Perhaps so, but that’s beside the point of the thread:
A prostitution trade catering to foreign tourists (e.g. early 20th-century Cuba) is not indicative of large-scale resort to prostitution for survival. If anything, trade oriented toward foreign tourists (self-selected for ability to afford travel) would tend toward the high-class rather than the grubby end of the spectrum.
Social and economic distress is not particular to plutocracies; it also exists (by definition) in societies where everybody is equally dirt-poor.
Dole Pineapple controlled the government and workers were exploited. The Havana corruption was a marriage of money, politics and the mafia. It was a mess of our doing.
I don’t see how this follows. When you reach the point that some100 families control all of the wealth and political power, why would they need a middle class. Sure they need them as servants and to produce luxeries for the aristocracy, in return the aristcracy will pay them enough so they don’t revolt but I see no other incentive not to keep everyone else as poor as possible. At this level it is less about how much you have (you have more than you could ever really use) and more about how much more you have than everyone else. I also think that voter apathy would further undermine the power of the lower classes. Its one thing to take the time to vote when your vote is just as important as everyone else’s, it’s another thing when you know your vote is only 1/1,000 of someone else’s.
This is a bit more interesting. I could imagine the upper echelons fighting with each other over control and using the plebs to gain influence in the way you describe. I’m also imagining intrigues between dynasties on a level not seen since the Medici’s in Renaissance Italy.
Primarily, I’d think, trade and resource exchanges don’t work the same way as they did in the Feudal era. If the middle class is poor and unmotivated, they aren’t going to educate themselves, and the workforce’s education level is not going to be up to modern standards, lowering production. In addition, the export markets for US products are crap, and I’d expect our plutocrats (since some of them demonstrate that knowledge now) to keep middle-class wages up in order to keep a market for the services they provide.
Other things you might see: increased company provision of things like houses/cars/luxury goods/recreational goods in lieu of (income taxable) salary.
Where I make 72k now, I might make $25k in a plutocracy but have a nicely appointed company house and car and big-screen TV–my relative purchasing power would go up, my choices would diminish, and my voting power would drop, but at the same time I’d likely overall be happier.
So there you have it from a group that is part of that Plutocracy, where they pretty much say, the majority don’t matter in their long term goals. Again, it is a long read at 33 pages, but well worth reading.
I agree with you that financially profitable ‘moral crimes’ would be widespread in a plutocracy, just as long as the plutocrats stood to benefit from them financially and owned access to them (black market ‘moral crimes’ like prostitution or drug dealing outside a plutocrat owned venue would be heavily prosecuted and investigated). So gambling, drugs and prostitution would likely be widespread.
But other socially conservative values like gay marriage have no financial incentive. Neither do permissive films and books. So I don’t think the society would become liberal about issues like that.
Within a capitalist society, the richest 400 only make income if they can continue to sell products and services. For that they need people with enough money to buy those products and services.
Think back to Henry Ford when he realized that if he raised everyone’s salary enough they’d be able to buy his cars and he’d be richer.
If the top 400 want to continue to hold power they need to continue to pay income tax, for that they need a taxable income.
Steve Jobs needs people buying iPods, so if given the choice he’d probably prefer the US had an environment that allowed him to continue doing that.
Simply having wealth isn’t enough, power comes from income, and income comes from sales, and sales comes from a society with disposable income–hence the need for a large middle class.
Frankly, if you put the top 400 in charge I seriously don’t they’d give a shit about abortion and gay marriage (until one of their gay kids knocks up a hooker). They’d want policies that make them more money, but for them to have more money all of us at the bottom need money to spend.
I could easily see them altering tax structure to make sure the middle class has as much disposable income as possible. I doubt they’d want universal health care, but I could imagine Bill Gates realizing that if people are spending their money on cancer treatment, that’s money they could be spending on computer electronics.
At that point it would be an interesting show down between the tech industry billionaires vs the health industry billionaires.
The way to look at this isn’t from a power stand point, but from a purely capitalist approach in which the goal is to generate as much income as possible. You can’t do that if you enslave your society and eliminate disposable income.
Except that this capitalist society does not matter when you take in account the global markets, which is where they gain their real wealth from. Their not dealing with 300+ million American’s but, close to 7 billion potential customers. If a company is able to sell their widgets to only 1% of the global market, that is 70 million people.
They make their wealth by exploiting the current situation we find ourselves in. The US workforce has the most educated number of people with degrees than anytime in it’s history, which explains the stagnant wages (supply and demand)
So, they have a highly educated cheap and abundant workforce here in the US, and cheap slave labor overseas. Encouraging immigration in the US as was their policy here and in other countries lessens the jobs people can run to, and lowers wages even more. It was the plan all along and was supported by both “parties”.
As was mentioned in a previous post, they do play the divide game with the left and right, but regardless of the rhetoric that comes out of their mouths, their actions are exactly the same. Obama like Bush is a warmonger, corporatist and Wall Street Shill.
He also discusses how the Italian – almost all southern Italian, from what was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies before Italian unification – immigrants to the U.S. had a deep cultural distrust of/contempt for the government, or, as they called it, il estado ladrone (“the state thief”). And the KOTTS really was the kind of crowned racket that deserved that attitude; but the Italians carried it over to (comparatively) honest law-enforcement authorities in America, which had certain lasting and cinematically lucrative consequences. (He points this out because, in his view, today’s Mexican immigrants have a similar cultural attitude toward the state.)
