GuidoWorld

Disparity and Our Standard of Living

July 16, 2007 on 8:05 pm | In General |

In previous posts I’ve already described how most workers do not partake in the profit aspect of capitalism. Most workers are laborers and their pay is but one component of overhead a boss uses to tabulate his profit margin.

A laborer works to earn pay to go out and buy essentials and creature comforts. Only management is capable of making a profit on the goods and services produced and rendered. In modern corporations the boss gives himself hundreds of dollars to every dollar he gives a bottom rung employee. This ratio has been going up significantly whereby the top 1/2 of 1% is making over 70% of all money made in the US.

The disparity between the bottom and the top is escalating at a mind bending speed. The rich are getting much richer and the poor are getting much poorer. Many who know this fact to be true defend our economic system by saying that the standard of living of even our poor is much better than most of the world.

This may be true, but the disparity is not the cause of the rise in the standard of living. The rise in the standard of living is due to inventions such as electricity and the computer, and the use of natural resources such as oil, coal and metals.

Much of our nations wealth is due to our reckless use of the planet’s bounty. We are using, in a few generations, the planets resources which took millions of years to produce. Yes, we may find new resources to replace the old before we run out of resources such as coal, oil and water.

Since this discussion is on disparity and the standard of living and not on the future we will not discuss the potential repercussions of using up our natural resources with the hope of finding solutions in the nick of time.

If we were using energy and resources with the thought of preserving some for future generations it would definitely have a negative impact on our current standard of living. The meteoric rise in our standard of life was due to our aggressive use of our land and its resources.

When this nation was formed the US was a relatively pristine land incredibly rich in resources. The birth of the ages of electricity and petroleum came when the US as opposed to Europe was still relatively virgin land bursting at the seams with rich soil, uncut forests, and untapped mineral wealth. The US was well positioned to best utilize the age of discovery and the age of technology.

The US, like every other empire before it, used and uses domestic as well as foreign slave labor. Like, the pirates and conquerors of old, it also used and uses the natural resources of almost every nation on the globe.

Though it is true that capitalism was able to capitalize on this previously unimaginable opportunities offered by the gains in technology and invention, it is also true that every empires wealth ballooned no matter what economic or political system it used.

If we do not succeed at finding renewable resources before we consume what we currently utilize, history will probably not view us well. Future generations would likely sneer as they say that any idiot nation could appear wealthy if they used thousands of years of resources in a century or so. They would say any man could appear to be wealthy if he consumed all the food, goods and money his family was to have for the next several centuries.

Disparity, being inherent in a profit based economy, appears to be an essential component of capitalism. In corporations the top tier of executives make hundreds of dollars for every dollar that a bottom rung employee makes. If they physically handed out the money it would sound something like this, “one for you and a 150 for me”.

Now some would argue that without this disparity our standard of living would not have improved over the years. Yet, the bulk of the growth in our standard of living came when the gulf between the haves and have nots was not nearly so great.

What is indisputable is that our current system causes growth in the standard of life to be top heavy. While the true profiteers amass immense wealth and freedom to do what ever they want, a growing percentage of citizens are nothing more than consumers whose standard of living is treading water if not regressing.

If it is true that the average laborer loses as the boss profits, then why hasn’t the average worker gone bankrupt? I will address this issue in my next post.

Guido