Rich vs poor

The free market helps those who help themselves. That’s why the more money you earn, the less it costs you to live. The reason is that basic goods and services are the same price whether you are rich or poor. The toll road charges rich people the same as poor people. A bag of potato chips costs the same no matter how much you make. Same with the electric bill and car insurance. The bills are equal which makes it cheaper for rich people.
 
Free enterprise tips the table in favor of the rich. Understand of course a Las Vegas game of chance that tips the table just 3% towards the house will mint money for the game’s owner. In America today, the table is tipped toward the wealthy and the end result is market monopoly instead of free competition. That’s because the table has been tipped for so long that you need big dollars to get into the game.

Mom and pop are allowed to cut grass and fix transmissions but little else is available. Only the exceptional can enter the national marketplace. Ordinary folks have to get a job, and that’s good. But the hard working laborer who could buy a house and feed his family is a distant memory. Today the working poor are fodder for debt schemes that promise a better time ahead.

Business has always taken your money by con and charm, so what else is new? Ah, what’s new is the sales job they have pulled over the public. The absolute high-water mark of business is that we believe we are helpless to do anything for ourselves or do anything about it.

We must rely on the marketplace. We can’t make our own cheese. It’s too expensive, therefore we must buy it. The latest charm says we can’t even fix our roads and bridges so we must sell them to private enterprise. Instead of using money wisely, we are egged into buying a house with fine appointments. And the marketeers have convinced us we must succeed by avoiding menial labor. Only an ass would need a barn with animals. We are dandies smelling nice, quick with a social grace that effuses our station. We are hip, baby, we don’t have to save money before making a purchase, we just borrow against the future.

The indebtedness drives up the cost for everything. That’s why health care has turned over on the public. It’s because our cult makes us believes a fancier car and bigger house are reasons for living. After all, we’d be foolish to work hard and not have a bunch of shiny stuff.

A frenzy of powerlessness has invaded our lives thoroughly. That is why TV has not changed since it was sold to private enterprise in the 1950’s. Have you tried calling to demand more choice from the TV marketplace? They still produce 60 minute and 30 minute programs just like they did 57 years ago. And in defiance of all probability, each TV affiliate, acting totally independently of the other, runs commercials at the same time each hour.

The free market has not produced innovation because it’s locked shut by private ownership. You’ve been swindled into thinking that TV and radio airwaves belong to the public. It’s true that the airwaves belong to the people. And you used to be able to set up your own broadcast. But no more. They put you in jail if you broadcast a program on the public airwaves. Instead of allowing infinite choice that would come from true public ownership, we are told that all possible programming is being produced for us by the free market. Yet you cannot watch a Tokyo station. Nor a station from Turkey or Egypt. The free market has decided that you’re not interested in that programming. To prove it to yourself, go on-line to You-tube. Compare the unlimited choice of the internet and the handful of choices from TV and radio.  Ask if the TV and radio airwaves are rife with innovation? And then ask what else in the free market has been stagnated by ownership?

Privatization of public resources leads to ownership monopoly that locks you out. And afterwards, the market produces only higher bills and less innovation. Look at your electric bill. The only innovation in electricity is those guys figuring out how to get your monthly payment quicker at less expense for them. And the new owners of your electricity have reduced the number of poles they replace each year. Why would they do that since the older poles blow over in big storms? Innovation is the answer. The electric owners know that public funds will be used to replace the poles following a weather disaster. Therefore you pay twice, and that’s called free market innovation. You are not even allowed to question the poor decisions of electric companies because they have more legal rights than you do.

This is precisely why you can’t shop for medicine in foreign countries yet business can shop your job around the globe. You are tricked into thinking that you need a prescription, instead of medicine. You have been sold a bill of goods that claims you have market freedom when you are being shoved into a pharmacy cattle-chute that pinches out thirty pills costing more this month than last. And each year you have to jump through more hoops to claim a paltry piece of medical care in the greatest country in the world. Yet the rich have ample service and see no reason for change.

The rich argue that the cost of repairing your spleen would cost less if you didn’t need the spleen repaired. It’s the law of supply and demand they claim. Do without because that will reduce the price. Denying service to keep prices high is the pinnacle of marketing innovation wouldn’t you say?

Yep, you have been sold a bill of goods, which is why a bag of potato chips coated with tasty chemicals costs three seventy while a fresh potato costs twenty-three cents.

It’s also why you can’t pay your bills by growing potatoes in your back yard and why you must work for bosses who, each year, demand more and give less. This is the cause of terrorism around the world. Has anybody mentioned that the free market cause terrorism? Has anybody mentioned that the Taliban stopped poppy growing in Afghanistan? The Taliban affronted the free market by ending the supply of heroin. Yes terrorism is resistance to being enslaved by the sugary debt of the free market. Astounding as it seems to our paradigm, some people are actually happy tending goats all day and having no health insurance, unlike us who must be happy with no health insurance while racing between two jobs and praying the car holds out and the baby don’t get sick. Life is tough everywhere, but the monopolists should be taxed enough to put the freedom back in the marketplace again.

Gene Haynes