We Now Live Under The Rule Of A Rentier Capitalism by Paul Street

An excellent essay by Paul Street explaining many of the trends in advanced capitalist societies in the last several decades which have resulted in vastly increased economic inequality within them as compared to the early decades of the Post WWII era. Wealth, income and political influence have become increasingly concentrated in fewer hands, exacerbated by laws and policies which enable such trends. Intellectual property laws, tax laws favoring certain forms of income over others, and ownership of property (physical as well as intellectual) along with how the wealth becomes re-distributed over time, result in more really rich folks and many, many more living in poverty.

Some examples of how this works are easily gleaned when one examines our current health care system and the pharmaceutical industry serve to impoverish so many. Health insurance provided by employers or on an individual basis has gradually (Depending on how one one defines that term) become more costly for employees at the same time as their paychecks have failed to keep up with the cost of living in other areas of their lives. The increasing number of new jobs replacing old jobs but at lower pay and benefits hurts millions. Allowing pharmaceutical companies to prey on captive audiences of people requiring their products to become healthy or just to stay alive (through the use of patent and other laws that enable them to often make windfall profits on their products, regardless of the effect those prices have on those who pay them) ,eams that more people than ever before are just one hospital stay away from lifetime debt and/or bankruptcy.

To date, most countries have done a better job of alleviating the effects of these changes as regards health care than the US has, but the overall extremity of the problem hits other areas of our lives as well. Climate change becomes an even more urgent problem, especially when governments like our current one continue to urge increased consumption of the various energy and other industrial and agricultural methods that speed up the climate change to begin with. To put it simply, we allow a small number of oligarchs to profit tremendously at the expense of the vast mass of humanity with little or no regard for the future.

The solutions to these problems exist, though they have been and will continue to be fiercely opposed by most of the people who have gained control of most of the world’s wealth. The time to slow down, stop and begin to reverse this path of personal and societal destruction is long overdue. Our government and economic system need to become friendlier to us by becoming saner in the ways in which we are all treated by the system, and the ways in which we treat our planet. H/T to Dandelion Salad blog. – RJC

via We Now Live Under The Rule Of A Rentier Capitalism by Paul Street