Elements of Fire & Consumerism

In order to make fire or to put fire out you need the fire triangle: oxygen, fuel and heat. Take one away and the fire goes out. For the capitalists’ consumer system to thrive like fire it needs: money, demand and product, if you take one of these away and capitalism dies. Let’s look at what happens when 400 individuals accumulates more than $2 trillion and keeps it in their pockets year after year. This is the start of inequality, which causes poverty. The USA now is at the highest level of inequality in our history. We sit between Venezuela and Uruguay. We are even higher than every major European or East Asian nation in our inequality, which causes poverty through economic mismanagement. The corporations don’t spend their money; they just sit on it, which drains money from the economy and the “fire” goes out. With no corporations spending there will be no jobs, which means no workers spending, which means no demand for products (the fire is snuffed out). With fewer jobs and with the existence of all those people without jobs, it creates what Karl Marx called a reserve army of unemployed. Unemployment fuels poverty by decimating wages. Desperate people bid down the price of labor simply to survive, which means the fire still goes out . It is a misconception that business is the job creator, and will deploy corporate profits to take risks to reinvest to expand and ultimately to employ more people. Businesses see labor simply as a cost. Businesses try to reduce that cost as much as possible in order to boost profits as much as can be and at any expense. Businesses are not in the business of creating jobs; businesses are in the business of maximizing profits. Businesses hire labor only when they can make a profit from the workers. If a business could eliminate its labor force entirely, it would, which would put out the fire forever. This is what we—the wage slaves— are up against. We must force the wages up, which will put more money in the hands of the people who will actually spend it. This will then entice the people who are sitting on the cash to want to make more by investing to cover the needs of the spenders and soon we will have a good fire again. To make it work, we, the 99 percent, will have to do it. It is time for the spring offensive. We need to use the good weather to get to the high ground (as described in the Art of War). The goal is for $15 to $24 an hour; and a decline in unemployment of about 2-4 percent—would equal a wage slave’s dream.