The Architecture of Frustration
I think we need to look upon the economy like a layered onion, or a tree. All of the attention is focused upon the outermost layer, the one that is growing. The trouble with the US economy is that since the 70’s the outermost layer has become detached from the domestic economy. The fact is that the US won the oil shocks of the 70’s. It did so by raising interest rates enough to crush the domestic economy. That caused the dollar to prevail at a crucial time. Consequently, the outer layer takes a great deal of its investment from anyone who can afford, has the surplus, to put their money there. The anonymity of share ownership together with an understood narrowness of purpose make the argument that it doesn’t matter who owns in order for corporations to prosper while catering toward the best interests of their shareholders. There isn’t any domestic bias intended, or wanted. This money is, therefore, often contributed by foreign investors. This is good for the market capitalization of companies.
The trend toward the so-called investment arena becoming so important began in the 70’s because that is when the Fed raised rates in order to combat the two oil shocks which the West was suffering from. By doing this they trimmed the money supply because their actions slowed down or halted borrowing. This not only countered inflation, but boosted the dollar. They, essentially, made the dollar so important that the sources of the oil shocks, the OPEC states, capitulated. They had to crash the US economy in order to do that. It established a new order. From that time forward a sort of whoring began on the part of the US, as a receiver of international and corporate investment.
The trouble with looking upon the situation as investment, why I call it the so-called investment arena, is that type of money, money which purchases shares in companies, is not really investment per se. It is not money which is available to the company which has been purchased so that the company can operate. All that it does is allow the layer of the onion to continue to grow, as a measure of capitalization. Control is based upon the percentage of shares, not the amount of money invested. The rules of the game ensure that. Those who have a continual income stream, such as those benefiting from the concentration of wealth by receipt of massive dividends or executive scale pay or bonus structures, or those who come from the outside, bringing the benefits gained from siphoning their countries of wealth, or those directing large pools of money, such as insurance payments made to an insurance company can increase their stake by purchasing more shares over time. Diversification is still important, as seen in the host of investment instruments available to allow new money to diversify. Having lots of money doesn’t guarantee picking winners, not even at this scale.
The banking and finance systems have grown to accommodate this way of doing things. The mental energy of the people has grown to accommodate it as well. When you ask a person what they want to do with their lives, or who they want to be, you, more often than not, will hear the reply that they want to get rich. They are thinking so much about what is going on in the outermost layer that their desires are no longer rooted in their own domestic world.
They don’t think about aligning themselves with vigorous purpose. The purpose involved in owning shares is enough purpose for most people. Don’t get me wrong, what happens in the domestic US economy is still very important. You have to have actual operations take place within companies for them to exist. But the assessment of what those operations mean is done by the money passing around in the next layer. That layer doesn’t care so much about the long term, unless the long term is going to say something that could impact percentage of ownership short of transacting in the markets.
It’s the long term over which the income inequality situation has developed. The focus of ownership has changed to primarily that of appreciating growth. Certain expenses, like wages, are always argued against. That fosters income inequality. That’s why income can actually go down over time and there is no real impact. All that’s necessary is to make certain that the income earned by those who are so relatively poor doesn’t collapse to a level so low that the service economy can’t actually operate at all. You can even pay people less than minimum wage, as independent contractors, and the law won’t do anything. The only thing you have to make certain of is that you aren’t leading the pack toward some form of operation that would destroy the whole thing. There must be activity to measure so that bidding for the ownership of the capital responsible for allowing that activity can continue to take place. Until there really is artificial intelligence, that activity will take place because of work done by workers.
Though tech does hover over the whole picture while holding the artificial intelligence card, it has actually become a sort of savior in this circumstance. It has allowed the thing to go on in places where it might have faltered. Whole sectors are reeling. It’s done this by allowing people who aren’t making enough money to seek lowest price across a greater number of markets. Along the way it has given companies a means, by peering into personal information, to find those who have something they could spend with them and give them an edge in understanding how to get them to spend it. They are stretching their marketing dollars too.
