My day

Can We Afford Capitalism?

In his book, Adam's Fallacy, Duncan K. Foley, an economics professor at the New School for Social Research, criticizes Adam Smith, the guru of capitalism, for failing to explain exactly how "private selfishness turns into public altruism."

Foley points out that Smith's theory "requires a strategy of wholesale denial of the real consequences of capitalist development, particularly the systematic imposition of costs on those least able to bear them, and the implacable reproduction of inequalities that divide people from one another in society."

Smith argued that political and social considerations would mitigate the selfishness that is inherent in the economics of capitalism. It is not difficult, however, to come up with a sampling of the costs of capitalist development that contradicts Smith's assertion:

• Deaths from unsafe workplaces. An AFL/CIO Report in 2008 tells us that an average of 16 people a day die while on the job because of employer negligence. That's 6000 deaths a year. The penalties for this negligence, if they are levied at all, are so minor that employers can simply factor the costs into their budgets rather than institute safety measures to protect the lives of their employees.

Furthermore, over the years the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been so under funded that most workplaces will never see a federal inspector come through their doors.

• Deaths from occupational diseases. According to the same report, an additional 50,000 to 60,000 workers who don't die while at work do die each year from diseases associated with their jobs. These range from the black lung incurred by miners, exposure to tuberculosis, lung cancer brought on by inhaling asbestos, poisoning from pesticide spraying that can also cause still births, and from the flavoring of butter with diacetyl which causes a deadly lung disease in workers who handle popcorn.

• Deaths inside hospitals. Ralph Nader's Public Citizen reported in 2009 that 85,000 deaths could be prevented if the health care industry were willing to make a few simple changes. These deaths happen because of medication errors, catheter infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia, bedsores, and incorrect surgical procedures. Hiring more trained nurses would save additional lives.

• Deaths from lack of health care. According to a 2009 study by Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance, nearly 45,000 people die each year because they lack health insurance and cannot pay out-of-pocket for the care they need or for medications that would keep them alive. On the face of it, having to buy insurance in order to obtain healthcare is a preposterous and illogical notion. But it is a moneymaker.

• Deaths from unsafe products. Toxic chemicals come into our homes on furnishings and in cleaning products. Radiation from nuclear power plants attacks the most vulnerable parts of our bodies, especially our reproductive systems. Pharmaceutical medications like Vioxx, prescribed by doctors for pain relief, have caused heart attacks or strokes. Asthma rates are skyrocketing because of increases in air pollution. Defective automobiles are responsible for hundreds of deaths every year. Tobacco products that are still on the market even though we know they are lethal cause 400,000 deaths a year.

• Deaths from combat. "Economic growth" is the oxygen that keeps capitalism alive. Aggressive and illegal wars, like the two we are fighting now, are instigated to obtain control of new markets and new resources for this expansion. The number of deaths by members of our own armed forces, while too many to be sure, are low compared to the millions around the world who have been killed by the US military.

All of these tragic deaths do not just impact individual families. They affect us all for we collectively bear the costs in one way or another.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the yardstick that measures the rate of economic growth. If that rate is neither too high nor too low, then all is right in the world in the eyes of capitalists. However, the GDP only computes transactions that involve money. It does not measure the suffering of families who have lost loved ones due to war or other circumstances. It does not take into account the stress on working people that comes from the demands for greater productivity - asking workers at all levels to do more at the same rate of pay - or from disabilities associated with one's job. Nor is it a measure, for instance, of the hardships caused by the loss of a decent retirement for those who, as a hedge against inflation, had put their money in the biggest crap game going.

• Corporate Assault on Mother Earth. Corporate America is killing us. For profit. But they are not only killing us - they are also destroying Mother Earth, taking her resources that we depend on and returning them in the form of trash and toxic wastes. The planned obsolescence of computers, electronic gadgets, automobiles, appliances, even clothing, and thousands of other items that the advertising industry exhorts us to buy uses up the earth's precious resources. Production of all of this "stuff" is outstripping both the planet's ability to renew its resources as well as depleting its non-renewable ones. In other words, capitalism is destroying the means of survival not only for our children and grandchildren, but for all living beings.

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"Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will they realize that they can't eat money."
                                                                                                                                                  Based on a Cree Proverb