COTW: Not So Much

A few corporations, notably Wall-Mart, Inc., have given their employees bonuses and raised minimum wages in response to the the 'yuge' tax gift from Trumpy.  Their 'generosity' reminds US Person, an ungrateful cur, of a Dickens novel. The chart above puts their much-touted largess into actual perspective.  At the same time the Waltons were demonstrating concern for their wage-slave labor force, they suddenly announced the closure of 63 Sam's Club outlets across the US, putting 9400 employees out of work.  This action is symptomatic of the way finance capitalist elites (plutocrats) do business. Historian David Harvey argues* that ownership (share holders) and management (CEOs) of capitalist enterprises have fused together, as upper management is increasingly paid with stock options. Raising the price of their stock becomes the objective of corporate operations. Productive corporations compete by generating rapid increases in the price of the corporation’s stock, immediately through gimmicks and trickery, but more basically through firing workers, moving production, and raiding pension funds. Workers, (labor commodity), receive little consideration in their profit calculus, other than to improve their bottom line.  It's all about the market, baby, just ask Trumpy!

*David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: University Press, 2005), 31–3. Only 27 percent of U.S. families own stocks. While 78 percent of the richest 20% families own stocks and mutual funds, 3 percent of the poorest 20% families do so.  It is no wonder that Trump constantly touts the ageing bull market as evidence of his "making America great again". As Professor Richard Peet points out in his Monthly Review article, "Contradictions of Finance Capitalism", "...industrial capitalism primarily exploits productive workers through the wage system, finance capitalism adds the exploitation of consumptive individuals via indebtedness. The idea is to have everything bought not with dollar bills or pound notes, but with maxed-out credit cards, so that purchases yield several years of interest at far-higher rates than banks pay on deposits (20 percent as compared with 2 percent)".  
These profitable income streams from indebted workers are then further leveraged by trading in debt-backed securities (credit default swaps prominent among them). The prices of commodities, such as oil and housing, are also inflated by commodity futures trading which benefits the rich, but imposes higher prices on consumers.  One commentator revealingly calls modern neoliberal economies, "Ponzi capitalism".  Under this regime, manufacturing declined markedly in economic importance to be replaced by finance or what is sometimes called the "FIRE" economy (finance, insurance, real estate) .  With this development, an organized industrial workforce, the traditional base of the Democratic Party, also declined.  The "genius' of Bill Clinton was to recognize this deindustrialization and switch allegiance to Wall Street where it has been ever since, Bernie Sanders not withstanding.   Where has manufacturing gone?  Just look at the source label of the next item you purchase at Wal-Mart.  Chances are better than even it says, "made in China".  Trump's campaign catch phrase is so much snake-oil, a deceitful banner of the distracting, media-driven circus that is American national politics.