Consumers are the engine that drives the American economy
As children, we learned valuable lessons from fables. One in particular stands out today, the fable about the man who killed the goose that laid golden eggs. It taught us that greed can cause people to destroy that which is benefitting them in a vain attempt to accelerate the benefits.
FDR was elected president at a time of great economic turmoil. He realized that the goose laying golden eggs was the American working class. By nurturing them, he he helped them become consumers which, in turn, healed the economy. The newly born consumer class grew, prospered, and fueled the growth of many resulting new industries and companies. The goose was doing an excellent job.
But eventually industry succumbed to greed. Big businesses grew bigger and they started killing off smaller (and therefore weaker) businesses. They used a portion of their profits to buy even more power in Washington. Corporate executives ceased viewing their companies as servants of the consumers. Instead, they came to view consumers as merely a means to their goal of accelerated and expanding profits. As the wealth and power of corporate executives expanded globally, many concluded that laying off American workers and shipping their jobs overseas where labor is cheap would make them even richer. The goose’s goose was cooked.
Now, big business is in a tailspin because there is not enough American income or spending to sustain their existence, much less their profits. Corporate executives, Wall Street speculators, and the politicians they’ve been sleeping with all act as if there was no way to predict this day of reckoning. Apparently they were all absent, or not paying attention, on the day everyone else heard the fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Let’s hope “change we can believe in” includes a renewal of the understanding that American consumers are the engine that drives the American economy. Any business executive or politician that promotes practices or policies that abuse American consumers should be shown the door, including some jailhouse doors. They are, after all, the culprits responsible for the fix we are in today. I say, “Power to the goose!”
Doc Holliday
Lake St. Louis
Doc Holliday:
“Let’s hope “change we can believe in” includes a renewal of the understanding that American consumers are the engine that drives the American economy. Any business executive or politician that promotes practices or policies that abuse American consumers should be shown the door, including some jailhouse doors. They are, after all, the culprits responsible for the fix we are in today. I say, “Power to the goose!””
Are you of the Loopy Land opinion that NINJA loans promoting real estate consumerism among those who were dust beneath a pauper’s feet were abusing American consumers? That Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac along with Wall Street thieves trading and profiting in worthless promises to pay from “consumers” were somehow abusing them? From where I sit, it looks like excessive consumerism is quite harmful if not destructive to our society. I’m sorry I can’t give you specific directions but I would encourage you to find a way back through the looking glass.
Doc
Morning nd happy New Years.
Good post
“I say, “Power to the goose!”
I have heard “Power to the People”, but this is the first ever of “Power to the goose”. I that a “green thing” for gree power is getting trendy.
If there’s no consumer purchasing (like now!), and lowered or reduced or no new investment in businesses (like now!)and no demand for goods and services which reduces wages and jobs (like now!), the only place to have stimulation of the economy is through new government domestic spending.
The GOP has vested our economic future in reduced tax revenues which are supposed to have the rich make more investment and stimulate the economy. The GOP plan ignored the general buying power of the middle class and that taking from the poor and the middle class and giving to the rich isn’t going to get our economy moving. In one fell swoop, the GOP split the “c” of consumers, the “d” of demand, and the “i” of investment out of the economy. The rest of the GOP plan is to strip the government of its ability to make investments into the economy to stimulate middle class buying power, employment, and investment so as to keep the other classes down where they belong, working at Wal*Mart for little pay or benefits.
At its source, the GOP economic policy has a preternatural antipathy to unions and other orgnizations which boost middle class purchasing power and independence from the vagaries of their bosses desires for increased profits at the expense of workers’ wages, safety and health care. We see this in the narrow vested GOP interests which have successfully opposed loans to the US auto industry unless there are union wage concessions to make wages in places other than the right-to-work South the same as in right-to-work states.
Government is unfortunately the only part of the economic equation which at this time can effectively make new investments, create demand and stimulate consumer spending. The use of federal dollars for New Deal or Eisenhower-types of construction projects seems most appropriate, and should focus on our energy infrastructure, educational infrastructure, as well as our transportation infratructure to spread the benfits aof the new domestic spending cross the broadest numbers of our citizens.
