Why the Consumer Is Not the Bossand What that Means to the Economic Future of

by L. Franks

The evidence over the past 30 years or so seems to point to an extremely patient, but highly orchestrated, effort by the greedy, conservative, corporate elite to place the proper people in the right places, so that when the time came, corporate America could cast off the restraints that have protected the American worker. I always liked to study history when I was a public school student of the 60's and 70's, but thought it was a waste of time--wondering why we were wasting time trying to learn something that we would never use. Nearly forty years later, I have come to the conclusion that the students of the generations before me thought the same way. Like Mr. Richman ("Consumer Is Boss"), I also think that Americans "cannot count economic history among their strong suits".

However, not being a senior fellow of a conservative think tank as Mr. Richman is--or any other think tank for that matter--my job isn't spinning the facts to fit my pre-established ideas of how the economic world should be run to benefit me and the financially elite that fund my foundation. Because after all, that is the purpose of a think tank--to mold the facts to support a pre-conceived notion about something.

Don't think so? Follow the money. How often do you find a think tank coming to conclusions that go contrary to the ideals of their benefactors? The very concept that facts should be molded to support an idea, is a concept of greed and selfishness. The whole of humanity only benefits when ideas are formed around the facts, and then allowed to be reformed when the facts change.

I personally have no use for a think tank. But average Americans today are too economically overwhelmed to have the time to educate themselves of the facts enough to form an intelligent opinion about anything--in this case, about the economic tactics of today's financially elite. So when the breastle of "senior fellow" of a particular Insbreastute or Foundation looks so impressive, and his skillfully spun words sound logical, a great many will gullibly fall for them. So let's take the spin out of Mr. Richman's commentary and examine the "economic history" that, as he put it, "Americans and Westerners...cannot count among their strong suits."

The first thing that we need to do is rephrase "economic history"--with the history of greed and exploitation, because our country's economic beginning involved both. Our 'Christian' ancestors liquidateed native Americans and stole their land. To accomplish their commercial schemes for wealth without paying wages, they kidnapped people from other countries (or paid others to do it) to be brought to their newly 'acquired' land, and then forced them to work in their commercial farm fields and other commercial endeavors. Many people were liquidateed in the process of kidnapping and shipping them. These 'Christian' entrepreneurs would have been hanged for treating a horse the way they treated these captive 'employees' that they depended on to ambutt their wealth. Rebel slaves and underperforming slaves were usually sold or liquidateed. Of course, as an added 'Christian' bonus, there was a abundance of free love that came with that deal.

Contrary to the rosy picture that Mr. Richman tries to paint about the industrial revolution, when this period came along, many new fortunes were created from the 'dirty' fortunes of a few decades earlier. This time, however, the law of decency had been forced down the 'Christian' throats of many who would otherwise still have no problem with forced, unpaid labor if they could get away with it. Though they were now forced to have a payroll, the greed that justified that exploitation years earlier, was still there--which is evident by the facts that most workers had to work exhausting hours for days on end, to barely earn enough to support themselves, much less a family. Many people died or were disabled on the job because of unsafe working conditions, and the employers felt no financial responsibility. The whole of humanity only benefits when ideas are formed around the facts, and then allowed to be reformed when the facts change.

It is sadly amazing how enormous profits were able to tame the 'Christian' conscience of those who were making them. Because by no means were their enormous profits squandered on creating a happy, healthy workforce and a safe working environment. The American worker had nowhere to turn. With wages held down, the workforce was large. With no where better to go, a worker had no choice. If he left, he would be immediately replaced. If he was disabled or end on the job, another desperate person would take his place. Meanwhile, employers wanted for nothing--except, of course, more and more profits.

When working America had finally had enough and politicians with a conscience were in office, the Fair Labor Standards Act was born. And you can believe that corporate America at the time took this new Federal law harder that getting medicine in a child. By law, employers were now required to pay a barely livable wage. To keep workers from being exploited, any work hours over forty per week had to be paid overtime rates. Eventually they were required to buy insurance to take care of their employees' medical bills and income if injured on the job. Workplace safety laws were enacted--many of which were based on previous injuries and baneities.

