American Capitalism Is Immoral, Unfair, Dangerous, And Unsustainable
Michael Nagle - Bloomberg/Getty Images
Writing an article about the flaws of capitalism is an overwhelming task, to say the least.
Capitalism is an evil, aggressive, devastatingly toxic cancer that has metastasized to every aspect of American life. Financially, physically, mentally, socially, politically, culturally, environmentally, and the list goes on and on.
I feel like a doctor holding up an x-ray, with nothing but a shadowy, ominous, jet black tumor covering every inch of the film.
Where do you even start? How do you operate?
Do I tackle it in broad sections? Do I just link to a bunch of horrifying facts and figures? Both?
I guess it’s both.
Despite my best efforts, it may not be enough to break through the collective apathy most of us have for this topic. We’ve been beaten to the point of helplessness and subsequent disinterest. We’ve seen the horrifying numbers. We’re living through the ills of capitalism on a daily basis. We get a paragraph or two into these kinds of articles, get slightly nauseous, and close the tab. I understand that.
However, we can’t continue to lay down and accept this as normal. As fair. As anything other than what it is: An unsustainable path we don’t have the luxury of staying on. We simply can’t continue heading in this direction. Humanity as a whole can’t afford it. The 2020 election will be an inflection point, and one that is vital for the collective survival of not just this country, but the world as a whole. As scary and dramatic as that sounds, it’s true.
There’s no way to cover everything in this article. Entire books are written on this subject. I’m trying to condense it into one digestible piece, and as a result, will only be touching broadly on a variety of topics. The best way to break this article down, is to focus on the elements I mentioned earlier. The physical, social, political, cultural, and environmental ways capitalism negatively impacts our lives.
Financially
Capitalism is an economic system, so let’s focus on the financial pitfalls of such a system first and foremost.
People often say capitalism is broken; that it isn’t working. This is categorically false. Late-stage capitalism is working better than it ever has in its storied history. It’s working as intended. Merriam-Webster’s definition of capitalism is as follows:
An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
Capitalism is an economic system controlled by corporate ownership whose main goal is to maximize profits.
In that regard, it’s working. Capitalism isn’t about worker’s rights, sustaining an economy that benefits the majority of its people, or contributing to the overall well being of a given country. It’s purely about how much money any one individual or corporation can make. Workers are nameless, faceless cogs in a machine. Easily replaceable, exploitable parts.
Wages for said exploitable parts have stagnated as the cost of living continues to rise while millionaires become billionaires and billionaires add to their billions.
According to New York Magazine, a study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development claims American workers are more likely to be poor, get fired more often and with less warning, and have seen their share of national income drop eight percentage points between 1995 and 2013.
The middle class is shrinking and the wealth gap continues to grow.
The following chart from the World Inequality Report is startling. It shows the national income shares for the top 1% and bottom 50% of the U.S. and Western Europe.
World Inequality Lab
It’s even worse when looked at along racial lines, with black families earning $5 for every $100 a white family earns.
The richest 26 billionaires have as much money as the poorest 3.8 billion people on Earth.
26 people.
Again, this is all by design. This is how capitalism was intended to work. When a corporation’s sole purpose is to maximize profits, this is what you get. The money goes to the CEOs of those corporations, and their families. “Trickle down” economics - the belief that reducing taxes on the wealthy will allow for them to invest in workers, stimulate the economy, and overall improve the financial standing of the middle and lower class, is a fallacy. It’s an idea pushed by the super rich to remain super rich.
While people like Betsy Devos buy another yacht, 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in emergency money. The most perverted part about that statistic? That’s actually an improvement over past years.
We’re living at a time where this generation is making less than the generation before it. Millennials and Gen Z aren’t able to find stable jobs, save money, or buy homes. Mainly because they’re buried in student loan debt.
Student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category - behind only mortgage debt - and higher than both credit cards and auto loans.
According to Make Lemonade, there are more than 44 million borrowers who collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S. alone. The average student in the Class of 2016 has $37,172 in student loan debt.
We live in a country where you get punished financially for seeking higher education.
Call me radical, but I don’t think you should go into debt for wanting to better your chances of finding a good job - which, nowadays actually isn’t promised, as 57 million workers are part of the “gig” economy - freelancing and taking part-time jobs that don’t give you the traditional benefits of a full-time job.
About two dozen other countries offer affordable college tuition or free college outright, because they tax the rich at an appropriate rate. This also allows such students to have spending money. Money they can put back into the economy. Forget trickle down, let’s trickle up.
