Laissez-Faire Capitalism: Best of Luck!
It’s Christmastime in Los Angeles. The weather boasted a sunny 80 degrees last week when I ventured toward LAX at an early hour. Now it’s 45 and rained for 24 hours. When I came back from Chicago on Sunday, I joked that we brought the cold weather with us. Flying during a pandemic seemed like a terrible idea -- and it probably was, but it gave me the strength to wake up every day for another week to work my day job. This respite provided the motivation to write and acknowledge my feelings after abandoning my blog on a 4 month hiatus. It even allowed me to take a break from the daily drink or three. The trip seeing my family and a few close friends left me feeling well-rested, which allowed me to finally acknowledge my feelings of anger and bitterness since the start of the pandemic.
I came home to find some changes. I assume the police forcibly removed the homeless next door to my home after their year-long stronghold in an empty bank parking lot. Or maybe it was the torrents of rain that caused them to voluntarily evacuate. It was the cops of course. It was private property, after all. The motley crue drank 24 ounce Budweiser and Bud Light Clamato out of tall cans. I would have gasped if they were actually considering drinking Mad Dog. Yikes! I’d wake up for work daily and view a man defecating and wiping himself methodically but quickly, shitting and squatting above the sewer, allowing parts of his feces to join the rest of the waste and the rest to fall nearby. Laissez-faire capitalism is fucking great.
Doomscrolling anxiously, I expressed my frustration in a post. I wrote something like “Mitch McConnell doesn’t want us to have $2,000. That would be socialism despite the thousands of dollars the American worker has paid in taxes that go directly toward aiding countries like Pakistan that actively harbor terrorists and bombing the shit out of some brown kid in Gaza”. I don’t want six-hundred-fucking dollars, Mitch. Is that the best you can do? I don’t want two-thousand dollars. I want economic security for when I’m struggling like most of the developed world. If you ran out of income for a month, would you have a home?
Responses came in liberal DINKers recommending that Congress should not support us at all and should focus their efforts solely on the most needy. While I don’t disagree that the most vulnerable should be aided before the rest of the population, are you sure that you’re not in need of financial support? Are you sure you’re not one corporate restructuring away from losing your income, one costly medical bill that will force your hand, one car accident that will cause you to receive a temporary portion of your salary? Where would you be if you didn’t work for 3 months or for 6 months? Or if you were laid off at the beginning of the now 9 month pandemic? I bet you thought this would be a NIMBY post!
Another response was for people to invest in precious metals. If you can hardly afford to purchase food and pay your rent and face threats of eviction and harassment from your landlord, how the hell are you going to buy silver or gold? Lawmakers always brag about our strong economic growth and the massive gains on the bullish New York Stock Exchange, but that’s such a piss-poor way of looking at economics when most people in Los Angeles are a paycheck away from being homeless.
It’s not that I disagree with the liberal response. If our country had a social safety net and the government wanted to piss off, yeah, sure. If I need to be self-reliant, I will be. I show up for work every day, don’t I? I don’t spend extravagantly. Sometimes I spend too much on takeout. If I could go to the doctor with a broken hand or the dentist without the fear of two surprise crowns and blowing $2500 in a month, I’d be largely content with this capitalism on steroids. I’m employed. I invest, save money, buy stocks, and fund my retirement. My family always supports me when I need to refinance my credit card! This predatory capitalism wouldn’t affect me! Oh, but it would! Woe is me! It has been 40 years since the beginning of Reaganomics took hold. What about the working poor? What about the chronically homeless? The disabled expected to live on $900 on social security? Nine hundred won’t cover rent in LA or in any major city.
Government’s function is to provide aid and social security for its inhabitants yet the last aid package Congress passed for us fell short months ago. Our country’s mantra, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t attainable if you’re broke. Unless you’re consistently earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and have a financially supportive family, you need more cash! Take the money. There’s no shame in having a little support. You’ve earned it and your tax dollars entitle you to some cash.
We have to start thinking differently. Recognize that the current work-to-live idea is fundamentally flawed and that work should not be a requirement of the pursuit of happiness. America is the wealthiest country in the world with the wealthiest individuals. It’s time for them to support the ones that make their businesses run. We’re all in this together yet we fight against each other. The oligarchs in this country feed us lies about hard work. They “worked hard” and “paved their own way” as “entrepreneurs”. Don’t get me wrong. You should have a desire for success and be proud of your successes, but redirect your energy into supporting each other. I would have supported the liberal ideas of incremental change, but as wages have stagnated for 40 years and people are being crushed by medical and student debt, a more radical solution is necessary. I truly hope it can happen in America.
Laissez-faire capitalism isn’t helping you and it’s destroying society. If you think you don’t need an economic blanket through hard times, think again. You’re much closer to being homeless and having to fend entirely for yourself without any guaranteed securities than you are to being a millionaire.
