Jandos Rothstein
A pinch of cardamom, guided by aroma and intuition. A dollop of Mama’s signature dahi, or curd, as they say. And, as a garnish: her homemade paisley pattern conceived by chopped coriander sprinkled in seamless circles. One of a kind. Irreplaceable—or so I thought. Now, Mama’s Indian delicacies turned into takeout—the essence of her cuisine wiped by the amber hue of its greasy counterpart—as she rushed to take the subway to her part-time job. Gone were the days where Baba’s earnings would suffice; after school, I, too, labored at the nearby Halal store, hoping to make ends meet. When Mama’s sweet cardamom turned into our scarlet-cracked fate, we accepted it—we had succumbed to the cyclical coercion of the working poor.
Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, by Robert B. Reich
And it wasn’t just us. We were a part of a greater movement—a constituency of 47 million Americans that already works diligently, yet remains embedded in grassroots poverty. Heartfelt pain entrenched in a culture of subhumanity was our newfound normalcy. And, without a doubt, there was just one perpetrator: the systemic alliance between Washington and the wealthy that regulates the invisible hand over capitalism—to spiral gains to the top and stagnate the status quo.
“Put simply, large corporations and Wall Street have gained substantial power over market rules that generate outcomes favoring them,” says Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under the Clinton administration, and author of a variety of books, including Saving Capitalism. A compelling treatise concerning amplifying inequality in the public sphere, Reich’s publication shines light on the disenfranchisement of the masses and a lack of inclusive stakeholding in fiscal and policy-based well-being.
At its core, Saving Capitalism provides a timely answer to why Mama’s curries no longer marked the table, or why Baba’s tireless labor simply wasn’t enough: the broken system of American capitalism that is in need of an urgent remedy. Certainly, Reich’s assessment of ludicrous, profit-driven markets and the arbitrary rules of today’s economy hold significant merit—and are further bolstered by his evidence-based framework, holistic scrutiny, and transparent conclusions.
Reich’s fundamental, baseline argument is the lack of prevalence of the debate between the free market and government intervention. Simply put, “government doesn’t ‘intrude’ on the ‘free market.’ It creates the market.” Take the issue of intellectual property, for example. While free-market enthusiasts would claim that the prospect of patents and copyrights incentivizes innovation, some entity needs to create the guidelines for the conceptual properties in the first place. And it’s certainly not helping that Congress extended the longevity of copyrights from 14 years to 95 years from the first publication—allowing corporations to create intellectual-property portfolios and spend billions on litigation and countersuing.
Furthermore, even in seemingly self-regulating processes like bankruptcy, the government is compelled to establish parameters for who and when the practice is applicable. Again, the federal foundation for declaring one’s insolvency is heavily swayed in favor of the elite; corporations find it accessible and beneficial to declare bankruptcy to partially relieve outstanding debts. Corroborating this ideal is Reich’s statistical consideration that “over the last two decades, every major U.S. airline has been through bankruptcy at least once.” Meanwhile, institutional wealth has consolidated the privilege of bankruptcy by actively preventing its ubiquitous use. In fact, when an extension of Chapter 13 bankruptcy for homeowners passed the House in 2009, “the financial industry flexed its muscles to prevent its passage in the Senate.” The long-term consequence of the aforementioned action was five million lost homes and a foreclosure crisis in 2014, but did big business care? Most certainly not; they, as per usual, leveraged their political clout to compel the government to instill a framework that actively protects their interests, regardless of the fallout for the general populace.
With this in mind, Reich is right—“the central American debate … over the seeming choice between the ‘free market’ and ‘government’ … hides a larger reality: the necessary role of government in designing, organizing, and enforcing the market to begin with.” But re-examine that last set of phrases, with an exemplary focus on the derivation of influence: Who influences the design? Who influences the organization? And who influences the enforcement? In the case of all three of those, and virtually every other large-scale decision of the federal government, the answer is moneyed, corrupt interests, composed of Wall Street, corporations, and the wealthy.
