{"id":10104,"date":"2015-07-16T06:53:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T11:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10104"},"modified":"2015-07-16T06:53:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T11:53:59","slug":"when-capitalism-turns-to-cannibalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10104","title":{"rendered":"When Capitalism Turns to Cannibalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Capitalism Turns to Cannibalism<\/a><\/h3>\n

With authentic growth scarce, there’s no other way to reap huge profits but cannibalism.<\/i><\/p>\n

When people say “capitalism has failed” or “capitalism has succeeded,” we have to ask: what type of capitalism do you mean?<\/b>\u00a0Authentic 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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/b>\u00a0But let’s face it, authentic capitalism occupies a diminishing corner of the U.S. and global economies.<\/p>\n

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:\u00a0Endangered Species: The Self-Employed Middle Class<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The political and financial influence of small business and the self-employed barely registers on K Street, Wall Street and in Washington D.C.<\/b>\u00a0Politicos 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.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the real world, small business is in decline while corporate money floods the financial sector and Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0published a study that found\u00a0U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they\u2019re being created<\/a>. While not exactly a surprise, this is sobering evidence that small enterprise is in structural decline:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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?\u00a0Authentic capitalism, in which capital is placed at risk to earn a return in a competitive, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2309,111,7318,127,182,7317,2128,7316,4924,860,865],"class_list":["post-10104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-cannibalism","tag-capitalism","tag-cartel-state-capitalism","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-crony-capitalism","tag-finance-capitalism","tag-free-market","tag-monopoly-capitalism","tag-oftwominds","tag-wall-street","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10105,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10104\/revisions\/10105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}