The richest three men in the US have more wealth than 150 million US citizens. The top 1% has more wealth than 99%. Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of the voluminous “Capital,” describes neoliberalism as an inequality machine..
According to neoliberal theory, the higher the profits, the greater the investments and the more jobs. In truth, profits have exploded and investments have stagnated. With their enormous profits, corporations speculate on foreign currencies and buy back their own stock. The poor and unemployed are blamed for their misery that arises through bad decisions and weak motivation. The neoliberal system with its myths of the self-healing market, efficient financial markets, wages as a cost factor and labor as expendable and replaceable is held to be sacrosanct.
The state should serve the public interest and yet private or special interests are often in the driver’s seat. Education, health care and housing should be rights and not privileges. Water quality, food safety, public airwaves, social security, minimum wage protection, food stamps are state responsibilities when people fall under the wheel. Market failure happens when industries become oligopolistic or monopolistic and competition falls by the wayside. State failure happens when private debts become public debts, when trillions of taxpayer monies are given to the big banks that are stylized as “too big to fail.” State failure is marked by the domination of economic interests where the state becomes the “errand boy of the banks” (cf. Bill Moyers). Corporate profits are confused with community welfare.
“Taxes is the price we pay for civilized life,” said Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Most mammoth multinational corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase and Boeing shift tens of billions of profits to tax havens or miniature states like the Cayman Islands, the Bermudas, Lichtenstein, Luxemburg, Switzerland, or Delaware. With aggressive tax planning, profits are shifted and double non-taxation occurs. States and cities suffer with revenue shortfalls forcing drastic cuts to services necessary for lower and middle-income folks.
Neoliberalism is an ideology magnifying competition and the market that mutates into a quasi-natural law. Private corporate bankruptcy is transformed into a public debt and responsibility. Workers are called “cost factors” and speculators and financiers are described as “achievers.” To prevent the collapse of capitalism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created more than 4 million jobs in two months, built 170K public buildings, schools, libraries and community centers and built 660K miles of roads.
The state must be an active and social state and not an activating and punishing state. With the wonders of digitalization and information technology, working hours could be reduced, roles exchanged, the public sector expanded, the financial sector shriveled and the productivity gains shared. In 1938, the economist John Maynard Keynes thought a 15-hour work week would be enough. The 26 community centers in Vancouver B.C. have a cushioning and multiplying effect and serve as surrogate counseling and learning opportunities where working and non-working persons feel included in the modern
project. Public banks as in O Canada could finance vital investments in housing, transportation and health care and avert the speculative “black hole.”
Economic reductionism threatens when competition and the market are made into idols that are without alternative. All personal and corporate success is based on state investments in roads, schools, hospitals, libraries, touch screens and the Internet. How can we humanize and democratize economic life so nature and workers have rights and work becomes more person-oriented? Will the future be person-oriented or thingoriented?
Learning from history is a mark of being civilized. Vancouver B.C. built its computeroperated light rail “Sky Train” in 1986 when Reagan and the US were attacking Nicaragua as a threat to the world. Twice as many jobs can be created in education compared to the military. Intercultural learning enables us to change our view of human life and encourage everyone to radically different career choices. People could exchange roles and have many opportunities as writers, editors, translators and “cloud workers.” Qualitative growth could replace quantitative growth as we accept life on a finite planet with limited resources. State investments could make all the difference on whether we head for a human and environmentally-friendly future or exploding inequality with a tiny elite benefiting from the technological changes.