When Capitalism Turns to Cannibalism
With authentic growth scarce, there’s no other way to reap huge profits but cannibalism.
When people say “capitalism has failed” or “capitalism has succeeded,” we have to ask: what type of capitalism do you mean? Authentic capitalism, in which capital is placed at risk to earn a return in a competitive, transparent marketplace, or do you mean cartel-state capitalism, or crony-capitalism, or monopoly capitalism or finance capitalism, i.e. the types that dominate the global economy?
As long as most startups crash and burn, and anyone with a few bucks and plenty of inner drive can start an enterprise, authentic capitalism still lives. But let’s face it, authentic capitalism occupies a diminishing corner of the U.S. and global economies.
With a work force of 150 million and around 120 million fulltime workers, the U.S. economy has about 6 million small businesses with employees and a few million self-employed (sole proprietors) who earn a middle-class livelihood: Endangered Species: The Self-Employed Middle Class.
The political and financial influence of small business and the self-employed barely registers on K Street, Wall Street and in Washington D.C. Politicos praise small business in the same way they speak of small family farms as the backbone of American agriculture–as a form of pandering for PR purposes while they pocket the big campaign contributions from Monsanto and Big Ag.
Meanwhile, in the real world, small business is in decline while corporate money floods the financial sector and Washington D.C.
The Washington Post published a study that found U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created. While not exactly a surprise, this is sobering evidence that small enterprise is in structural decline:
The 22.4 million with some self-employment income looks like a big number, but most earn a pittance: only a relative few earn what qualifies as a middle-class income, and 3 million of these are professional-sector corporations or partnerships:
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