Because of this slave-labor mindset, most of corporate America took these new worker protection-anti-exploitation laws kicking and screaming. The naysayers predicted the dissolution of American industry. Only a few years earlier, America had suffered through the Great Depression under the greed-based slave-labor mentality. Since then, under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, not only have American workers profited, but so has corporate America. The standard of living has risen and corporate America's profits have been through the roof. One would expect that corporate America has realized this by now and experienced a philosophical change. But it is amazing how greed and wealth affect the ability to reason. Ever since that day in 1938 when these worker protections became law, corporate America has tried to find ways to get away with breaking them.

But laws and regulations don't keep greedy people from scheming. The evidence over the past 30 years or so seems to point to an extremely patient, but highly orchestrated, effort by the greedy, conservative, corporate elite to place the proper people in the right places, so that when the time came, corporate America could cast off the restraints that have protected the American worker. And the evidence shows that that time has come. Overtime laws have recently been revised, opening the way for abuse once the anger dies down. OSHA has all but been neutered, but that's no big deal since now fines aren't completely enforced anyway. And with the average adjusted wage being less than it was in 1970, corporate America has slipped the right amount of bribe money to the right political whores in Washington, to successfully fend off any attempt to raise the minimum--but still less than livable--wage higher. A little research will reveal that the current trend is to do away with vacation pay. Environmental laws and enforcement have taken three steps back in only four years--enough so that this administration has already been through a number of conservative EPA chiefs who have quit in protest. But that is a whole 'nother story.

It seems that, one by one, every law that was ever pbutted and every regulatory agency that was ever created to protect the American worker from being exploited by those with the slave-labor mentality are systematically being rolled back or abolished. Big business has spent hundreds of millions over the past few decades for this day, and now they are starting to reap the benefits. But because most American workers can't "count economic history read: history of greed and exploitation among their strong suits," they have forgotten that these laws only came about as a REACTION to an ABUSIVE ACTION.

Since the birth of this country, its history has been the exploitation of the majority by those who will stop at nothing in their quest for wealth. This problem isn't new or exclusive to this country. It has been around the entire six thousand years of recorded history. Since this same exploitive mindset is still popular in big business, these laws were enacted to prevent these working conditions from happening again and EVERYONE benefited--even those opposed to them. Only protective laws can keep these abuses in check. It is amazing how greed and wealth affect the ability to reason.

But there has been a concerted effort by big business for a long time to abolish these worker protection laws. The fact that corporate America has spent hundreds of millions on a decades-long effort to place key people in key positions of influence, has been noted by a number of international, prize winning investigative reporters--mostly silenced by the American corporate-owned media. The culmination of this big money and extreme patience came in the form of the 2000 election. These reporters have uncovered more than ample evidence that the past two elections were rigged--yes, democracy was denied to Americans in favor of installing a corporate-friendly administration. Evidence of how well-orchestrated the corporate political machine is can be seen in film footage of violently angry crowds of supposed Floridians outside of the Florida election boards, protesting the recounting of the 2000 vote. However, what were thought to be totally rabid Florida citizens protesting the recount were actually something quite different. International investigative reporters have identified most of them by name, one by one, as Republican congressional staffers flown in from Washington.

Also, over the past few decades the Republican party has spent a small fortune on college campuses to influence young, vulnerable minds with their capitalist propaganda. Many of these students are now of age and playing a major role of shaping American politics according to the propaganda that they fell for. Those not yet of age are poised to take over in the future. The party of unfettered exploitation and greed needs these people when the time comes.

