 |
|
 |
|
Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 7/9/99 Government doesn't matter anymore. Corporations matter. Which is why you feel so unsure about your economic future, and why you may feel the present is starting to spin out of control. It's also why notions like patriotism and the common good may soon be as dated as eight-track tape players. Remember the movie "Network"? Peter Finch, playing the deranged television commentator, screams "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." His boss meets with him and tells him he's "screwing with the elemental forces of nature." He then patiently tells the Finch character that there is no America, there is no my country 'tis of thee. There is, he tells him, only Exxon and General Motors and those like it. That was in the mid '70's and it was good for a laugh. So why aren't we laughing now? Take your own financial position. Since the economy's been booming, you're probably better off than you were five years ago, at least on paper. But polls show most people feel a vague sense of discomfort and nervousness, but they can't put their fingers on it. Alan Greenspan, as usual, nailed it. The Fed chairman has said inflation remains low for one simple reason---Americans are terrified of losing their jobs, and fewer people than ever belong to unions. So wages remain stagnant because people don't dare offend the corporation they work for by asking for more. It's the corporate state, not the government, in control. Or take foreign policy. The other night on C-SPAN there's a discussion of American foreign policy being chaired by an executive from General Electric. He's doing that for the same reason we've turned a blind eye to China stealing nuclear secrets from us. America's overseas policy is run for the benefit of corporate America. We don't want to honk off the Chinese because they're potentially the world's biggest market for McDonalds and Boeing and Microsoft and General Electric. When the TV talking heads yap about globalization, that's what they mean---multi- national corporations with no loyalty to any one country, and who need outdated notions of patriotism like a fish needs a bicycle. When they talk about us being in the middle of a radical new economic revolution, what they mean is that most manufacturing jobs are in the process of being moved to Mexico or Thailand or someplace else where labor costs are a dime an hour. All of which leads to some very strange bedfellows indeed. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, on the left, has toured Mexican factories along the U.S. border. He's ripped into the companies who moved their operations south, and who pay their new Mexican workers a poverty wage compared to what they paid their now laid-off American workers. Perennial presidential candidate Pat Buchannan, on the right, has laid waste to what he's called the international corporate culture of cynicism and greed. Never forget something very basic. Private enterprise is about profit, period. Which is the way it should be. The free market is sort of like a mammoth oak tree. It's not good, it;s not evil, it just is. Which means it doesn't care much about war or peace or whether your kids are poisoned by a violent society or whether abortion's legal or not. All the free market cares about is profit. And that's the force that's driving things these days. Government, in theory, is about the common good. It may have been a long time since that was true, but that's the theory. Business is about private gain. Social good can come from business as a spin-off, but the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. So the next time you wonder why you feel sort of vaguely uneasy about things, that may be the reason. And the next time someone complains about government stifling business, remember---these days, government is to big business as Monica Lewinsky was to Bill Clinton. |
Visit the Editorial Archive.
 |
|
[ News Views ] [ Coming Up ] [ Public Speaking ] [ News Boom ] |