Bush Let Down the Little Guy: A Response from Greg Fuller

Ms Tucker :
 
Bush let down the little guy is a great editorial, lots of facts and sound arguments about our current rung on the economic ladder, one might say.
 
  Now let's look at the next logical rung on the ladder, the step knowledgeable wealthy investors don't or at least not in public, acknowledge, even though it's in their own self interest to do so and to change. When it comes to handling economic dislocation, in the fashion of the times, they tell themselves and others, It's the forces of the free market , a Darwinian inevitability and It's the lazy unprepared, the uneducated or the unlucky who are affected , nothing we can or should change . But when hardship hits closer to home , they wake to a new economic religion, for the ideological forebear's it was a FDR, A New Deal to believe in. J.K. Galbraith chronicles this mentality and behavior in his " Culture Of Contentment " as does John Gray in "The False Dawn" and of course, there are the current books by Soros and Krugman that make similar arguments. The will and theme for our own economic awakening is the stuff of future, hopefully not distant. But, back to our ladder.
 
There is an elephant on our ladder and it is, investor profit and wealth will eventually be eviscerated and with it our way of life, if the middle class (the world's most sought after consumer market) continues to decline. How could this be when business profits are soaring one might ask? Well, profits rise when demand for the goods or services that the business is producing increase, or when production costs fall. It is the latter that has given rise to much of the current rise in profits. Cost cutting can not be replicated indefinitely, especially if cutting labor cost is what got you there, it is a less sustainable business model, then say, increasing demand or growing/maintaining a market. Increasing profits by a recurring cutting of labor cost lowers a ladder to the bottom for everyone, consumers, and investors alike.
 
The fundamental truth of our economic system, upon which profitability/viability rest, is that it is incurably circular: Today's lower wage or unemployed worker is tomorrow's former customer or a customer who will force down your profit margins because they can only buy from you at increasingly lower prices, if they can buy at all . To paraphrase the old saying," There Ain't No Free Lunch ". As a society, we can not sustain profits the healthy way i.e. by creating demand for the goods or services, if we are continually reducing consumer purchasing power via layoffs and wage cuts. Won't work, it's a dumb idea - that's mind numbing," it's a pig hunting truffles in a ham factory ".The practices most companies ,oil companies excepted , are using to boost current profits : Squeezing suppliers, moving jobs offshore, predatory pricing or merging with competitors , amounts to rearranging the Titanic's deck chairs .
 
The realities of economic decline/dislocation don't produce hardship in some alternative universe, what should prompt all of us from our collective butt , is the increased likelihood of a greater degree of social and political upheaval than we have presently and that it will grow the further we slide down the economic ladder. Who wants more divisiveness, more crime/prisons, more racial/ethnic and gender hostility, a less educated populace, and a healthcare system failing increasing numbers of people, as our future? No one.
 
The wonderful reality is, we have the means and sociopolitical framework to correct much of the above, that said, it will take visionary and caring stand-up business and political leadership and informed followers to get us out of this  downsprial.
 
Greg Fuller
A BrownWatch Contributor