What about politics?

“I am so disgusted by the whole political mess I don’t even want to hear about it anymore!” lamented my dear mother. “Just last month I decided to move some funds from a safe secure spot to one that would bring a slightly better return. Now I stand to loose those funds. I have to hold on and hope it turns around before I need the money.”

At seventy-six years of age she is still healthy mentally and physically. She has over the years invested well with the once middle class resources her and my father accumulated. Now as a widow on a fixed income she is fairly stable. This latest down turn in the economy may push her stability on tilt! 

I have been closely watching the political news this last couple weeks. I was quite concerned that congress could not come to an agreement on the debt ceiling issues. The subsequent market responses around the globe are still spinning our futures in the air. 

I have long been a proponent of taking back the democratic process by becoming involved in the political process. My mother feels the same and has for several years even done volunteer work at election polls to help the democratic process. 

I am distressed by the fact that many people in this country have a gross misunderstanding of some key concepts at issue in America today. I would like to take a minute to clarify something that the media in general seems to work at distorting. Democracy is a method of governance, “by the people, for the people”. Capitalism is a means of economic distribution. The two are not joined at the hip. We can have Democracy without Capitalism. We can have Capitalism without Democracy. That is what we have now! Capitalism has supplanted Democracy with Oligarchy.  Oligarchy for those who may not be clear is a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes, according to Merriam-Webster definition. ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy )

This week along with the markets free falling toward further economic peril, I read an article that made me realize just how fully the democratic process has been supplanted.  The article linked below is entitled “A dozen donors account for bulk of ‘super PAC’ money”. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-08-03-super-PACs-elections-2012-campaign-spending_n.htm

My son is self employed and has a drive to achieve financial independence. He is well on his way and is not thirty years old yet. He has worked hard to make his way in this treacherous political/economic system that we currently have in America. I think he has seen what was needed to get to a stable financial situation in our current environment. He was not willing to work for someone else hoping to somehow stay ahead of the downsizing and outsourcing. I applaud his initiative and determination.

This week my son had this to say: “I graduated in late 2004 and by mid 2007, the credit crunch was big news. There hasn’t been a single piece of good economic news since 2007. Not just in the economy, actually, but the whole world! I really hope that before I’m 40 the US at least has something to be positive about because having this low grade anxiety about the economy (as a small business owner) and the world in general is like having a slight fever I never get over.”

It is the young people like my son that our future rests with. Here are some statistics about small businesses in the United States that are of importance:

·         Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.

·         Employ just over half of all private sector employees.

·         Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.

·         Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.

·         Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).

·         Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).

·         Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.

·         Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007.

·         Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.

Cited from the U.S. Small Business Administration(http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7495/8420 )

From these statistics we see that the small businesses are the backbone of our country. In a democracy these small business owners would have a vote in the politics that legislate how they conduct their business. In the present Oligarchy however,  based on the information in the article about the “super PAC”, unless you’re neighbors with the likes of John Paulson, a New York hedge fund manager, or Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation,  it is not likely your voice will be heard by anyone in government.

The old and the young in America are in agreement, things are bad and seem to be getting worse. Is it Capitalism or is it the supplanting of our democracy that has brought us to this place? Perhaps it is a combination of both. What is the answer to the crisis? I think we are all beginning to realize that the status quo we thought we were voting for was a dream from the 50’s and hiding our heads is not an option any longer.