In fact, in any of the five blocks of capitalism—property, monopoly, contract, bankruptcy, or enforcement—the affluent have an innate advantage to command favorable political outcomes to compound their respective prosperity. Whether you read that “lobbying for pharmaceutical corporations reached $225 billion in 2013,” or the fact that “50% of top treasury and congressional officials turn to corporate lobbying after their days in Washington,” Reich makes it beyond evident that the wealthy are manipulating the system to bolster their welfare. So that leaves us with the question: How should the government drive change?
First and foremost, the government must end the vicious cycle of corporate growth where “economic dominance feeds political power, and political power further enlarges economic dominance.” While such a process includes marginal steps like mandating transparency of political expenditures, sustaining unions, and shortening the duration of intellectual property, a broad transformation can only be catalyzed through dismantling the precedent put forth by Citizens United v. FEC (2010). As Reich cites, the Citizens United decision ruled that “corporations are people under the First Amendment.” In practice, corporations and unions could spend unlimited amounts on political donations, mechanisms, and advertisements. Certainly, corporations raved that the decision delegated the right to freely make political contributions to unions—constituted of the working class—as well as themselves, thus signifying equitable stakeholding. However, it was merely a false lead; indeed, in 2013, “corporations spent fifty-six dollars on lobbying for every dollar spent by labor unions.”
Instead, the impact of the decision has been—you guessed it—sympathetic to the top 1 percent, who now relish record levels of political influence in Washington. And what about the poor—those members of labor unions who live paycheck to paycheck; well, the Court’s ruling is an outright disservice to them, such that “today 43% of children born into [poor families] in the U.S. will remain [poor] for their entire lives.” Confronted with this cyclical nature of poverty, the government must attack its roots, or in this case, Citizens United v. FEC. Consider this: If corporate entities couldn’t legally donate to political officials or campaigns—meaning that congressional officials would have no direct incentive to lobby for their interests—would 29 pay-for-delay agreements drive Big Pharma wealth when an estimated 50 million Americans couldn’t afford to refill their prescriptions? Or, would cable operators retain an effective monopoly over their industry as 80 percent of Americans complained of access to only one high-capacity option in their region? Worse yet, would the federal government utilize $600 billion of taxpayer funds to bail out Wall Street in the case of a financial collapse? The simple answer to all of these questions: No.
Political power is proportional to monetary impetus, and only the nullification of Citizens United can separate the circuit of wealth-induced influence. But, how? Don’t get me wrong, overturning Supreme Court precedent is a formidable task—yet there’s hope. The case was ruled on the basis of corporations maintaining an autonomous voice; as Reich points out, however, “freedom of speech is the freedom to be heard, and most citizens’ freedom to be heard is reduced when those who have the deepest pockets get the loudest voice.” Citing the aforementioned as a tangible indication of prejudiced expressive abilities, grassroots movements should push the government to rethink and, hopefully, overturn the case.
Nonetheless, the revolving door between Washington and big business will continue to exist—ensuring that political advantages for corporations aren’t completely mitigated. In other words, federal action can only go so far to protect the interests of the general populace; in order to create a truly equitable resolution, ordinary citizens must witness a restoration of the countervailing force. Initially conceptualized by economist John Galbraith, the countervailing force is used by Reich to refer to an active effort of resistance that can be deployed by the masses to combat the force of the wealthy. While Reich is too optimistic in alluding to the potentiality of a third political party or universal basic income to protect the interests of the middle and lower classes, society can take more pragmatic measures to challenge the authority of the elite via a countervailing effort. For example, corporate taxes can be made dependent on the ratio of CEO to normal employee pay, as introduced in the California legislature in 2014, or transfers can be employed within a company, where executives are required to reallocate portions of their bonuses to base-level employees.
Naturally, capitalism needs to be saved—but not by raising tax rates on the highest earners or imposing other so-called burdens on the elite. Rather, we must empower the masses by increased accessibility to resources. History only reaffirms this stance; the successful responses to rectify society both in the Progressive Era and the Depression were largely driven by strengthening the people, rather than taking from the elite.
Ultimately, we are at a critical turning point in the era of capitalism, and now is the time to serve our country’s constituents to equilibrate wealth and prevent long-term domination by a moneyed few.