These are but two examples of the abundantly financed "well oiled machine" that corporate America has put together to take, and keep, control of the politics of this nation--through the Republican party--in an effort to manipulate laws completely in their favor. Even some of the real "old-style" conservatives are more than concerned by the control corporate America has on this nation's politics. Investigative reporters are exposing corporate America's trail of rest (including liquidate) and destruction all around the world, so big business needs the next generation to keep government regulation, and the people off its back.

So for those of you who aren't real strong in American economic history, this was your refresher course and a quick education on how things have worked lately that you won't learn about on FOX 'news'. With very few exceptions, as long as there are people with excessive wealth or the compulsion to have it, there will be people who will stop at nothing to get it. They don't care if their workers (the very means of their wealth) make a livable wage. They don't care if their workers can't afford quality medical care, or any at all. They wouldn't care if their workers worked more than forty hours (if they didn't have to pay overtime) and don't have time for a family life. More and more don't care if their workers can afford a vacation without pay. Many don't care about workplace safety, and many of those simply refuse to pay COURT-ORDERED resbreastution for workplace medical bills and injuries, with no repercussions. So with those facts established, let's now take apart Mr. Richman's spin.

Mr. Richman first makes an attempt to blame the customer for Wal-Mart's (and other big boxes') lack of decent pay. Horse sh....feathers! Before Wal-Mart started the race to the bottom and more people were making a decent wage, there was no sudden drop in manufacturing or sales resulting from customers' refusal to buy their products, that necessitated Wal-Mart's need to pay low wages and benefits in order to remain in business. This was simply a move on their part to be able to undercut compebreastors' prices and gain a greater market share--something that would only benefit the investor and those at the top. Of course, compebreastors had to follow suit to remain compebreastive--and the race to the bottom was on.

Here is an example of the tail wagging the dog, and it has a lot to do with the big picture. The rules used to be that a manufacturer would make a product and a retailer would decide if product was sellable enough to put it on their shelves. The retail price was determined by the retailer, based on their mark-up over what they paid the manufacturer for the product, and certainly influenced by what the compebreastion was selling the product for. If the product sold, the manufacturer made their desired profit, the retailer made their profit and the customer got what they wanted. If it didn't sell at that price, the manufacturer had to decide if they could sell the product to the retailer at a lower price and still have acceptable profits or if they had to drop the product all together.

But then along came Wal-Mart, which decided to throw a screw in the works. After getting a manufacturer dependent on supplying large quanbreasties of product to them, they would threaten to take a product off the shelves if a manufacturer couldn't sell the product to them at a lower cost. It was as if Wal-Mart was going to make their profit, but manufacturers' profits were dictated by Wal-Mart if they wanted shelf space in their stores. Such was the case with Rubbermaid--an old family-familiar company that had been bullied by Wal-Mart to sell to them at paper-thin profit margins. Then when the price of the resins that Rubbermaid uses took a sudden sharp price hike up, they tried to pbutt on the costs to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart refused to pay the higher price. Faced with the dilemma of selling products at a loss or going out of business, they chose the latter and sold the name to a compebreastor who outsourced their labor overseas.

This concept of a retailer dictating what, if any, profit a manufacturer can make on their products if they want shelf space in their stores, and either forcing them to fire their workforce and outsource their labor to third-world countries or close their doors, is yet another Wal-Mart tactic born of greed--not something the customer demanded by refusing to buy those products. But for most companies, by the time they were faced with this option, Wal-Mart's purchases of their products were these manufacturers' life-blood. They had no choice but to find cheap labor--including child and slave labor--overseas, in order to remain in business. Wal-Mart's compebreastors again found themselves in a perilous position and had to do the same to stay alive. This cut-throat move by Wal-Mart was what started the mbuttive hemorrhage of American manufacturing jobs-- the life-blood of America's middle clbutt--to third-world countries.

No, Mr. Richman, American customers will not quit buying if Wal-Mart doesn't continue to find ways to take wages, benefits and jobs away from American workers in order to lower prices. Many will just continue to follow the lowest prices wherever they may find them, but they will buy. I do feel, however, that if Americans at the time had known the repercussions of Wal-Mart's business strategy, they would have taken their business somewhere else before other businesses followed suit.