IMF estimated US GDP in 2010: $14.6t
IMF estimated world GDP in 2010: $62.5t
So the US is, in real terms, almost a quarter of the global market. The European Union is another quarter. I think the plutocrats are far more likely to tell the third world to blow.
They don’t make products. Most of them manipulate money. They sell CDOs . They speculate in oil. The few that actually sell something are like the Waltons who have their business centered in China. The rich do mot care about America,
Ideally you’d want to make products in the developing world, then sell them to the developed world. Make them using laborers who are accustomed to a 5k a year income then sell them to laborers who are accustomed to a 50k a year income.
The problem is that that is like a draining bathtub, pretty soon you run out of enough 50k a year income earners to buy what you are making. However that process will take years, it won’t happen overnight. And you can just make credit easier to get to keep the consumption up, create housing bubbles and use houses to obtain more credit, etc. All of which happened in the US. If the plutocrats make trillions of dollars in interest bearing loans to keep consumers consuming, that is even better. Now they are earning interest, can keep a larger % of the income for themselves and consumers are now debt slaves.
By the time a developed country has severe problems with debt, stagnation, lack of consumption, etc. you can just move to a different country and start all over. That seems to be happening.
At the same time not all plutocrats are Mr Burns style characters. Tons would be opposed to plutocracy, or feel a loyalty to their home country, or something else along those lines that stops a plutocratic takeover. So I don’t think you’d see all the plutocrats on the same page wanting to get rich by any means necessary.
According to a citibank report in 2005 about plutonomy, the rich make up a huge share of consumption in several wealthy nations. So you can have the rich buying items from each other and keep an economy going.
No ,we can stand up to politicians who allow this mess to go on. But a lot of you idiots will vote for those who think tax cuts to the wealthy are good for the general economy. that corporations pay too much taxes and the wealthy should be allowed to pass their loot on generation after generation. As long as your thinking processes are that unhinged, true return to the American ideal will be beyond us.
It is damn bad. Take it seriously. Look at asshole Ryan’s budget that cuts more taxes to billionaires while gutting help to the poor and middle class. Look at how they want to end Social Security and chop unemployment. Can you figure out who needs SS and Unemployment? Are you able to figure out who does not want to pay it?" Do you understand why?
This economy has become the piggy bank for the rich. Stop them while you still can.
Going back to the OP, perhaps you could allow people to buy extra votes at the polling station - debit card only. Your first vote is free, your second costs $10, the third $100, the fourth $1000, the fifth $10000, and so on. Votes are, of course, still secret. This would allow the wealthy a measure of extra power but not overly so and raise money at the same time.
Which was the point I’ve been trying to make. The Plutocrats need income to stay in power, so as far as I can tell a strong US economy is in their best interests.
Now, it might be possible (and entirely likely) that as you said when the cash runs out The Plutocrats *might *push to make credit easier to get. But after the last crash, who is going to risk losing their power?
Work your way through the list of Top 20 Highest Paid CEOs and consider what their motivation would be (http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1004/gallery.top_ceo_pay/). Bill and Melinda Gates already donate millions to charity, as well as lobby the government. Is it not possible they’d see this as an opportunity to do good?
Larry Ellison of Oracle made $84.5 million so he gets lots of votes, but what would he vote for? Republican or Democrat? Socialism or Libertarianism? I’d assume he’d want policies that benefit Oracle, but what are those policies? And do they conflict with IBM and Hewit-Packard? Sucks for Mark Hurd of HPQ because he only made $24.2 million.
Let’s pretend **Gonzomax **is right and Ellison is pure evil and wants Medicare cut. Then along comes Ray Elliott of Boston Scientific earning $33.4 million who makes most of his money off Medicare and wants it expanded. Elliot knows all of his profits come from the US middle class that have group based health plans. So he teams up with William Weldon of J&J and Mckesson’ CEO is John H. Hammergren, along with a dozen other guys that make their money off of Medicare and they push for an expansion. In fact, these guys look at the CEOs of the defense industry and decide that’s the life they want. So they push for UHC to ensure they have a nice steady cash flow. And not the chinsy sort of UHC, these guys want as much cash as they can get.
Where I think you’ll run into problems are the nationalist guys like the CEO of Ford that decides it’s in his best interest to shut down auto imports, or to increase the safety standards for foreign cars.
The US is still a huge market. If you want milk you need to feed the cow.
I think, emacknight, that what you are failing to appreciate is how quickly the economy would change to something that is not at all resembling the free market we have today. Monopolies would quickly form in almost all industries because there would be nothing to stop them. All of the laws would be in favor of the big getting bigger. Once you are on top you can exert legal pressure to the point that no other companies can get a foot hold. You can also give yourself government grants, which are heavily taxed to maintain your political power but not so much that you don’t gain economic power as well. Just to be on the safe side you may want to institute policies that lead to high inflation so that the 1 vote per person regardless of taxes paid can be devalued out of existence.
Giving the middle class money so that they can buy my things so that you can get some of it back, seems a rather round about way of doing things, when you can just take their money and keep it. If their only choice is to work for USco and buy from USco or starve you can keep the plebs productive and but still with a low standard of living. Those who work hard and do well will be somewhat more comfortable than those who don’t.
As with the Aristocracy some will be more benevolent that others, but I’m not sure that any will want to rock the boat. And those who do will soon find that themselves out voted in congress with laws passed to quickly reduce their income and tax burden.