As it stands in America right now, this generation is overqualified and underpaid; a recipe for disaster going forward.
If nothing changes, what are the possible outcomes? Either the debt continues to rise until it hits the economy like the housing market did, or people will grow more and more averse to seeking higher education, leaving anyone who doesn’t have the money to pay for college undereducated, furthering the financial and educational divide between the upper and middle/lower classes.
What do we gain from stunting the educational growth of our youth, limiting their career opportunities, or saddling them with debt if they do choose to seek higher education?
It’s a decision that only makes sense within the confines of the hyper-capitalist system America runs on.
It’s a system that will lead to a less skilled, less educated workforce, or one that again, benefits only those who can afford to go to school.
Even the concept of interning to gain experience is problematic, as a lot of internships are unpaid; meaning only those that are fortunate enough to be able to work without pay can apply - and many of those people already have an advantage over their peers.
The future of our workforce and educational system are in real trouble if we don’t turn things around, and soon.
Physically/Mentally
It’s not just our wallets that are being affected. Obviously, our quality of life is directly impacted by how much money we have (or don’t have).
Healthcare is a privilege in this country, whereas it’s a right in every other nation in the developed world.
America stands alone as the only wealthy, developed country without universal healthcare.
Once again, it’s because American capitalists see healthcare as a business opportunity, and not the vital, moral, necessary service every other country in the developed world sees it as.
Big Pharma hikes drug prices to astronomical levels, and insurance companies come up with all sorts of excuses why they can’t cover people paying into their plans, leading to people going broke simply because they’re sick. Taking out loans and refinancing their homes in order to cover cancer treatments.
It’s indefensible and sickening that the richest nation on Earth cannot provide healthcare for its citizens.
For years we’ve been told that it’s simply not possible. That other countries will eventually collapse under the weight of mounting healthcare costs, and that the quality of care in those countries is negatively impacted by such a system.
Again, this is false. Another lie perpetrated by the wealthy to scare Americans into believing that something literally every other rich nation has, is a laughable pipe dream.
Even though we pay the most, we have the worst healthcare compared to the world’s richest nations.
All of what I’ve said mainly focuses on the physical ailments people can face, but doesn’t begin to touch on the mental anguish people feel in regards to their financial standings. “Will I get fired?,” “How can I survive when I’m not getting a raise and the cost of living keeps going up?,” How can I save?,” “How can I provide for my family?,” “What happens if we have an emergency?,” and plenty of other financial-related questions send people into sleepless nights and outright depression. It’s hard to quantify how much mental strain capitalism and the fear of poverty puts on those that aren’t part of the elite class.
And it’s not just healthcare (or the lack thereof) that’s hurting us physically.
48.8 million Americans, 16.2 of which are children, struggle with hunger.
Nearly 50 million people in a country of 325 million. Roughly 15% of people living in the richest country on Earth are going through life hungry.
No one should have to go to bed hungry in this country. Hungry people shouldn’t rely on the kindness of middle and lower class people to start food drives. World hunger shouldn’t even be a thing, but when it comes to America specifically, it’s especially true. There is enough money and resources in this country to feed us all.
The sadistic irony in all of this, is that when people are strapped financially, they have to stretch their dollars. So when it comes to healthy food, many have to skimp, relying instead on capitalist fast food chains to survive. Only, those fast food chains are notoriously unhealthy, especially when eating it more often than one should. It leads to health problems down the road, and when you couple that with the fact that many people don’t have the money to cover healthcare costs, it’s a vicious cycle that currently has no end in sight.
Money is tight? Eat McDonalds. Your cholesterol is raised as a result of eating McDonalds? Go see a doctor. What’s that? You don’t have coverage? Sucks for you.
People are dying unnecessarily in this country so that rich people can become even richer. That’s the bottomline.
Politically
Capitalism is inherently abhorrent; but when coupled with political corruption - its most lethal accelerant - it’s given the platform to do catastrophic damage.
We are governed by corporations in this country. They write the laws.
They buy the politicians, the politicians sign into law pieces of legislation beneficial to the people paying them off, and as such, the real lawmakers in this country are the bankers and CEOs.
Wall Street is “too big to fail.” The auto industry is “too big to fail.” Financial institutions that have become so large, and have entangled themselves so deeply into the fabric of our country, that we can’t allow them to take a hit. The middle class has to shoulder the weight. We’re the ones who have to bail them out when their greed gets excessive to the point of sending our economy into a depression.
Politicians look the other way on senseless school shootings and mass shootings at large because gun manufacturers and the NRA pay them to. Because again, capitalism is about maximizing profits.
