"Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, of plutocracy." – J. Pierpont Morgan
Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory, right? So let's sidle up to the concentration of wealth and take a few sniffs.
If you look at the economy throughout the past couple of decades, you'll see a pattern. Say that 20 years ago you got together a group of plutocrats with the goal of making the country a better place for big business. And let's say you started by creating a set of ideal outcomes. What would be on your dream scenario list?
1. Find a way to put working-class people in their place, which is to shut up and be grateful to even have a job.
2. Open new markets for American goods, especially ones where they do not compete with goods from local companies.
3. Find ways to operate outside of government regulation and lawsuits.
4. Increase consumer spending without increasing wages.
5. Increase government spending without sparking inflation (which eats into the value of accumulated wealth).
Those five events would create enormous wealth without social uprising or government interference. So how to get there?
First, you create a global labor market. Doing so, you open new markets, such as China and India. Thus, you have more people to sell to, and, if done properly, lots of low-cost laborers, reducing your labor costs while getting rid of lots of pesky employees and the expensive annoyances they have become accustomed to, like benefits.
Indeed, you accomplish the quadruple-dip of wealth creation — suppress domestic wages, thwart inflation, and add new customers, all while side-stepping labor and environmental laws.
The only drawback to this scenario is that by suppressing wages, people have less money to spend on your products and services. However, if you could achieve easy credit, you could maintain or increase spending levels. Further, if you have a nice, costly war, you pump vast amounts of governmental money into the economy.
Take all this together, and you have two or three decades of what used to be called "unconscionable profits." You don't hear that phrase anymore because we as a society have agreed that there is no such thing — it is now a part of our culture that the more you can grab the better. Period.
Would such a series of coordinated events require a conspiracy? No. Let's face it, the natural state of affairs in a free-market system is inequality, not equality. In order to have an income distribution that is becoming more equal would require compassionate effort. To have diverging income classes requires doing nothing. And nothing is what we, as a society, have done. We have conspired to not give a damn. So that is my conspiracy theory.
That raises the question of how working people can deal with the reality of a global labor market. Individuals must figure out what businesses have always understood: The real money goes to those who can get around the pressures of competition, to monopoly power. You get rich by having exclusive rights or information, like say owing the rights to the dominant software used by computers. For individuals, this monopoly power is individuality — there is only one George Clooney or one Tiger Woods. For most people, however, exclusivity is not an option; the best they can do is have a specialty. But say you are a trained specialist, like a radiologist, engineer or architect. You still might find yourself competing globally — for instance, architectural plans for US buildings are being drawn in China.
Thinking globally, you must take into account the geography of competition. If your work can be done via the Internet, then you are up against the world.
However, if it requires face-to-face meetings, then you have limited competition, perhaps even a bit of monopoly of geography. In other words, a career comes down to two principles: specialize and localize.
That's how you conspire to opt out of the global labor market.
Dale Dauten is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at dale@dauten.com.
