I once lost my job at a time when my family was young and I needed to be the major breadwinner. I adapted and we made out OK. In my current employment my hours are about to be cut due to the current economy. I will adapt again. It helps that I always have avoided involvement in capital markets as much as possible, not being a fan of gaining capital for doing nothing. Actually, one way I plan to adapt is to accelerate my publishing timetable by self-publishing. I plan to do a lot of touring and self-promoting anyways. Look for Systems out of Balance being available in late February.
The other day I received a very thoughtful comment on deflation that pointed out whole industries were destroyed by a luxury tax (that may be a slight dramatization but I won’t refute the basic implication). I do not support a luxury tax if it targets goods, though I don’t mind government tinkering with capital, since capital markets require government tinkering merely to exist. Yet I don’t give a fig if whole industries collapse, if the collapse is due to government refusing to indulge them.
I know that is not a popular sentiment. I understand the ripple effects throughout an economy when a large corporation goes belly up, and the concern this brings to the middle class. But an ecologist understands that is the consequence of things getting too big. Healthy ecosystems are diverse ecosystems where the flow of matter and energy is diffused through many different species. A healthy economy needs a similar strategy in regards to the flow of production, but we won’t get there if we indulge large corporations, particularly if they engage in part or in whole with “producing” capital out of thin air.
There is something else that few people seem to understand in our modern culture. A person allowed full independence, or a culture, will adapt, survive and even thrive. Adapting is something the human species does remarkably well. Perhaps our greatest era of innovation was the one not recorded. In prehistoric times we started as a species that lived only in Africa and adapted to colonize almost the entire globe. Talk about the massive globalization of resource distribution! Yet in our modern American culture we allow ourselves to be persuaded that we are helpless without business corporations.
No one likes the idea that large corporations were bailed out during these rough economic times. For the record I do not support any bail out of business corporations, though at least the automobile industries produce something besides creating capital out of thin air. Humans have proved over the course of our existence that when our natural rights of independent labor, independent thought and independent belonging thrive, so does our ability to adapt to the environment we find ourselves in. Yet many of the same people who cringe at the thought of government bail outs also are against increasing taxes on the wealthy because they fear the loss of jobs. A comment by a middle class person to that very effect, as reported in a newspaper, was the impetus for this series.
Unfortunately, our natural rights have been swapped for a bunch of cultural entitlements such as property, privacy and security. These are liberties we cannot demand from Nature, but the State obliges us with dubious intent. Instead of retaining independence we have been indulged, with Puppet Libertarians and the Powell Cabal leading the charge. We need only show our appreciation for being indulged by bailing out corporations or allowing the tax burden to shift away from the wealthy to reward greed.
If government endorsed an economic system favoring proprietorships that produced over business corporations that bartered capital, the human species in this culture would have greater independence of labor, thought and belonging. We would not grow dependent on government-licensed, anonymous business corporations with a bottom line of greed to indulge us with our livelihoods, our retirement and even our health. We would have less multinational automobile makers but many more regional automobile makers, started up by that entrepreneurial spirit we allegedly support.
Would we have greater wealth? Probably not. We might even, horror of horrors, fall short of being the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. But we would have less wealth disparity, less greed, less inflation of expensive and essential items, more independence, more diversity, more adaptability, more stability, more diplomacy abroad …. and more middle class folks facing tough times with resolute determination rather than thinking the wealthy should be taxed less so they can indulge us with jobs.
Tags: Economic Misinformation, Free Market Merit, Independence, Middle Class Economics