Sensible gun control? Hard pass. That would limit the ability to sell guns. It would limit the ability to maximize profits. Can’t do it. Thoughts and prayers are free, though. So help yourself to some of those.
Never mind the fact that no other country on Earth has an epidemic of mass shootings. The real problem is that none of these innocent people had guns. They should buy some! That’ll teach a mentally unstable person not to do something mentally unstable. We just need to arm more people. It’s that simple!
They even use topics like gun control to divide us culturally. They’ve made it a partisan issue to believe that less people should be dying from guns.
Why? Because if we’re fighting amongst each other, we’re too distracted to see that we’re all getting taken advantage of by the same system. Whether you identify as conservative or liberal, we’re all feeling the brunt of capitalism’s evils.
Politicians need those culture wars to survive. To take away from the fact that they receive benefits the rest of us don’t. They receive healthcare that we pay for. Then they get in front of a camera and explain to the American people why we can’t have the same thing.
The 2017 tax cut that was shamelessly created to help the rich get even richer, is actually worse than expected, according to New York Times opinion columnist and economic professor Paul Krugman:
it certainly made most Americans poorer. While 2/3 of the corporate tax cut may have gone to U.S. residents, 84 percent of stocks are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population. Everyone else will see hardly any benefit.
Meanwhile, since the tax cut isn’t paying for itself, it will eventually have to be paid for some other way – either by raising other taxes, or by cutting spending on programs people value. The cost of these hikes or cuts will be much less concentrated on the top 10 percent than the benefit of the original tax cut. So it’s a near-certainty that the vast majority of Americans will be worse off thanks to Trump’s only major legislative success.
None of this even begins to tackle all the members of Trump’s administration that are former lobbyists or bankers that are basing their policy agendas on enriching themselves and their friends. Nor the fact that Trump and his administration looked the other way on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, purely because they have shared financial interests with Saudi Arabia.
A big part of running a successful campaign in this country involves having the capital needed to do so. Once again, the donor class and Super PACs throw their financial support behind politicians that are Wall Street-friendly, essentially tipping the scales in what should be a fair democratic process.
Some of them have begun cutting the middleman out and running themselves. Trump did it in 2016, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has decided to do the same now.
People that are bored after accomplishing virtually everything they set out to accomplish, rich beyond imagination, and looking to become richer. That’s their qualification. “I’m rich. I know what I’m doing. I ran a successful company, so now I should get to run an entire country - the most powerful one on Earth. I have the money for it, so why not?”
Socially/Culturally
And I don’t blame them for trying, or for thinking they can succeed with just that platform alone.
Capitalism isn’t just an economic system in America. It’s a religion. It’s a way of life.
Many of us have been brainwashed to believe that being rich means you’re smarter than most. That you work harder than most. That you’re more qualified.
Forgetting the fact that many of those billionaires were born on third base. Benefitting from being born into a family that was well off. A family that was able to provide the best education money can buy. A family that had business connections and put their child in the right social circles needed to advance in life. A family that may have been outright wealthy, to the point that they could give their child a cool hundred thousand, or even a million, to get their business off the ground. Wealth begets wealth.
It’s not that they were smarter, harder working, or more qualified than the rest of us. They were merely given the tools necessary to compete in a capitalist system.
Of course there are self-made millionaires and billionaires, many of whom are talented and visionary, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re human beings like the rest of us, are still prone to making mistakes, and thus, should not have every word that comes out of their mouth treated as gospel, simply because of their net worth.
We live in a culture that promotes this belief of an “American Dream” - that if you work hard enough, you’ll get by in life. Again, that’s a lie.
Plenty of people are working two or three jobs, just to survive. Their paychecks don’t reflect the output of labor they’re producing.
And yet, for a lot of us, we still think taxing the rich at an appropriate rate is a punishment.
When Elizabeth Warren unveiled her plan to tax the ultra wealthy; a plan that would reportedly produce $2.75 trillion dollars over 10 years, it was met with overwhelmingly positive response, but there were still segments of the population who opposed it. And not just the people who would get taxed! Middle class Americans!
Reading the comments to her tweet about taxing the rich was met with nausea-inducing comments.
When you have middle class people defending billionaires, capitalism has done a phenomenal job of keeping its people in the dark.
Never mind that the elites will never live long enough to spend even a quarter of the money they own, and that taxing billionaires doesn’t make them any less billionaire-y - people defend billionaires because they think they’ll be one some day.
