Thom Hartmann: The Oligarchs Don't Understand Economic Collapse Happens When They Get All the Money

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/danger-ahead-oligarchs-dont-understand-economic-collapse-happens-when-they-get-all-money

Thomhartmann.com / By Thom Hartmann, Sam Sacks

Danger Ahead: The Oligarchs Don't Understand That Economic Collapse Happens When They Get All the Money

The corporate masters seem to have forgotten they depend on working people for their own survival.

November 12, 2012

Let’s face it, if your opponent in Monopoly scoops up Boardwalk, Park Place, North Carolina Avenue, Pacific Avenue, both utilities, and the four railroads – that’s game over.

The other players, all of whom have been relegated to mere consumers instead of property owners, will slowly go bankrupt having to pay higher and higher costs for rent and services, utilities, and transportation. Eventually, one player has all the money and the losers have to clean up the board game and put it away.

But let’s assume the Monopoly game doesn’t end there. Let’s assume the broke players keep rolling the dice and keep going around the board. They essentially keep living their lives desperate and broke, using their credit cards and home lines of credit to stay in the game. Maybe they end up in jail. If they’re lucky, they land on Baltic Avenue and can afford to stay a night in the slums.

Meanwhile, the oligarch who owns everything can no longer collect any income. The other players can’t afford to pay rent, they can’t pay utilities, and they can’t ride on the railroads. Eventually, without consumers spending money, the Monopoly oligarch goes broke, too. His properties and businesses disappear and suddenly everyone is broke!

That’s what Monopoly’s version of economic collapse looks like. And it’s very similar to what global economic collapse in the real world looks like, too.

Now put the Monopoly game board away and consider this: Researchers in Zurich, Switzerland have found that there are roughly 43,000 transnational corporations that dominate the global economy. Of those, there are about 1,300 companies that control 80% of all the global revenues for all the transnational corporations on the planet. Now let’s take it a step further. Of those 1,300 core companies, only 147 companies, which all happen to own each other in some way, control 40% - or nearly half – of all the wealth in the entire transnational corporate network. That means 1% of transnationals own 40% of all the world’s business wealth.

In other words, the global 1% has its own 1%.

MORE[p]

[DCKit]

1. So forwarded.

Have I told you how much I love you in the past two days?

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. More like, they don't care one whit

or get a tremendous laugh out of it.

It is dangerous to eliminate "intent" from their actions. They are not automatons.

[HooptieWagon]

3. Friedman's economic model was tested in Chile.

Chile's economy was devastated, a handful of people got very wealthy, so the free marketers declared it a success.
http://www.bidstrup.com/economics.htm

[Live and Learn]

4. Monopoly is what I have always equated it to, too.

Hated the board game and the real life game sucks even more!

[Selatius]

5. Supposedly, the inventor of the game set it up to mimic what happens in any market.

If you let the players do their thing, eventually only a few players or just one is left in the market. He then becomes a monopolist, and the game stops because there is no more competition.

If you wanted the game to go on and on, you have periodic bouts of trust-busting, where you expropriate money and property from the monopolist and redistribute to the other players who were defeated, and you go again.

Then, you're actually mimicking social programs in real life like the SBA or food stamps or unemployment insurance, programs that help people get back up on their feet when they "lose" the game.

[Live and Learn]

6. Exactly. Without some form of redistribution, the 99.999999... die off.

And then what becomes of the 1 left?

[Selatius]

7. Another game starts. It's called Feudalism.

After the Roman Empire and civil society disintegrated, anybody else who wasn't on the feudal manor died.

Those who were on the plantation or worked for the landowner became locked in and were reduced to serfs and peasants; the landowner became lord; the plantation became the feudal manor. The peasants worked the land to grow food. The lord ate the food and gave the scraps to the peasants. Religion is used to put the fear of the landlord into their hearts with the divine right to rule over all.

The Roman coinage was locked up in the keep, eventually melted down into new coins and stamped with the face of the new lord, this to erase any lingering memory of a form of government elected by people.

[Live and Learn]

8. Yep. In my home, it was called throwing the game up into the air.

Funny, it was usually done by the only one of my 4 siblings to become a right winger.
Of course, at this point he is the best well off of any of us and calling for our parent's government pensions to be revoked. Arghhh.

[Hissyspit]

9. kick nt

[reformist2]

10. We've known for over 100 years that capitalism ends up in monopoly. Trust-busting, new deals...

...redistribution, to be blunt, is the only real solution. Not only is it the solution, it's the only option left. That is, unless you happen to want impoverishment and slavery.

[marions ghost]

11. Yep--Oligarchs never get it

Up to us to help them understand.

Group solidarity.