In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.
'A couple of years before he was convicted of securities fraud, Martin Shkreli was the chief executive of a pharmaceutical company that acquired the rights to Daraprim, a lifesaving antiparasitic drug. Previously the drug cost $13.50 a pill, but in Shkrelis hands, the price quickly increased by a factor of 56, to $750 a pill. At a health care conference, Shkreli told the audience that he should have raised the price even higher. No one wants to say it, no ones proud of it, he explained. But this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.
This is a capitalist society. Its a fatalistic mantra that seems to get repeated to anyone who questions why America cant be more fair or equal. But around the world, there are many types of capitalist societies, ranging from liberating to exploitative, protective to abusive, democratic to unregulated. When Americans declare that we live in a capitalist society as a real estate mogul told The Miami Herald last year when explaining his feelings about small-business owners being evicted from their Little Haiti storefronts what theyre often defending is our nations peculiarly brutal economy. Low-road capitalism, the University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Joel Rogers has called it. In a capitalist society that goes low, wages are depressed as businesses compete over the price, not the quality, of goods; so-called unskilled workers are typically incentivized through punishments, not promotions; inequality reigns and poverty spreads. In the United States, the richest 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of the countrys wealth, while a larger share of working-age people (18-65) live in poverty than in any other nation belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.).
Or consider worker rights in different capitalist nations. In Iceland, 90 percent of wage and salaried workers belong to trade unions authorized to fight for living wages and fair working conditions. Thirty-four percent of Italian workers are unionized, as are 26 percent of Canadian workers. Only 10 percent of American wage and salaried workers carry union cards. The O.E.C.D. scores nations along a number of indicators, such as how countries regulate temporary work arrangements. Scores run from 5 (very strict) to 1 (very loose). Brazil scores 4.1 and Thailand, 3.7, signaling toothy regulations on temp work. Further down the list are Norway (3.4), India (2.5) and Japan (1.3). The United States scored 0.3, tied for second to last place with Malaysia. How easy is it to fire workers? Countries like Indonesia (4.1) and Portugal (3) have strong rules about severance pay and reasons for dismissal. Those rules relax somewhat in places like Denmark (2.1) and Mexico (1.9). They virtually disappear in the United States, ranked dead last out of 71 nations with a score of 0.5.'>>>
The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the countrys history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. Read all the stories.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html?
DBoon
(22,356 posts)The manufacturing "plant" (short for "plantation" extending the legacy of slavery into American capitalism.
To this day, the states with the worst worker protections are the former slave states.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Criminally capitalistic companies have tried to destroy unions from day 1 in this country, and we once again losing them, which means we lose the middle class also.
We are very much back in the old Gilded Age.
BigmanPigman
(51,584 posts)He ruined so much by starting 30-40 years of ongoing policies and initiatives that are still destroying the country.
ChazInAz
(2,565 posts)The old commie-baiter was ratting out his fellow union members to J. Edgar and McCarthy.
BigmanPigman
(51,584 posts)not only was he a hypocrite, he was also an asshole apparently. I hated him with a passion.
potone
(1,701 posts)I encourage everyone to read it in full.
elleng
(130,865 posts)'The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the countrys history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. Read all the stories.'