Written by michael payne   

Corporate profits at all-time highs, CEO’s salaries and bonuses skyrocketing; at the same time millions of unemployed Americans are barely surviving and this nation’s economy remains stagnant and lifeless. How much longer can such a conflicted condition continue until this entire House of Cards collapses?

Yes, something is terribly wrong with capitalism, American style. Those masters of Corporatism who are obsessed with accumulating more and more profits are perfectly content with following their very successful short term agenda and don’t seem to see the future disaster into which they are heading.

That’s what happens when the lust for profits in the short term overrides intelligent planning to guarantee continued success in the longer term. Does anyone really think that these corporations’ executives wrack their brains to come up with ways to improve the American economy? Of course not; their one and only concern is to find more ways to achieve the highest level of profitability and improve their bottom lines, a monumental mistake in the long run.

While these corporations are commonly referred to as Corporate America, they typically don’t act in unison; rather, they act on their own, are extremely competitive and will, without any hesitation, use any tactic or devious scheme, legal, ethical or not, to destroy their competition. If they were joined at the hip and in lockstep, they might realize that their shortsighted, misguided policies are destined to bring about their own demise.

To take that premise further, let’s use the image of “Ouroboros”, an ancient Greek symbol that depicts a snake eating its own tail, to illustrate how these U.S. based corporations will eventually self-destruct if they continue to ignore and defy proven economic principles by allowing their intense greed and obsession with profits to cloud their vision of the future.

When an oil field, gold, silver or copper mine nears the end of its life, it becomes less and less productive and its value diminishes. This is a process in which value is being extracted but no value is being added. But the American economy doesn’t work quite that way. What’s happening is that these U.S. corporate entities gain substantial profits from this consumer-driven economy but adversely impact its stability and growth as they continue to decimate the American workforce. And so, one day these corporations will find that when they eventually cripple this economy they will have crippled themselves.

Here’s a formula that has long been very successful in business operations as related to the American economy: a skilled American workforce + good jobs with decent pay = substantial consumer purchasing power = fueling the economy = great success for American businesses in both the short and longer terms.

That’s the formula that was used for many decades in this country that made it the world’s leading manufacturing power. It was based on consumer-driven purchasing power to build and maintain a strong, growing economy that had no equal in the world.

And what happened thereafter that has taken this nation into its current state of economic stagnation and pathetic growth? Well, let’s say that the masters of Corporatism, aided and abetted by their lackeys in the Congress, radically changed the formula in this way: substitute foreign workers for Americans + transfer the manufacturing of products to China = millions of American jobs lost = a substantial decline in purchasing power = a stagnating economy with no real growth = a future disaster in the making.

Many Americans may not have noticed but these mega-corporations, besides outsourcing manufacturing jobs, have also been aggressively moving customer service jobs, plus those of programmers, system analysts, and accountants to overseas nations, many to India. These corporations don’t intend to pay American workers when they can get the same jobs done at much lower labor costs. So if you’re a programmer you may well be on the way to becoming an endangered species.

So corporations continue to operate in their blinded state of euphoria, their CEOs are receiving massive salaries, stock options and bonuses while American workers see their wages slashed, hours cut, full-time workers become part-timers, sick days and vacation days are reduced or eliminated, and pensions and other benefits disappear. That’s what these predator corporations do to their employees all of which has a negative effect on this economy.

But these CEOs better not get too used to their elevated status and grand lifestyles because as has been true in so many cases, someday before long the chickens are going to come home to roost. In other words those who have played the system to their own advantage and stepped on the necks of their fellow Americans are going to pay for their corporate sins. It’s only a matter of time.

You may have noticed that neither the Congress nor President Obama shows any great concern about the terrible beating that American workers are taking. Congress says nothing and does nothing that could, in conjunction with the business sector, actually create millions of jobs in this country that would, without question, refuel this economy. And Mr. Obama, who now is basically sleepwalking his way to the end of his less than illustrious presidency, occasionally wakes up and states something like this: “We need to create jobs for the American people and we must have the cooperation of the Republicans in Congress to do it.” Nothing comes of it and then he disappears again.

But while we contemplate what the future holds for America something is happening on a higher level with the masters of globalization. And if we think that this current adverse situation is bad, just wait because it’s quite likely to get a lot worse. Most Americans still are not aware of a very secretive global trade agreement in the works called the TransPacific Partnership (TPP). What’s really involved has been tightly guarded but here are some of the facts that have come to light:

There are 12 countries, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States and Vietnam) that are currently part of the development of this global trade agreement. The exact details are secret and even the U.S. Congress hasn’t been informed. But 600 high level corporate representatives have been given access to its recommendations. The issues that have caused the most concern about this agreement involve certain rules which, evidently, would give global corporations the power to bypass nations’ laws, regulations and court systems without any recourse by any government, including that of the United States.

This TPP initiative, being aggressively pursued by the Obama administration, if allowed to become a reality, could, for all practical purposes, spell the end of democracy among the nations of the world, ceding massive power and control over the laws of sovereign nations to the world masters of Corporatism. Those closest to the proceedings are warning that this trade agreement will allow global corporations to run roughshod over what’s left of the American workforce and turn workers into the equivalent of overseas slave laborers who will have no way to combat what is happening and the government will be powerless to protect their rights.

It that’s what these Corporatists are planning for the future they may be in for a massive shock. When will they clearly understand that for every dollar they pay to a Chinese or Indian worker, that’s a dollar that won’t be spent within the American economy? All they need do is to continue to ignore that fact and one day they will find that they are traveling down a one-way street that leads to self-destruction; they will have become victims of their own design, living examples of Ouroboros, the snake that devoured itself.

Michael Payne