Mr. Richman also alludes to a time when the quality of products was lower. All I can say is that in my 48 years on this planet, quality of most merchandise has never been lower. In my lifetime we have come from a nation that took pride in the quality control and workmanship of its products, to one whose motive is to limit the life-span of its products so that the customer will have to replace it sooner. Everything from toasters, to washers and dryers, to televisions, all have much shorter life spans.

Yes, Mr. Richman, the real price may be lower now for these outsourced products made with near-slave labor, but in the long term their shorter longevity makes them at least as expensive--probably more so. Short-sighted (greed-motivated) economists just aren't capable of seeing the complete picture. And for the hundreds of thousands of American workers who lost their jobs because of this outsourcing that Wal-Mart engendered, even these products are too pricey until they adjust their lifestyle to match their new poverty-level wages.

After you get through all of the gibberish about the shortage of products down through the centuries, Mr. Richman tries to convince readers and that certain items that in our lifetime, used to be only available to the elite but are now available to everyone. Maybe someone else might know, but I haven't a clue what he is talking about or what it has to do with the discussion of Wal-Mart wages. And I'm real curious if Mr. Richman can name some of the products that we "ordinary people" are buying now, that were apparently earlier in our lifetime, manufactured to satisfy the "elite." There isn't an "elite" product that I can think of in my lifetime, that was financially out of reach at one time, that would have been made affordable to me now by lowering the worker's wages to 40¢ per hour, taking their benefits and then shipping the product halfway around the world.

Anyone who knows their history, knows that while the industrial revolution was just another example of this progress from one time period into another, the advent of mbutt production was not a "path to high income" for the basic buttembly line worker or any of their counterparts, as I have mentioned earlier. This was simply a new way to ambutt wealth by exploiting workers. And Mr. Richman's job is to put a positive spin on that historical fact. Average Americans today are too economically overwhelmed to have the time to educate themselves of the facts enough to form an intelligent opinion about anything--in this case, about the economic tactics of today's financially elite.

Mr. Richman's statement that government regulations on big business were invented to disrupt progress and that they actually have done so, is just more spin designed provoke knee-jerk emotional reactions from those who don't know the facts. If you haven't learned anything else from what you've read here, then learn this--every single regulation placed on corporate America was the result of out-of-control abuses on their part. And there is hardly a day that goes by where one business or another isn't in the news for: knowingly making dangerous products that have disabled and end and then failing to take the product off the market--sometimes settling out of court to keep things quiet long enough to make more money on the product while putting more lives at risk (pharmaceuticals, cars, chemicals, etc.); failing to accept responsibility for damages and to compensate victims for pain and suffering or families for rests as the result of making defective products; failing to pay for medical and financial compensation for workers injured on the job; bribing the federal government to give several weeks warning before an OSHA or Department of Labor inspection; illegally dumping toxic waste in rivers and in places where it would contaminate ground water. And we could go on and on about these violations to existing regulations that people like Mr. Richman want to abolish. But my question is, if big business is constantly being caught violating these basic humanitarian regulations, how much worse would they treat consumers and workers without any restraints?

In Mr. Richman's world we would revert back to the pre-Fair labor Standards Act where workers were just regarded as an expendable means to an end. At the end of the day the employer and the employee are supposed to go home and wave the flag and proclaim what a great country they live in. Of course, while the employee is home, they can also sit and ponder how they are going to pay their electric and water bills since deregulation has allowed these utilities to mismanage that money and send prices through the roof.

