Godless Capitalism

The Value Shift That’s Killing the American Dream

By J. “Dr. Jay” LaVelle Ingram, Ph.D.

            The phrase “Godless Communism” was a poignant staple of the Cold War. Generalized from an anti-communist comics feature that ran from 1946 to 1972, it suggested that even the most powerful government system, based on the principles of communism, was immoral and would ultimately fail. According to this thinking, a core reason for this failure was the clear and explicit opposition to religious practices in the U.S.S.R. In America today, it is not this type of opposition that leads me to characterize the U.S. as a Godless Capitalism, but rather the adoption of greed as a driving principle over any other moral consideration. While recent morals debates have focused almost entirely on abortion and gay rights, the assertion here is that the focus on personal gain at almost any cost is the core moral failure in a loss of direction, of optimism and ultimately even of economic power for this country.

            Myriad sources have documented the expanding upper class through recent decades in America; many have noted that the middle class in America continues to shrink, while the lower class grows- along with the upper class. As Rich Morin, senior editor for the Per Research Center concluded, we are in danger of seeing “the rich getting richer as …the poor grow poorer and the size of the middle class dwindling (sic).” Other signs of worsening times include everyday Americans having to work past retirement age, younger generations having worse retirement benefits than previous generations and working people having less disposable income. Even among those holding on to jobs, it is clear that many middle income jobs have disappeared while low paying jobs have become more the norm. Real people feel the resulting strain.

Among those searching for answers, there are some clear factors that come into focus. Factors in this growing income inequality include unfair taxes, misguided government regulations, and even the advantages of investments for the upper class. While others focus on the impact of technology on middle class job losses, no one denies the hard impact of manufacturing losses. The general agreement is that 5.6 million manufacturing jobs were lost between 2010 and today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016) the projections for manufacturing jobs to continue to decline lasts into 2024. Meanwhile Steve Ference of the Suny Polytechnic Institute emphasizes that corporations moving jobs for lower wages, rather than trade deals, is a key culprit in this decline.

So what are the conclusions to be made by the average American, likely working longer and harder for less pay? First, no one is saying that it’s a bad thing to make money. No one is saying that corporations should be fiscally irresponsible or forget the bottom line. However, ever since the fall of Enron in 2001, there has been a growing awareness that large corporations and their owners and executives may be placing the desire for extraordinary profit far above fair business practices, and above any consideration of impact. The clearly illegal activity by Enron executives resulted in the loss of individuals’ pensions, investments and savings plans, most of it never to be seen again. More recent scandals include Volkswagen’s attempt to misrepresent car’s environmental friendliness to consumers, Valeant’s misrepresentation of its profits as well as its apparent price gouging of consumers, and the infamous inflation of a life-saving drug from $13.50 to $750.00 per pill by Turing Pharmaceutical’s CEO. Much of the frustration of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters surrounded this sense that the economic elite have been playing dirty ball to maintain and increase the funding of the 1% at the top of our economic ladder at the expense of the 99%. This movement drew a correlation between the growing income inequity and the corrosive impact of money on politics, meaning that the masses then have little ability to impact the inequity of the system. The current presidential dialogue reflects a clear focus on this factor in America’s woes.

The bottom line that undergirds all of the above examples is simple; greed appears to be undermining the old fashioned values of the American dream. It used to be that we worked for our pay, and if we worked hard, we earned more. However, the ability to make money from money, at the expense of the everyday worker, seems to have overwritten this tenet. The owners and managers of larger companies used to exercise some sense of fiduciary responsibility toward their workers, caring deeply for workers’ satisfaction and standard of living. After all, these same workers built stable communities, and became stable buyers of American products. Today, the economic elite in America appear to have discarded John Nash’s equilibrium principles in favor of immediate satisfaction, risking that end stage game wherein everybody loses.

In short, we Americans seem to have forgotten that greed, for lack of a better word, is evil. It does not satisfy the covetous; it only leads to the desire for more. Whether we focus on a bigger share of the company, a larger plane, a grander mansion or a sportier car, ‘more’ is always the answer to the question. Greed leads to want in those without. It leads a family, a community, a nation, into conflict and discord. It stifles growth. Generosity, on the other hand, leads to satisfaction and humility. It leads to compassion for hard work. It leads families, communities and nations to the achievement of great things. Something like the generations before us achieved. In sum, it’s greed that’s killing us. Ken Silverstein stated (of Enron) in a 2013 Forbes article that “In the end, those misplaced morals killed the company while it injured all of those who had gone along for the ride.” It doesn’t take complex analysis to see that capitalism functions best when it is driven by moral individuals who consider the impact of their decisions beyond the bottom line. What’s at stake? Well, it could simply result in more Americans falling short of the American dream; but it could also lead to the destabilization of the American economy as fewer and fewer of us can afford the products and services that the elite offer. This should lead individual Americans as well as policy makers and corporate moguls to consider that Godless Capitalism, in the end, may be no more viable than was Godless Communism.