Thursday, November 18, 2010

Why Republicans Wont Compromise

Republicans’ determination not to compromise has many wondering why they would do something that risks pushing the country deeper into the hole. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that the reason for their behavior may be worse than suspected.

For the last few days Dylan Ratigan has been saying that the government does the bidding of six major corporations, but he fails to elaborate.  I will take a stab at that. Consider the recent Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to pour as much money as they want into politics.  Add the more recent news that unidentified foreign money is being used by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund elections, and add the fact that U.S. jobs continue to be outsourced to foreign countries.

There is a reason why the Republicans - and to some extent the Demo-crats, who are part of the system - are stabbing American workers in the back: in the context of the global financial crisis, global corporations are no longer doing business the way they used to: to maintain global corporate bottom lines, jobs must be spread around the globe, even if American workers get hurt.

I believe that the influx of foreign capital into our Chamber of Commerce is the corporate world’s way of thanking American politicians for allowing jobs to continue to be lost at home so that more can be created abroad.

Not only does the interest of corporations not correspond to the that of American workers. It does not contribute to maintaining the planet’s ability to sustain humans. We need to reduce greenhouse gases to miti-gate climate change before it’s too late. This requires implementing a policy of de-growth in the industrialized world in order to bring the entire world to a ‘sufficient’ rather than extravagant level of development.

Two books worth reading on the idea of ‘sufficiency’, that favors citizens well-being rather than corporate profits are Ecologica, by Andre Gorz and Farewell to Growth by Serge Latouche.

Until these ideas enter the mainstream, not only the U.S. but the entire world will be doing the bidding of its corporations.

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