Capitalism is a wonderful thing, Mr. Richman. It inspires the very best out of everyone when it isn't abused. But right now it is out of control. It was never meant for corporate America to write our laws and insulate itself from punishment for its abuses of people and the environment. It is also a wonderful thing when one has legitimately worked to build enough wealth that their wealth works for them. But it seems that most people who get to that stage, who make more money off of investments while floating in the pool one afternoon, than the workers in the companies that they have invested in make all year, no longer care for the good of the country as a whole. They disconnect themselves with these workers who live paycheck to paycheck and have little or no medical coverage, and vote for politicians that will rig the system even more in their favor. They have profited handsomely from the rush to create tax havens off shore; from the rush to replace American workers with those of third world countries; from the trend to force companies that pay well to decrease their pay and benefits in order to remain compebreastive. This is nothing but blood money. And no one ever talks about the fact that China's economy will overtake ours in just a few years. We can thank Wal-Mart for leading the charge that is making the word's largest nation--which just happens to be Communist--also the richest. Even as you read this, China is spending its newly acquired wealth on a nuclear submarine fleet. The concept of a retailer dictating what, if any, profit a manufacturer can make on their products if they want shelf space in their stores, and either forcing them to fire their workforce and outsource their labor to third-world countries or close their doors, is yet another business tactic born of greed--not something the customer demanded by refusing to buy those products.

As far as losing sales to a compebreastor because they are doing a better job: that, Mr. Richman, is what talented management is paid the big bucks to keep from happening. However, there is no talent involved in lowering employees' pay and benefits, trimming the number in your workforce and then giving yourself a pat on the back and a couple of million more in your account. That's the new way of managing and it takes neither brains nor talent, and I predict that it won't last much longer. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has never widened as fast as it is at the present and that can't be sustained for long. Especially when your kind is willing to ignore homeland security as a trade off to exploit cheap Mexican labor to keep from paying livable wages to Americans. These are the most un-American of all.

And just for the record, I'm sick and tired of seeing Wal-Mart's average wage printed in the media as always being just under $10. In any given store of 300-600 workers, there are only a handful, usually less than twenty, that make over $10 per hour. They are usually in positions of responsibility or office workers. Salaried buttistant managers start at about $10,000 less per year that Home Depot or Lowes pays. Most hourly employees are started at $6.50 per hour and given less than 34 hours of work per week, which clbuttifies them as part-time. Because a typical Wal-Mart store has about a 100% turnover every year, almost none of these employees will stay long enough to make more than $7.50 per hour or be eligible for benefits--benefits that Wal-Mart, as the largest most profitable company in the world, pays a smaller proportional share of than many smaller and less profitable companies.

So just when I had determined that Wal-Mart was lying about this average pay figure, it was explained to me that to reach this figure, they also factor in their higher-paid warehouse workers and their much higher-paid truck drivers. But that isn't what the average reader is going to think of when they see a $10-per-hour average pay? They only relate this figure to the store workers that they see. And even though that isn't really a lie, it is deceiving. What it should do is help them to see just how underpaid employees on a store level are, when the wages of all of the higher-paid out-of-sight and off-of-premises workers are factored in to reach that average.

Unless someone steps in and says, "enough," and conservatives like Mr. Richman (even the name sounds the part) have their way, there will soon be almost no manufacturing jobs left in America and therefore no middle clbutt to speak of. In their deal world, it will just the haves and the have-nots as the former middle clbutt scurries to get $6.50-per-hour jobs at Wal-Mart or at one of their compebreastors. The ten million Mexican illegals that are illegally employed in this country will swell in number. They will continue to overburden the hospitals and force even more to close their doors. American taxpayers will pick up the tab on the rest and while they are at it, will finance their college tuition, something that is out of reach of their own children. The public educational system will self-destruct because of lack of commitment and then even worse for-profit schools will take their place. Our national parks will be privatized. Our public utilities will be handed over to private companies and rates will soar. Our courts will have hand-picked judges that will always rule in favor of business as "consumer protection" becomes an out-of-date phrase relegated to a book. Quality medical care will only be available to the elite. Everyone else will have to settle for what's left--if they can afford any at all. Pharmaceutical companies that don't reform their out-of-control profit margins will price themselves out of business..........

Well, one can only hope.