Tim Hogan:
“At its source, the GOP economic policy has a preternatural antipathy to unions and other orgnizations which boost middle class purchasing power and independence from the vagaries of their bosses desires for increased profits at the expense of workers’ wages, safety and health care.”
Preternatural antipathy is in the eye of the beholder. Have you ever seen a case of organized labor reducing or eliminating the vagaries of their bosses desires for increased profits? Every negotiation I’ve ever seen or heard of, the bosses retain the profit level they desire or liquidate their business and any improvement in workers’ wages, safety and health care come at the expense of customers who have no seat at the bargaining table and may not be fortunate enough to own a business or be a part of the organized labor group extorting higher prices from them.
You fantasize organized labor as heroic figures, dressed as Canadian Mounties like Dudley Do-Right and I see them as a pack of wild jackals, preying on the weakest among us and just as determined to grab as much for themselves as those evil bosses suffering under those dreaded vagaries disorders.
Why, in the name of Samuel Gompers, would a union want to destroy, reduce, illiminate or “liquidate” their employer’s profits and force the business which employs them into bankruptcy?
Average worker in “RTW” states earn $6500 less a year than workers in other states.
Black union members earn 30% more a week than non-union blacks. Women earn 35% more.
In “RTW” states 21% more workers are without health insurance than in free-bargaining states.
“RTW” states spend $1700 less per elementary/secondary stuudent.
Infant mortality is 18% higher in “RTW” states and the poverty rate is 22% higher (from the GOP who hates unions and pretends to care about unborn children).
And the big kicker…In “RTW” states the job-site mortality rate is 51% higher…”Don’t tell me it’s not safe, climb the damn scaffold or get sit-canned.”
Unions hurt our economy and hurt American workers…Want to buy a bridge?
PS…In 2004, every “RTW” state voted for Bush. Talk about cutting your own throats. Of course these are states where businesses rule and the electorate are less educated….They’re taking advantage of by the GOP.
Not a Sage, unions are not a fantasy as my heroic figures; they are my grandfather and father who worked to organize the quarries in St. Louis, and my sister who worked to organize the Catholic Elementary School Teachers’ Association, and my other brothers and sisters who worked and work union jobs to deliver our mail, cut our meat, sell our groceries, clean our workplaces and made America into a place where nine of 10 kids from a middle class family can go to college (for the first time!)and get a degree, and all 10 have a piece of the American dream.
I will never forget the contributions that organizesd labor has made to the greatness of America. To do so would be to deny the contributions my own family have been fortunate enough to make to our great nation. My only regret about unions is that I have never had the privilege of having a union card for my jobs but, now as an attorney I do what I can to preserve and protect and respect working people. Chief among my tasks is to bear witness to the contributions unions have made to my family’s success and that of our nation.
I never knew there was a law that said you couldn’t be successful without the aid of a union. Hell I know hundreds of people that are comfortable middle to upper class and few if any have ever belonged to a union.
You boys need to realize that the unions aren’t the end all be all of America. There are plenty of people making good livings without them.
If 3 of us were on an island, 1 gathered water, 1 gathered berries and 1 (the consumer) was the drinker & eater, I’m not sure I see him as much of an engine. Products don’t sell to non-consumers, but far from being a goose, too many of us are not much more than goslings.
Tim, nice post.
My brother is also an attorney. His opportunities were provided by the help of union wages from my father. I’m very grateful you remember your roots. How many college graduates who were helped by a strong [unionized] middle-class turned their backs on the working people just to impress their anti-union and pro-management bosses?
Looney can’t tie the connection between union jobs that pay well and good jobs without union representation. If he works, he thinks his wages and benefits are a result of his brilliance.
Garrison, I’m self-employed. I am the only employee as well. I have the responsibility to do it all. If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. Somedays I work 14-16 hours. Others, I don’t work at all. Somedays I make several thousand dollars, Some days I lose money. I pay my own healthcare and save for my own retirement. I am in complete control of my own destiny. I will sink or swim on my own accord.
I was drinking a few beers with one of my best buddies Saturday. He’s a union tile setter. He hasn’t worked steady in nearly a year.
I’ve got a friend or two in every trade union in St. Louis. To a man, I am better off financially than every single one of them. I wouldn’t trade places with any of them regardless of a perceived perk the union may offer.