The reason why incomes for the bottom so many percent of the population have been shrinking ought to be obvious. Their incomes are dependent upon what they receive in pay. The executives who run the corporations which the outermost layer seeks to invest in are allowed to participate in ownership as well. Largely, they do this through stock options, but that isn’t the only means. So executives have the same ideals concerning returning value to shareholders as do any who invest in the outermost layer of the economy. We’ve already determined that this group has a bias toward growth.
Because the value of any one asset in the outermost layer is volatile, can go up and down, executives can seek to time actions to influence trends in order to benefit themselves, when their options are exercised. They probably have about as much luck with that as you would trying to pick stocks. You can diversify. They have to guess. The problem for people who make wages, and for those who earn from corporations in any way that can be classified as an expense (as independent contractors), is that executives will try. In doing so, they will seek after certain actions. Essentially, it’s cost cutting. This goes on for legitimate reasons too. The simplest of these is to cut either worker’s pay, or the workers themselves. It gets more creative from there. The best executives manage to ‘return value to shareholders’ in these and other ways.
There is the way things are supposed to be, and the way things are. The way things are supposed to be assumes oversight. The way things are understands that there is plenty of room for excess. When excesses develop as part of the culture of a thing, part of the way of doing that thing, sometimes we refer to that as privilege.
It’s like when a person tailgates the car in front of them in traffic. They see other people who also tailgate. They feel like their behavior is justified, not by reasoning out the distance they should be following cars by, but because they see so many others doing it too. When an accident happens those people often blame the car they hit for slowing or stopping in front of them, they are so convinced that they are right. They were blinded by privilege.
Again, it’s like the local comedy club I read about the other day. Its owner was under fire for allowing a sexist culture to run amok at his club. Every time a female comic complained about what was going on he told her to put up with it. He would say, “That’s just how that guy is.” It would take him a long time to enforce any rules about behavior, to ban someone who went too far too often. Sometimes he seemed supportive of the situation. Then, along comes the metoo hashtag, and he may go out of business. He was blinded by privilege.
I maintain that many of the efforts to cut the workforce or reduce pay by executives have been maneuvers to increase the stock price because they come with the appearance of cutting costs. The actual effect may be negligible. Yes, there are times when it is the right thing to do. I say it happens often enough simply because there is an extravagance of money seeking capital which is disinterested enough that it will not examine the situation more closely. They will be lured by the news alone.
Of course shareholders are happy about that. They aren’t going to complain if it makes the price go up. What do they care if employees suffer when their suffering is of no consequence to them? If the result was direct, like a stoppage caused by industrial action, they might care. Yeah, they might care enough to contact their congressman rather than think about adequate pay. That’s happened too. I guess it’s a cheaper response than getting involved over pay because those arguments take actual work rather than disinterested work, such as the one time passing of a law that takes the notion of industrial action off of the table. The simple answer prefers it when employees can be gotten to work for the company for the lowest cost. Never mind arguments about what empowered employees can do for your company, or about enhanced productivity. Those take too much effort, and further demands upon management than those commensurate with an owner’s stock price boosting mindset. You just have to stay in the good graces of the investment flow over time. The stock price will go up without them.
In the right sort of economy it does not hurt the idea of the company being a going concern. When everybody does it, though, eventually there will be a price to pay. At first, that price is the indebtedness of your customers, for across the board people employed by companies that operate the same way as yours are your customers. Those people have to operate in debt in order to compete. That still won’t make you notice what you are doing, though. Business won’t be harmed. Then, when that indebtedness becomes onerous, that results in customers who will prefer lowest price as the marketing device they will gravitate toward. Suddenly, your company is vulnerable. Like the driver who rearends another and blames them, those executives will not often blame themselves, nor will their boards blame their lack of oversight. “Everybody was doing it.” They were all blinded by privilege.
growsomeart 