APRIL 17, 2016
POWER OVER YOU
That title will generate these thoughts in the minds of many Americans:
"No one has power over me. I am free and independent".
No one has power over you if there is nothing you need from someone else and if there is no one else to stop you from doing as you please or from getting what you want. If that fails to describe your life, then your freedom and independence are limited. Freedom has a price in the modern world.
Many view unlimited purchasing power as the requirement for absolute freedom since everything and almost every experience are bought and sold in the marketplace. If you have no wealth or income, there is very little freedom of action. Absolute poverty is a foolproof prescription for greatly curtailed experiences, starvation, illness and premature death. Around the earth millions face this undesirable destiny each and every year.
Greed and fear are the great motivators of humankind for a reason: the economic destinies of each of us are dependent upon the actions of one another. The decisions we make as workers, as employers, as taxpayers, as consumers, and as investors determine how the world turns out. If we are in it together, we will have one kind of life. If we are endlessly in a struggle with one another to gain personal advantage, we will get a different kind of life.
Americans have historically opted for competition and command among those in control. Royal charters, grants of land, indentured servitude, and the importation of African slaves all were essential to American development. Not so long ago, my grandparents knew soldiers who had served in the American Civil War. The last Civil War veterans died in the 1950s.
During the last half of the Nineteenth Century the American military completed the final conquering of the natives living here when the Europeans first arrived. The military model of an executive top down control structure was effective then and remains typical of large workplaces in America — whether public or private. Those organizations are where the vast majority of Americans spend their lives occupied as employees or managers. If their jobs are outsourced or automated away, their current employment security is likely ended.
Some believe that self-employment and small businesses offer an escape from unemployment and an alternative to the regimentation and the bureaucracy of corporations and government agencies. But small businesses depend on one another, on corporations, on government agencies, and on the employees of all of those operations for customers and sales.
Demand for products and services needs to be strong enough to require a work force that employs all who want or need a job.
Income from employment needs to be no less than required to pay for the basics of life: food, clothing, transportation, medical and dental care, household essentials, adequate savings for education, for retirement, and for disability, and housing that is a reasonable distance from one's place of work.
These are straight forward, uncomplicated, and achievable goals.
The major stockholders, the boards of directors, and the top executives of the major corporations in America have the political and the economic power to achieve those goals for all Americans. They have failed to make that choice. They hold all of the right cards. They have the power to give you more, to give you less, or to give you nothing.
Without a change in direction all that we count on for personal and family security may crumble: social security, private and public pensions, growing employment paying a living wage, publicly supported education and healthcare, a decent life for ourselves and our posterity.
Think carefully about who you want to support in the years and decades ahead. Our futures will certainly depend upon the choices we make.
