Or, just the opposite, Big Greed is expensive. In fact, the entire industry is expensive because all the competitor corporations are part of Big Greed, which has formed an industry association, and paid millions of dollars to lobbyists to get laws passed so they alone can provide a regulated service. The $$$ spent on the lobbyists comes back to Big Greed hundreds and thousands fold in the form of extraordinary profits. For human person consumers: Think medical insurance, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, credit cards. For self-employed human person businesses: Think business insurance and business services required by law.
Once we look beyond the myth that Big Greed loves you, and is treating you like gold, the truth is clear. Big Greed treats human persons as the inhuman abstraction consumers. If you live, get hurt or die, Big Greed doesn't care. There will always be another you to exploit. But finding another original equipment manufacturer that appreciates their premium widgets, that's another story.
When Big Greed dumps us all into the kettle labeled consumers it makes us faceless chattel to be exploited. Yes, Big Greed owns the consumer. It can and does manipulate the rules of trade. Everyday it creates false desires and sells products that promise more than they can ever deliver. They don't call it deceptive trade practices; they call it advertising. But that's the least of it.
Big Greed wants, and currently gets, a disproportionate share of the wealth, wealth created by you the consumer.
Consumer? Wait a second, that doesn't sound quite right because no consumer creates wealth, only workers can do that. Consumers can't spend us into a thriving economy, only workers can add value, and with their hard work create a thriving economy, one where human persons earn and spend.
You remember now. You're not just a consumer. You're much more.
Only workers can find, extract and refine raw materials. Only workers can take materials and make them into useful products. Only workers can build the shelter and machines. Only workers can operate the machines. It's the workers that clean up the mess, direct the traffic, grow the food, transport the goods, prepare the food, draw the plans, educate the young, care for the ill, keep others safe, provide the art and entertainment, do the research, conduct the experiments, purify the waste water, care for the live stock, butcher the meat, and install and maintain the conduits for the basic utilities.
Then why is it, right now, in the United States of America, we reward workers less than ever before? And why have we abandoned the economic engines, that formerly employed millions of American workers, to other less developed countries? (See answer above: externalities.)
Why is it that policy wonks, straight faced, state an obvious oxymoron: the way to fix the economy is for consumers to spend? Why is it that while Big Greed grabs the lion's share of the wealth derived from those who performed the labor, workers continue to be called consumers?
The answer is it's Big Greed's Dream.
In Big Greed's Dream there are no workers. There are only consumers. And in Big Greed's Dream, Big Greed sucks up all the wealth it can by stealing it in unregulated financial markets, by flinching on coverage promised for insurance bought and paid for, by letting consumers pay for the environmental clean-up, by pillaging the spoils of war, by creating entities called corporations that never die and, therefore, need never return money borrowed and equity invested, and by manipulating markets that drive "self-employed" workers out of business leaving all but Big Greed's "national brand" options available.
How's Big Greed's Dream working for you Mr.& Ms. Consumer?
Yes, there are things you can do if you don't care for Big Greed's Dream. Unfortunately, believing that President Obama is going to do them for you is not one of them.
Human people can start by considering these Three Rules for Ending Big Greed's Tyranny:
1) Recognize the actions of Big Greed in your life.
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