The Root Cause of the Economic Catastrophe

Everyone understands that the root cause of this economic catastrophe was corporate money's influence on our politics.

Corporations are able to concentrate money. We, the People let them do that because it enables them to undertake large-scale projects. But currently executives can access that money and use it to influence politics through bribery and/or manipulating public opinion. Deregulation, unfair tax codes, loss of consumer and worker protections and decades of falling wages and benefits have been the result -- hardly in the interest of the public.

Until we stop allowing use of corporate money to influence politicians and the public these problems will only increase.

When are we going to come to grips with that?

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Comments

[wmnorton]

The problem is supply side economics. All of the problems we see today can be traced back to that failed theory.advanced by Reagan.

[DougK]

The cause for the current economic situation is simply too many people squeezed financially. If wages had truly "kept up" over the last few decades there never would have been any "subprime" trigger. Instead of paying people with increased wages they were "payed" with increased credit. People "bought into" the real estate bubble because so many had no other way to get ahead.

Education has failed. Once the path to betterment it now serves primarily only to exclude people and deny opportunity. Working harder doesn't improve anything either. Productivity has grown while real income has dropped.

Ultimately the REAL ROOT cause of widespread economic hardship is the trade deficit, because that's at the heart of why real wages haven't "kept up" over time. There's no way to improve long term economically until after we rebuild enough manufacturing, and develop enough alternative energy sources, to eliminate the trade deficit. If we can achieve that then an EQUAL TRADE policy could prevent the hardships of both too much deficit (U.S.) and too much surplus (China).

The corporate influences you mention are not the cause, they're only the tools used to create the problem. As long as short term gains are valued more than long term benefits the majority of us will continue to suffer cycles of unnecessary hardship.