Presidential hopeful Herman Cain doesn’t think much of the Occupy Wall Street crowd because, he says, its members are un-American and against capitalism. But even though protesters around the country haven’t yet found their collective voice, it is safe to say they are a little closer to the truth than Herman Cain.
America is finally recognizing the incestuous fling going on between its politicians and their sugar daddy corporate benefactors. It is a simple and straightforward romance conducted in the bedroom of capitalism. Big business, spurred by greed and global competition in the marketplace, seeks ways to improve the corporate bottom line. Jobs are sent packing to other countries. Corners are cut in the production of goods that result in unsafe or downright dangerous products for the consumer. Commodity markets are manipulated. Books are cooked. Stocks rise and stockholders are rewarded. Executives are compensated for their unethical or criminal acts with obscene compensation packages – which often include massive amounts of company stock inflated by the very misdeeds of the corporate leaders who receive the loot.
America’s politicians are fully engaged in the process. The first act of any elected office holder in the U.S. is to begin raising money for his or her re-election, and global corporations are more than happy to back up the armored trucks to the congressional and White House loading docks. Billions of corporate dollars overtly and covertly find their way into election war chests. To encourage such “generosity,” elected officials must, at best, provide access to company executives, lawyers, and lobbyists. At worst, the relationship between corporations
and our elected officials is a simple exchange of money for influence and favorable treatment. It is the ultimate quid pro quo.
To acknowledge that capitalism is a flawed socio-economic system isn’t unpatriotic. It simply requires the courage to continually question and reflect upon the way we as Americans live our lives. It means shining a light into nooks and crannies where we might find distasteful truths. And upon finding flaws, as a country we can then set about finding ways to repair them. Capitalism isn’t immune from these examinations, even though it is regarded as a bedrock of our way of life.
The answer to the question of how we got here is admittedly complex and in some cases cyclical tracing back to the Great Depression. Much of the blame can be laid to the makers of public policy at the highest levels, and one name vaults to the forefront. Ronald Reagan was a corporate enabler of the worst kind. He didn’t really understand economics and so he adopted his policies from advice given by economic advisers. In his first term, the former president reduced a complex global economic scenario into a simplistic solution: Worship
at the altar of the free market. Do so, Reagan told us, and untold wealth would trickle down to the middle class and poor, beneficently directed by our captains of industry. But there was an important condition, Reagan told us. Government had to stay out of the way. Do away with most, if not all, government regulation of business, he insisted. Corporate America was to be implicitly trusted to do the right thing. What followed has been decades of unflinching and relentless corporate shenanigans, misdeeds, greed, and outright crime. This is not a fact that will be noticed kindly nor with acceptance by those who have elevated Mr. Reagan to Mother Teresa status.
So if we are to be honest about our current version of capitalism and where it is headed, it is the American people who must work toward exposing the flaws and fixing them. This is where Occupy Wall Street comes into play. In its fledgling, inarticulate form, Occupy Wall Street has neither the savvy nor the political muscle to fix much of anything. But the group is at least turning on the light, and it is helping to begin a national conversation. Sometimes the dialogue isn’t pretty, as Mr. Cain and others have already demonstrated. Dismissing dissenters without listening to them usually isn’t a very good idea for anyone, let alone a potential leader of the free world. Mr. Cain not only dismissed the protesters, he insulted them.
By now, many of you will assume that I am a bleeding-heart liberal, out of touch with reality, and an apologist for big government and the current administration. You would then likely be surprised to learn that I neither advocate a new era of government regulation, nor do I harbor a general belief that government can solve all of our problems. The fact is that early in the 21st century, our government is bloated, ineffective, corrupt, and unresponsive to the citizenry. How could that sort of entity ever set about fixing anything, let alone a system in which it fully participates in the bedfellow politics of corporate malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance?
Now here is what really scares me. If big business won’t heal itself (I suspect the greed is far too embedded for that to happen), and if government can’t fix itself (not likely as long as the system rewards corruption with reelection), how can capitalism ever get a fair trial?
For a long time, I worshipped at the altar of the free market. I believed in Ronald Reagan’s theory of a trickle down economy. But 25 years later, the only thing I’ve noticed is something trickling on my leg.
