The Free Market Has Spoken, And It Had Nothing To Say About Economic Inequality

One of the tenets of free market ideology is consumer choice. The idea goes like this. Empower citizens to make their own decisions and they will have greater freedom, greater prosperity, and businesses will live or die at the will of the consumer. Therefore, corporations and executives are in effect beholden to the consumer. Sounds good right? Who could be against that?

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America Needs To Break The ‘Walmart Mentality’

The “Walmart Mentality” could otherwise be referred to as “Supercapitalism,” also the name of a book by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. It’s the idea that unrestrained capitalism leads to corruption, not only of the market economy, but also democracy. The “Walmart Mentality” is that a few people get filthy rich by squeezing the system as much as they can without breaking it. But the problem, as is always the problem with greed, is that there is never enough, so eventually something is going to break. But the few people benefiting from this scenario are usually old, and they have build up such massive wealth, they can insulate themselves from the fallout for the rest of their lives.

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Video: ‘Death Spiral Of Falling Demand’ – Venture Capitalist Nick Hanauer On Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer

Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer explains why people create the demand which then creates the jobs. He says he makes 1000 times more than the average worker but that doesn’t translate to 1000 times the consumerism of the average worker. He can’t makeup the difference. So with more wealth accumulating within a small pool of wealthy people, that means less wealth spread across the rest of the country. It means less purchasing power and less demand for products and services from tens and hundreds of millions of Americans. This is why supply side (trickle down) economics doesn’t work. We’ve tried it for 30 years. How many more years do we need to continue failed economic policy before we wake up and realize it will never work?

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Supply Side (Trickle Down) Economics Doesn’t Work. Can We Move On Now?

This topic will never die on The Left Call, at least not until people stop believing the lie that is trickle down economics. This idea that we need to give rich people more money in the form of tax cuts before they will create more jobs would make for a nice laugh if it wasn’t so damaging to the country and to the prospects of income and wealth equality. And when I say equality, I don’t mean totally equal, I’m talking about getting back to something more reasonable, a time when CEOs only made 30 times the average worker instead of 300 times.

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