{"id":4388,"date":"2010-08-04T11:06:22","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T16:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=4388"},"modified":"2010-08-04T11:06:22","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T16:06:22","slug":"corporate-greed-or-plain-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2010\/08\/04\/corporate-greed-or-plain-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Greed or Plain Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Herbert’s column in The New York Tines<\/em> is under the headline A Sin and a Shame<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse \u2014 far more treacherous \u2014 than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession.<\/p>\n

Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He further goes on to say:<\/p>\n

Productivity tells the story. Increases in the productivity of American workers are supposed to go hand in hand with improvements in their standard of living. That\u2019s how capitalism is supposed to work. That\u2019s how the economic pie expands, and we\u2019re all supposed to have a fair share of that expansion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a way to misunderstand the world of capitalism.\u00a0 Where is it written that the invisible hand will make capitalist private companies hire workers that they don’t need?<\/p>\n

In no description of capitalism have I seen a rule that says it is good for companies to run inefficiently by employing people that they don’t need.\u00a0 The whole point of competition is that it drives companies to become more efficient.<\/p>\n

There used to be other factors that made it sensible for companies to pay decent wages to the workers that they needed. See the blog post Are the American people obsolete?<\/strong><\/a> Of course we used to have strong labor unions too.\u00a0 Companies that were not unionized felt compelled to treat their workers well, lest they decide to form a union.\u00a0 Now that the pressure of unions has diminished greatly, we see what unfettered capitalism can do.<\/p>\n

If you cannot understand how a system works in a way that is consistent with its own internal driving forces, then you won’t ever be able to figure out what external forces to apply to fix it.\u00a0 By trial and error you may be able to find something that seems to have a short term benefit, but why depend on luck?\u00a0 Why not study capitalism and economics without a preconceived notion of “how it ought to work?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Herbert’s column in The New York Tines is under the headline A Sin and a Shame. The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse \u2014 far more treacherous \u2014 than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4389,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388\/revisions\/4389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}