I believe I’ve come across a conspiracy theory. The other day I saw a post by a conservative group on Facebook comparing gas prices during the Trump administration and under Biden. Of course prices were lower under Trump, at least partly because demand was down; most people weren’t traveling.
As a comment, I asked, Couldn’t be that the oil companies don’t have enough competition, could it? One of the group answered, No, and nothing else, which I considered suspicious, so I asked, Why not? And added that I thought it was Adam Smith who said competition was good, but that it was John Kenneth Galbraith who said that all industries try to suppress their competition.
One reply to that was that I had advertised that I didn’t know anything about economics. That may be true, but Robert Reich (who does know something about economics) had said that oil companies had decided they could make more money by not trying to find new oil sources. One of the group said my scenario couldn’t work because in this country the oil companies are all private companies. I asked how that would prevent them from colluding to keep prices high, and that’s where the conversation ended.
The conservative group are all capitalist true-believers, so no doubt they were offended that I had suggested the oil companies might be corrupt. And I had said things before they hadn’t appreciated, so that’s part of the story too. The fact that I don’t automatically believe that capitalist hearts are pure doesn’t make me a Communist (though one of the group called me that repeatedly). I don’t like Communism any more than I like Nazis or other varieties of fascism. Both are authoritarian, and I like the freedoms we’re guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
But capitalism can be as authoritarian as Nazis or Communists. Maybe they have better rationales, but when Congressmen are concerned about ordinary Americans getting “free” money, it behooves me to ask why they’re not just as concerned about wealthy people being given large amounts more money. Aren’t they concerned that the wealthy will begin feeling entitled, if not downright corrupt? It’s sweet of them to be so concerned about the moral fiber of ordinary Americans, but I would suggest that most of them have very little idea how ordinary Americans live, and the problems they have to solve.
I read a lot of articles saying that large corporations have continued to make high profits through the Covid pandemic, while ordinary people have had the disadvantage of not being able to work, and having to try to pay rent (already high for most people), buy groceries, and deal with sicknesses in their families. Objecting to the government helping people who can’t work and have children to take care of is adding insult to injury.
Meanwhile, the government, during the last presidency, bailed out the cruise ship industry. How is that essential? And nurses (probably doctors too) are getting tired. I’ve been watching a lot of football the past few months, and have noticed few masks on in the stands. Am I surprised that Covid is surging again? No, I’m not. I don’t know of large corporations are surprised or not, but considering that in the meat-packing industry there were reports that middle management people were betting on how many people in their plants would catch Covid, I doubt that they care.
They do care when people don’t want to work for them, though. Several business people have been quoted the past few months as saying that people don’t want to work anymore, at least implying that the government shouldn’t be helping people financially. There have been a number of posts correcting that statement to read, People don’t want to work for the pay they’ve been getting and in the workplaces they’re confined to. Having financial help from the government has given some people a chance to think about what they want to do, and at least some don’t want to return to their previous jobs.
Forty years ago, during the Reagan presidency, the country turned away from the regulation that had been imposed on business previously, and deregulated a lot of industries. Now we see that the wealthy have rigged things to put most of the profits in their pockets. They complain that raising the minimum wage will make products (fast food, for instance) more expensive, but don’t explain why CEOs being paid millions a year won’t do the same. One conservative explained to me that CEOs are worth that much pay because they have rare abilities. Which doesn’t explain why the economy was so strong in the 1950s and 60s, when CEOs made a lot less.
The unspoken explanation is that companies feel their ordinary employees can work their jobs for less, and have been forcing them into a situation in which they almost certainly HAVE to work for less than they would have had to forty or fifty years ago.
Remember when people looking for jobs were denied them because they were “overqualified?” Those were people who had worked in their companies a long time, had worked their way up to middle management, and had been fired because the company needed to become leaner and more efficient. Actually, according to an article I read in the 1990s, they were being fired so the company could hire younger people to replace them whom they wouldn’t have to pay as much. Of course they also didn’t know how to do their jobs as well, either, but when they companies were highly profitable, what did they care?
And this was after the age of leveraged buyouts, when one company would buy another, take its assets, saddle it with the debt of the price of buying it, and then shut it down. These companies didn’t care about the workers they displaced, most of whom couldn’t find jobs at which they could be paid nearly as much.
Then there’s the housing industry which was selling property to lots of people who, if they had been paying attention (and known their jobs), would probably have realized couldn’t pay their mortgages. And then compounded that by creating investment vehicles based on the questionable mortgages. I have to wonder to what extent they were just acting like they were drunk, and to what extent they actually PLANNED to throw lots of people into bankruptcy.
Whatever the truth of that, it’s clear that they didn’t care about the people they had ruined financially. I would have liked to see the big companies go bankrupt, and the government help the people unable to pay their mortgages. Instead, of course, the government bailed out the banks and mortgage companies.
One thing has become clear in this country: capitalists, when they get their own way, treat their workers like enemies. How long can that state of things persist before the country comes apart?
allenstarbuck 