Capital takes advantage
McCarthy, Eugene .I.
NATIONAL DEFICITS CAPITAL TAKES ADVANTAGE The demise of labor & resources T he fears of federal deficits, of the imbalance of trade, of rising national debt seem to have gone the way of the...
...They get some attention on television discussion programs but are no longer emphasized, and seldom mentioned, on the evening television news...
...Capital and income on capital have achieved progressively in the United States, a preferred position, to the point that capital income, at least for tax purposes, now has a status bordering on that of the sacred monies of the temple in ancient times...
...presidency...
...If, as is anticipated, the total national debt by 1995 will be close to $4 trillion, about three-fourths of which will be held by individuals of wealth (including foreigners) and by financial institutions and other corporations, the annual cost of servicing that debt will approximate $400 billion...
...government...
...Oil has been under severe downward pressure...
...Economists, generally, continue to express some concern over them but with restraint, almost as though they were hedging their bets, or their professional reputations...
...Established religions are finding that they can accommodate capitalism to their theological and moral doctrines...
...Measured in 1977 dollars, the value of weekly wages in 1985 was a little over $171, a decline of $17 a week...
...The pressure on American labor is further increased at home by competition from new equipment, plants, and automated machinery, developed, built, and put in place with the aid of investment credits, tax-exempt industrial bonds, and other subsidies from federal, state, and local governments...
...Downward pressure on U.S...
...NATIONAL DEFICITS CAPITAL TAKES ADVANTAGE The demise of labor & resources T he fears of federal deficits, of the imbalance of trade, of rising national debt seem to have gone the way of the herpes scare...
...Now even the deficits and the national debt can be made to serve the interest of capital control and concentration...
...Agricultural prices generally are depressed...
...Capital is developing and propagating its own theological and philosophical support...
...The prices of most industrial minerals — iron ore and copper, for example — are depressed, as are timber prices...
...labor is further intensified by the importation of foreign labor — legal and illegal — and by bringing in (in the name of free trade) both raw materials and manufactured goods produced by low-wage workers in countries like Taiwan, Korea, China, India...
...A recent news program showed steel workers in India, reported to be earning $ 1 a day, producing manhole covers for Baltimore, Maryland, a city which does have a steel mill, or did have one...
...euGene j. McCarthy (Eugene J. McCarthy is the former senator from Minnesota and twice a candidate for the U.S...
...More significant, however, than these advantages being given to capital, relative to the other two factors of production, are the integral advantages of capital and the income on it within the economic-political system itself...
...In fact, the transfer of more control over capital to those already with significant control will be facilitated by the increase in the national debt...
...At least one conference on "Capitalism and the Constitution" has been scheduled during the bicentennial observance of the adoption of that document, and many more are likely to follow...
...All this may explain why currently the most popular investment in the United States, possibly in the world, is in investment in future tax collections of the U.S...
...The federal government will then be, as it is now in lesser measure, the instrument through which taxes, levied largely on earned income (that is, wages and salaries, the return for labor) will be collected and then transferred, and — more than that — transformed into capital, contributing to the continuing concentration of wealth and of power over wealth and wealth production...
...Capital also has an advantage, currently, over a second of the classical factors of production, namely: land, and natural resources...
...In the United States, farm prices set against the prices of 1977 as an index base, are at an index number of seventy-nine...
...Environmental protection is on hold...
...Fundamentalist preachers are moved to take their religious-economic beliefs into politics...
...38: Commonweal...
...International businessmen, bankers, other traditional defenders of the capitalistic system, seem only slightly disturbed 30 January 1987: 37 the United States was $189 a week in 1977...
Vol. 114 • January 1987 • No. 2
