Greed For The Moment

Throughout our lives we hear about the need to think ahead, but I'm not sure we can really do that, most of us anyway, at least not enough of us or far enough into the future. When I was in school in the 1960s, there was talk of computers being the way of the future and that students needed to choose training for that future. Some heeded that advice from those with the foresight into the developing computer advances, but too few, in my opinion, including myself, took the advice. It's a tough sell telling people, especially when we're young, that we need to do such and such for the future. For young people the future is the next school dance, the next school sporting event or the next legal holiday when school will be closed. With the wealthiest of Americans, some people ask, "Can't they see where their greed is leading?" So will greed for the moment threaten to later bring down dog-eat-dog capitalism? No question about it, the money is going to the top of the income ladder, but is there a point where that top rung of the ladder collapses from the weight of all the wealth up there?

Technology and the sending of sectors of the economy out the country for cheap labor and ways to get around workplace and environmental regulation can only go so far, as the resulting consequences of stagnant or declining wages for so many Americans come home to roost. It's a vicious cycle, with lower wages requiring cheaper goods for lower paid workers to be able to afford to buy them, but with the increased profits going to the top, where few seemingly can see, or want to see, from that lofty perch, that the Titanic is heading for an iceberg.

The growing income gap is not just about technology and the decline in manufacturing, but also about the  financial sector, which has expanded as a part of the economy for the last several decades. As finance expanded, it began to need more income to sustain the big and increasing salaries in the industry, as well as its growing workforce. The financial sector makes money a number of ways, two of which obviously are through fees for various services and commissions on transactions. How do you collect more commissions? By selling more stocks and bonds. How do you get people to invest more in stocks and bonds? You show them profits. How do you show them more profits? By selling more of something and by cutting costs to increase margins. As you can see, it's not a big leap to "cutting wages and benefits by shipping jobs and production to places where costs are low, thus increasing profits." If true wealth is measured by tangible items; that is, things we can actually touch and which usually have some endurance, what does the financial sector produce for Americans? Not a hell of a lot, although it can be involved in helping produce wealth and it IS important. We've seen a similar situation with the growth in lawyers, as a number of Americans poured into law schools to be trained in legal matters, a profession that typically pays well above average income. What happened? Lawsuits went wild, as the expanding legal profession needed more business to pay for all of the added lawyers and incomes. The action of the financial and legal sectors is not a terribly tough one to figure out folks, as at its heart, it is about self interest.  

Hm, I don't know about you, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the need for more income brought about risky ventures in the financial sector, especially after protections against nonsense were removed in the 1999/2000 era.  If such risky ventures pay off, those involved can make big money, but when they fail or are so misguided, as was the mortgage fiasco, LOOK OUT, but it was greed for the moment, "we want money NOW!" Few, if any, at the top paid no real penalty and they certainly did not spend any time in prison, although their schemes almost brought down the entire world economy. In the end, to halt a potential collapse of world finance, governments, including the U.S., first under George W. Bush and then under Barack Obama, stepped in with money; that is, taxpayer money, to bolster the teetering financial system. So the rewards up to that point went to millionaires and billionaires, but the losses were covered by that dreaded entity ... GOVERNMENT; that is, society. Amazingly, many in the upper class speak against socialism, but I guess that only counts when they aren't the ones getting "socialized." (In fairness here, a good deal of the "bailout money" has been paid back.)

Most Americans can't save the necessary amount, if anything, for retirement. It's easy for the wealthy to talk about people needing to save money for retirement, they have money ANY TIME.* There is a high proportion of Americans living essentially paycheck to paycheck, a very dangerous situation (some say 3/4 of all Americans, but even if that's a bit high, and it's "only" 2/3, that's still not great either). Lack of savings makes Social Security mandatory, as it's the only thing to keep many older Americans from being totally destitute, and Medicare and Medicaid, both targets of the superegos and their right wing allies, provides needed medial care to the elderly, the poor and the disabled. Many Americans fiddle while their own personal Rome burns, oblivious to the scheming of the rightists and fascists who can't stand the fact that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are shared national programs. They want control and their cut of the action. Don't be fooled by "privatization" talk, meant only to open the door to the treasure chest for the wealthy interests. They always seek to make matters about money with the euphemism "free markets," because then they can control it; "free markets"=control by the wealthy, not anything else, there's no other definition. To the wealthy, Social Security just can't be right because it is in part financed by lower interest rate securities. To wealthy and financial people who love to talk about "yields" on stocks and bonds, that's almost criminal, because their own personal sense of business, driven by human greed (we all have it to some extent) just can't accept that. They lack the ability to grasp anything that isn't solely about making money.** They have to be regulated by us, because they can't self regulate; many lack the perspective necessary to do so. It often tends to be "greed for the moment." In one episode of "Gilligan's Island," the castaways are threatened by an active volcano. When the Professor needs a timing device for a bomb to act as a counter to the volcano, super millionaire Mr. Thurston Howell III SELLS him a clock. Even in the face of danger or death, he just couldn't give up that business idea of making a profit on something. It may only have been a television comedy, but there's an underlying truth there. All well and good to talk about the future, but people live in the present.

* America really took off as a "consumer" driven nation in the 1920s. Mass production of various goods needed a market to sell those goods, which brought investment in mass marketing to "encourage" Americans to buy products. Consumer credit (often called "charge accounts" back then) expanded tremendously to allow Americans to buy products on credit and pay for them in installments. The increasing spread of electricity and the invention of several electrical devices, like refrigerators, radios and mixers, saw sales skyrocket, and profits for companies soared too, but wages did not soar so much. After an intense run-up, the whole thing took a major nosedive in a little event termed the Great Depression. So when I say Americans cannot always save for retirement, what I mean is, many people make bad choices, buying things to "keep up with the Joneses," but then again, there are pulls and tugs at us going on all of the time. Self esteem is certainly in play, as some folks try hard to be seen as "cool" and part of "what's happnin'." On the other hand, those preaching for Americans to save are trying to have it both ways; that is, they want us to spend, spend, spend to buy their products and services, but then they preach about too much credit and too little savings. What the right balance is, I don't know, but I believe I'm safe in saying, "we aren't in balance, nor have we been, for quite some time."

** To add some balance, the opposites can't understand about human greed, let alone big money greed, and they seem to think things get financed from thin air. There is balance here somewhere, folks, but finding it is often difficult, especially in the last several decades of  the "greed is good" mentality.  

WORD HISTORY:
Wight-This ultimate origin of this now generally archaic word is unknown, and "apparently," besides forms in the Germanic languages, it has some connection with Slavic (Russian "vesc" and Old Church Slavonic "vesti," both meaning "thing, matter"), but it is related to English "whit," (small object, particle).^ Old Germanic had "wihktiz," which seems to have meant "substance, matter." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "wiht," with the meaning "person, being, creature." Other forms in Germanic are: German "Wicht" (small child, rascal, imp, little creature); Low German "Wicht" (young girl); Dutch "wicht" (child, small creature); Swedish "vätte" (imp, gnome). I did not find a form in Frisian, but sources on this close relative of English are not exactly abundant, so such a form may well exist, or like English, it could now be archaic. Further I could not find forms in Danish, Icelandic or Norwegian.  

^ Now more commonly used in an expression like, "I don't even care one whit about it."   

^^ For the use of "wight" as part of the word that became modern "not," see:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/08/success-not-excess.html