SocioECONOMICS.

[dmcauliffe09]

An example of the way economic capitalism has influenced the oppressive society we live in is the recession through which we are currently suffering. Capitalists depend on a free-market system whose prices depend on supply-and-demand rather than consumer need. Therefore if we have one apple with 100 potential buyers who really want it, a capitalist can make the price of the apple something extravagant in order to gain a substantial profit. However, if there are 100 apples and nobody wants them, instead of giving them to people who need them at a reasonable price, the capitalist will throw the apples away and fire his workers to make up for the profit that he did not gain. Obviously this is a crude example, but it is the basic theory of what is happening right now. Capitalist overproduction has led to a surplus of useless items (useless in the sense that the items do not accumulate profit) that nobody will buy, so massive jobs cuts are being instituted to account for the ungained profit, and the market is going down. Free market capitalism is doomed to have recessions because of the intense competition and subsequent lack of interest from the population. Commodity fetishism has led people to believe that they need an iPod more than they need bread or water. If we were to institute a planned economy, there would of course be some setbacks such as shortages and surpluses, but these could be minimal if such an economy were to be correctly instituted.

Through this free market system, capitalists are able to cut jobs of hard-working people when they should be cutting the jobs of the CEO whose one paycheck accounts for the collective paychecks of thousands of factory workers. Thank God Obama has out the salary cap on those men who earn over $500,000 (though he himself earns about $400,000). How long will we continut to let capitalist economics determine our futures?