The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Threat To Capitalism

from OurFuture.org:



The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Threat To Capitalism
By Eric Lotke

June 11, 2009 - 10:42am ET


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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched yesterday “a sweeping national advocacy campaign … to defend and advance America’s free enterprise values in the face of rapid government growth and attacks by anti-business activists.”

The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t get it. They aren’t defending capitalism and free enterprise. They are all but destroying it.

Free-market fundamentalists don’t understand that capitalism is a system. It has rules, boundaries and obligations. When those rules are broken, the system falters.

• It’s not football without lines to mark touchdowns and out of bounds.
• It’s not basketball without a referee to call the fouls.

This is more than just a sports metaphor. Capitalism won’t work unless a negotiated price and promise to pay $100 is followed by payment of $100. And someone needs to enforce those rules. Otherwise it's not capitalism. It’s robbery. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009062411/us-chamber-commerce-threat-capitalism

their national office was on the route of the sept 07 march, and they were the scariest, dagger-eyed people i have seen. scarier than the gathering of eagles folks who taunted us at later marches. they are your local barber/pharmacist/bookseller. the cofc is the largest and second largest lobbying group. they have two outlets.

:)

What an odd system that ensures the descendent's of slave owners and robber barons continue to profit off of the labor of others by doing absolutely nothing.

Oh yes, I see the exception to my generalization to those great achievers who manage to marry into wealth or commit crimes for success. But for the most part, you are born an owner (very few are), or you are born a laborer. No matter how well you pay the laborers, I'm still not 100% sure why someone should be born to profit off of them.

How about regulating private ownership such that laborers earn back ownership over some tangible timespan of the company, such that any initial ownership capital is rewarded with a high ROI but perpetual leeching from a corporation is no longer takes place. In other words, strike a balance between rewarding investment and rewarding the laborers of the company. While you do not remove and incentive for private investment, you also create an incentive (and empowerment) of the modern worker.

So, why not have a structure that defaults corporations to employee-owned while still rewarding initial investments? It would rather consider private ownership as a loan that has an end-term.

Yeah, thats just off the top of my head and I'm sure there are some problems. But isn't it a bigger problem to allow perpetual, inherited ownership (which is currently causing the lowest rate of intergenerational mobility in the industrialized world in the US), whereas non-working private baron descendants profit from doing nothing? They profit at both the cost of the workers, the company, and the customers. Sometimes the company needs those funds to grow and sometimes the workers need that money to live (whereas private coffers need it to grow bigger). But, revenue re-investment and innovation can often be stifled by calls for profit.

Currently, ownership is par to an infinite percentile loan that can never be paid off and alive as long as the company exists (for your great grand children to inherit). This seems contradictory to the concept of a meritocracy.

:thumbsup:

Just read yesterday how Hank Paulson was able to not pay taxes on 200 MILLLION dollars of income because of the timing of his begining day of work over at the Fed.

That is obscene. Who in the world needs or deserves a 200 MILLION dollar tax break?

Why should the hedge fund crowd have their income tax topped off at the 15% rate while school teachers and bus drivers pay much more than that?

The whole problem is that the rich see that their bidding is done. Just follow the discussion over at this topic about people with new SUV's getting handed a $ 4,500 voucher to help pay for a new more efficient car - after they have already gotten massive tax relief for buying thsoe vehicles in the first place. URL is here:
http://tinyurl.com/nto9mn