---

Paris Hilton spent more time in jail for drunk driving in which no one was injured. The rich have it easy in this life, but corporations have it even easier. They have 1st Amendment free speech protections without any obligation to defend their country. If Enron does business with the Taliban that’s good for America. If John Walker Lindh supports the Taliban, he is a traitor. If Halliburton kills our troops in Iraq, it’s an Oops! ---a financial miscalculation, not real murder----

If Jesus tried to drive the money lenders from the temples in 21st century America, he would be nailed to a cross.

[Rochester]

1. :thumbsup:

:thumbsup:

[JDPriestly]

2. Brilliant observations.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. Yup! KR

[xchrom]

4. This is a deliberate recommend. Nt

[chervilant]

5. Are we waking up?

I've been a closet economic anthropologist since my days at University. I assert that we humans are our own worst enemy, because we blithely and greedily engage in economic behaviors without examining the import or the impact of such behaviors. Our economic behaviors have become more important and more influential than ALL of our other behaviors, comprising the framework within which we do all things political or spiritual. Please note that I mean WE as in our entire species.

Humans are now a systems-stressing economic resource, yet we seem incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. All other economic resources are being taxed beyond the system's capacity, yet we sustain a rhetoric that smacks of the blame and shame game--warring with one another, blaming others without examining our own roles--when we should be seeking ways to fix the problem.

A great philosopher once predicted that capitalism would eventually collapse, and that economic behavior would evolve into a more egalitarian, cooperative means of production. Capitalists, politicians, and others with a vested interest in maintaining an oppressive status quo promoted a pejorative meme that taints this great man's scholarship to this very day. We should take note of the enormous energy expended to denigrate this man's collected works.

We too can attack Karl Marx on the strength of his detractors' red herring meme, or we can emulate his courageous endeavor to examine human economic behavior as it exists today and envision the changes that MUST occur if we are to progress as a species. Do we have to throw out the baby (capitalism) with the bath water (Corporate Megalomaniacs)? Is communism the inevitable alternative to capitalism, and would that really be a bad thing? Can we continue to subsume our spiritual selves in servitude to the almighty dollar?

Change is often a big scary barrier to personal growth, isn't it?

Still, as another great philosopher said, "We MUST be the change we wish to see in the world."

So, this starts with me. My awareness of the core issues described herein above shapes and informs my activism every day. I refuse to buy into the divisiveness that the Corporate Megalomaniacs promote to keep us from examining these real issues, and that includes divisiveness predicated by education, status, or any other hierarchical measure. We The People are on the verge of a major change--perhaps cataclysmic--and we have the intellectual capacity and the spiritual framework within which to propel ourselves into an amazing future.

FURTHERMORE, to those who vilify, parody, ridicule, or otherwise denigrate the unfortunates among us who are factually challenged, please bear in mind that at least 40% of our adult population is functionally illiterate. Of those who can 'read,' another 60% cannot comprehend what they've read, nor can they give a defensible synopsis of the material they've read. Many of these unfortunates cling tenaciously to their world views, because fear--and the other visceral emotions that drive them--is a great motivator. Furthermore, any measurable self esteem in these pitiful individuals is often a thin veneer over a seething cauldron of insecurity and doubt.

The Corporate Megalomaniacs know this and use it well, both through their propaganda tools (the MSM, lobbyists, and paid political hacks) and through their skilled sustenance of the 'wealth carrot meme.' Moreover, the Corporatists continue to divide and conquer, regularly promulgating their partisan red herrings (which quite a number of us snarf regularly--regardless of party affiliation).

That old chestnut, "Ignorance is Bliss" carries new meaning for me. Perhaps, "controlled ignorance is bliss" might be a better way to look at it. I beg the non-ignorant among us to focus your energy and your analytical skills on ways we can help the unfortunates among us (variously labeled Teh Stoopid, teabaggers, right-wingers, DINOs and blue-dogs) to understand who is the real threat to their financial and social well-being.

Oh, and--at the risk of getting more backlash from some for whom this post resonates--our networking efforts need to intensify. Our efforts to work together to effect change MUST focus on stopping the exponential success of the Corporate Megalomaniacs, or we'll find ourselves hiding behind closed doors, avoiding any mention of a world view that challenges the controlling uber wealthy elite. Actually, how many of us are already there?

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

[LongTomH]

6. +10 for this reply and K&R for the original post!

:kick:

[glitch]

10. Nice. You should post more :) nt

[zeos3]

7. Excellent! K&R

[me b zola]

8. K&R

[Fire1]

9. Well, as Mr. Geitner indicated this morning, the middle class

was living far beyond their means, anyway. Now, they're adjusting and realigning their budgets with reality.

[glitch]

11. The sacking of our economy is everybodies' fault but the sackers.

IOW, what an asshole.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

12. K & R

[sam sarrha]

13. the richest 1% have 42% of Americas Financial wealth, 6X what the bottom 80% hold at 7%... >Link>>

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

the GOP believes that Wealth is the measure of Gods favor of a man, so it is a Sin to tax a rich man. likewise it is a Sin to help the poor because God is punishing them.

[Trajan]

14. So true ....

By starving wage increments and canceling pensions, they have taken a good economy and drove it off the fucking cliff .... see ya late-ah alligate-ah ....

But they cut their own throats ... well .... They cut the throats of those of the lesser capitalists who aren't prepared to amass enough wealth to tough it out while the rest of the economy crumbles ....

The richest of the rich aren't worried about a meltdown - They already own most everything ....

Wanna end this malaise ? .... BOOST wages .....

The capitalists would need to inject money into the system in order to get it re-started ... that is the 'stimulus' that's missing ...

Yet, they wont .... Not unless American workers are willing to accept pennies to the dollar in wages, under brutal and unsafe conditions, without any workplace laws whatsoever ....

So .... They aren't going to spring the money to boost incomes, and so there will be a new bottom to seek .... a new low to stoop to ...

The long ride of a union-born middle class making good wages and getting decent benefits, with fair workplace rules ... some 80 years running .... is over ....


Silly asses .... THEY killed it .....

[ilaughatrightwingers]

15. Sorry folks, but Marx was right

Consumerism and the capitalist system which fosters it have lead to this failing of human behavior. Money and commodities dominate our lives to the point where we lose sight of other things in life. Sorry folks, but this isn't the fault of people being irresponsible and letting money go to their heads; this is the result of capitalism.

If anything, we need a system change. Out with the old and in with the new.

[Oldtimeralso]

16. K & R n/t

[The Wizard]

17. Any system left unfettered by checks and balances

will in the end destroy itself like sharks on a feeding frenzy eating one another. Predatory capitalism is like predatory evolution. As the song said:
"They're will be no one left to save
With the whole world in a grave."
You don't believe we're on the Eve of Destruction?"
(Barry McGuire)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo