neoboule

Anyone who has read many or any of my blogs would probably think I am socialist, but they would be incorrect. I am a capitalist. I believe that capitalism is the strongest economic theory. I probably need to remind my readers that I always describe communism and capitalism as economic theories rather than forms of government. I do espouse many socialist ideas though. The disparity in income and resource distribution in the United States is immoral and likely unsustainable.

Personally, for the most part, I think rich people suck. They live in a world most of us would not recognize. They only hang out with other rich people, own yachts, live in gated homes with security, and really believe the rest of us are peasants that are here to serve them. They have few or no morals and value one thing, money. Most of them would sell their mother’s soul if the price was right. They are truly assholes and they know that their rich friends are assholes too, but since their friends are rich assholes too they automatically qualify as their friends.

When I say rich people I am speaking of the mega-rich, only those that qualify as billionaires. If you are not worth at least a billion dollars I am not talking about you, not yet anyway. I understand the drive to gain wealth. It makes life much more comfortable, especially in the United States. I do not understand the obsessive drive that the richest people have to get even richer. At some point, life is not going to become more comfortable with another couple of billion dollars. So what’s the point? And why do so many people admire them?

To me, the drive for a mega-wealthy person to gain more wealth seems like a mental disorder. That so many people admire them probably means the rest of us also have some issues. The term “corporate greed” comes to mind as a scapegoat for human greed. As the war against Iran started the press immediately started talking about how fuel price would go up and all other prices would follow due to higher shipping costs. I noticed prices started going up on everyday things at Walmart within a week of the war starting (by the way it’s two months later and Amazon prices have not gone up yet). Everybody accepted that it was because of our latest war. It’s not. The products in the warehouses and in the pipeline account for a four to six month supply. The products have already been paid for by the warehouses. There is no need to raise the price right now other than the opportunity for additional profit. Further, the prices are slow to come down at the retail level when a decline in price has been realized at the wholesale level. That is corporate greed.

The problem with the term corporate greed is that the corporation is not the greedy one. The people that run the corporation make the decisions. Oddly, most of the decision makers at that level are not the mega-rich. They are the next step or two down. We can call them the bourgeoisie. It’s an old term, but it still fits. They strive to make their rich boss richer. I think the actions are unethical, but there is nothing illegal about.

Our economic system, capitalism, relies heavily on private sector investment and investors expect a reasonable return on their investment so corporate leaders are expected to maximize profits, that’s why they get paid the big bucks. But there needs to be an ethical consideration in all corporate decisions and that seems to no longer exist. The same people that do not like income redistribution through social programs and the tax code are the people that are receiving dividends from corporate investments, which is also just a form of income redistribution. Think about it. The mega-rich pay the bourgeoisie to make them richer (which is their only value) and the rest of us do the work. We are the proletariat or peasants, whichever term you like better. We have nothing to sell but our labor.

We used to manufacture a lot of products in the United States, but that has not been true for several decades. When American businesses started moving production overseas they said labor costs in the United States were too high. Labor costs were just an easy target for corporate executives. The corporations were paying dividends and working to increase stock prices to ensure the investor profits increased. Of course, the investors do not do any of the work but they get paid just like the employees. The right thing to do would be to keep profits at a reasonable level and increase the pay of the employees that do all the work. But the mega-rich and the corporations they own are not about doing the right thing.

So why are the rich so admired? I think it is because they hire image consultants to make us think they are caring, benevolent and moral. They form their own charities and make huge donations to whatever cause makes them seem the most caring, righteous persons on planet earth, but they are not. How many of the mega-rich have been found to have associations with Jeffrey Epstein? We are just getting fooled. Having a rich person in charge of a charity is like having a fox guarding the hen house. They are going to gain something or they wouldn’t do it.

Even though I don’t have nice things to say about the mega-rich, I understand why we need them. The mega-rich build mega-everything. Most recently the investments in large data centers to support artificial intelligence are mostly private investment by the mega-rich. Major investments in semi-conductors, energy, Amazon, Tesla, Apple and Microsoft all exist because of investment by the mega-rich. In a communist economy those kinds of investments could be made by the government and in a highly socialist economy it’s unlikely you could get enough smaller investors to take the risk. So we need the mega-rich, whether we like them or not. They built and continue to build our society – that’s capitalism.

We need to quit being fooled by the work of the image consultants. Is the public really that gullible? The answer to that is probably yes. The image gurus are good at what they do and most of us would like to believe the best about all people. I am a little more cynical than most, but like most people, I get fooled by the trickery of the image gurus. Rich people are a necessary evil at best, but they are necessary. Their morals and values, or lack thereof, are right up there with our politicians. And a mega-rich person that gets into politics has a double dose of horrible.

This brings me to my final point in this rant. Government is not a business and should not be run like one. Government should be run like a government. People of a certain age will remember Ross Perot and his popular criticisms of how bad government is at doing business. His whole campaign revolved around running government like a business and a lot of people bought it. As I recall he got more votes than any other third party candidate in history. The reality is really pretty simple. The job of any business is first and foremost to make money. Is that how you want your government to operate? Before you answer that remember that the only source of income the government has is our pockets.

Rich people suck, but we need them. Their arrogant, narcissistic, condescending, immoral selves build everything. Without them building our buildings and starting large business ventures we would be left for the government to do it. That is communism and it has been repeatedly proven to fail as an economic model. Yes, I know China is doing great but their economy is really not communist. I’ll get into that in another blog. But we should be realistic about our benefactors. They are not heroes, they are just rich.