They think the capitalist system is a free and fair market that allows anyone to make it big. A belief that we all have a chance. Avoiding the harsh reality that your zip code, more than anything else, will determine your future.
These middle and working class people don’t realize the very system they’re defending is the same one keeping them down. It’s the same one shrinking the very class they belong to.
But they continue fighting for the rich. They continue admiring them. They continue envisioning themselves as them. It doesn’t stop them from buying the latest phones and designer sneakers, most likely made through child labor, just to feel an ounce richer. To feel like they’re legitimately wealthy, if only for a second.
The little spending money some of us have, is often used to put on a facade. To take a moment to feel just a tad bit better about our work a day lives. While the wealthy buy politicians to pass legislation that keeps most of us struggling, a lot of us are content with having a few dollars to splurge every now and again. A temporary high that keeps us just satisfied enough to remain complacent.
And it’s not just our rabid consumerism that exacerbates the issue, it’s our collective acceptance of being a product ourselves.
Tech companies sell our personal data for financial gain without any government oversight. It’s how social media platforms are able to remain free, and why the second you make a post about traveling to the Bahamas, you coincidentally start seeing all sorts of online ads for cheap tickets and hotel accommodations for the Bahamas. We are the product.
There’s really nowhere capitalism can go after that, when the very people it exploits to make products and buy products also become products. We’re through the looking glass at this point. Capitalism has become a satire of itself.
Environmentally
Last, but definitely not least, is capitalism’s effect on climate change. We often hear about climate change in a way that suggests that we’re contributing to it as individuals. It’s those damn plastic straws we’re all using. We need to ban them. Grocery bags, too. We’re killing the environment.
Actually, 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions.
Now I’m not suggesting individuals can’t affect climate change - we should all be making sacrifices for the betterment of ourselves and future generations. But make no mistake - it’s corporations that need to do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
New York Times opinion columnist Benjamin Y. Fong says it clearly:
The real culprit of the climate crisis is not any particular form of consumption, production or regulation but rather the very way in which we globally produce, which is for profit rather than for sustainability. So long as this order is in place, the crisis will continue and, given its progressive nature, worsen. This is a hard fact to confront. But averting our eyes from a seemingly intractable problem does not make it any less a problem. It should be stated plainly: It’s capitalism that is at fault.
It’s the vicious circle at play again. Coal lobbyists and oil magnates are knowingly destroying the environment. They’re making billions of dollars a quarter, just as capitalism intended. None of them are going to suddenly grow a conscience and shut down their companies for the sake of the environment, so they pay off politicians (Republicans) to deny climate change outright. To muddy the waters of information. To suggest that we don’t really know yet if climate change is real, or if it is, we can’t say for sure we’re the ones causing it. And since these politicians are bought, they refuse to pass legislation that limits emissions and pushes for greener alternatives.
One Forbes contributor believes humanity will starve by 2050 if capitalism is left unchecked. With the world’s population expected to grow to 10 billion by that year, and species going extent at a rate 1,000 times faster than what’s natural, there simply won’t be enough resources to adequately provide the world as a whole.
When I say capitalism is unsustainable, I mean it’s unsustainable. Not for America - for the planet.
And it gets better.
Because these corporations aren’t stupid, and they know that climate change is very real, they once again, see a business opportunity.
That’s right. Corporations will be monetizing climate change by creating new products.
Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. said it matter-of-factly:
As the climate changes, there will be expanded markets for products for tropical and weather related diseases including waterborne illness.
Capitalism is wasteful and environmentally dangerous; and their answer to that, is to create a variety of products for consumers to buy to combat the problems capitalism itself is responsible for creating.
Again; through the looking glass, beyond satire. We’re living in a cheesy B-movie that’s a little too on the nose at this point.
Conclusion
So yeah, capitalism sucks, and most likely will kill us all. Humanity itself faces a very real threat of extinction if things don’t change in the next few years. That being said, as much as I’ve bashed billionaires and plutocrats in this article, there is one person from that class I’d like to quote. Someone who can sum up everything I’ve written with a mere few sentences.
Early Amazon investor Nick Hanauer, a self-described 0.1 percenter.
Today's neoliberal orthodoxy teaches us that inclusion and justice are luxuries. That health and education should be left to the mercy of the free market, available only to those who have the money to pay for them. That ever-lower taxation on the richest will only benefit economic growth. But this view is wrong and backward.
You know things are bad when the people benefitting from the system are just as scared of that system’s future as the rest of us are.
This exclusive, highly unequal society based on extreme wealth for the few may seem sturdy and inevitable right now, but eventually it will collapse.