I still think America is the greatest country on earth.

Any honest person can plainly see, American capitalism cannot survive without exploitation.

Let me share a perspective I first learned from Professor Richard Wolff. History will show you America has always demanded the exploitation of some people. The Native Americans were the first. When they were exhausted, who followed? Slaves from Africa. But America couldn’t keep them (except if convicted of a crime, see the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution). Despite everything, the slaves were ostensibly freed. But the fires of our modern day Mordor demanded coal. In the early 1900s, children worked the mines for coal, but that too was outlawed. Until today; child labor is back on the legislative agenda because capitalists refuse to pay living wages. Over and over, we’ll repeat the same old same old. Money has it’s own morality and it usually comes at the expense of someone or something. It’s never free.

Any honest person can plainly see, American capitalism cannot survive without exploitation.

As we confront cascading crises in our lifetimes, wildfires, floods, an ongoing pandemic, supply chain disruptions, unprecedented storms, atmospheric rivers and the collapse of bees, it should be apparent, we cannot rely on capitalism to provide solutions to the problems it has itself caused.

Fast forward to today, capitalist exploitation now includes poor white people. Don’t believe me? Who did Rittenhouse un-alive during the BLM protest in Kenosha? Go see for yourself. Wasn’t black folks. Why were they there? I believe it's because they're finally understanding the extent of their exploitation.

From where I sit, we don’t have free market capitalism in this country, we have government supporting private businesses with publicly funded bailouts even as the working class struggle to make rent or buy food. Healthcare should be a contentious issue for all of us but it isn’t. Where other countries have widespread state funded healthcare, we do not.

As a result, our particular brand of capitalism has contributed to birth rates in America falling below replacement levels. Who can afford children? Most of us can’t even fix our teeth. Along the way, capitalism has resulted in a planet wide degradation of the environment with us creating sacrifice zones right here inside America. Places where you daren’t drink the water. Flint Michigan comes to mind. Places where fracking sets the kitchen sink on fire or where rare cancers target towns. It helps create food deserts: places where it’s easier to get a Twinkie than a tomato.

Not to mention no one really wants to work in a system that demands human sacrifice. We’re living through a great resignation: people appear to have had enough and are in the process of figuring out how to live lives worth living. and in the meantime, they are resigning by the millions or striking by the thousands.

Where will that line of thinking will lead? Ask AOC, ask Bernie. The writing’s on the wall as more and more young people openly support some form of socialism. Capitalism is gradually discovering, there is a limit to what people will put up with. Resignations and strikes are only the first waves of discontent. Without respite, there will eventually be widespread protests with millions in the streets. We’ve seen this countries around the world before. It shouldn’t surprise anyone. Cue the democrats with a trillion dollar spending package that they hope will take the air out of the outrage building across America.

And yet even within their best intentions to tax the wealthy to ‘build back better’, analysts have found potential tax cuts for the wealthy incorporated into the plan. Seems we can’t go one step forward without a couple lateral moves to placate the donor class. As we confront cascading crises in our lifetimes, wildfires, floods, an ongoing pandemic, supply chain disruptions, unprecedented storms, atmospheric rivers and the collapse of bees, it should be apparent, we cannot rely on capitalism to provide solutions to the problems it has itself caused.

So what’s left?

Mass movements are coming unless Biden and company understand they have to implement spending on a transformative scale comparable to FDR. To meet the moment, to save capitalism, FDR reached for socialist policies. Social security came out of the new deal. So did massive worker programs that created the state parks. On that scale, the least Biden could do would be to provide a living minimum wage. Or healthcare for all. Free college education should fall within the ambit of saving the American way of life. On every metric that counts, America is not in the top 10 compared to the rest of the world. Even our life expectancy is falling. Can we really claim to be the greatest country in the world if we can’t even live here with any expectation of good lives?

All of this brings me to still supporting capitalism but only when constrained by morality. We need the entrepreneurship and innovation of individuals searching for gain even as we restrict the excesses of of billionaires exemplified by their cackling and obscene ego driven efforts at space tourism whilst children across the planet go to bed hungry. We need to build a system with safeguards using public funds, where middle aged men don’t fall through the cracks and either kill themselves quickly with bullets or slowly with substance abuse. Where we find ways to uplift our young instead of bemusedly watching as they embrace ‘van life’ trying to glam up poverty as they lose hope for a future they can live in.

In short we need social democracies, and the only way I can see to get there is to get there is to tax the hell out of the rich. Because the alternative, the words already on people’s lips is much different. They say ‘eat the rich’. I don’t want to live in that world. There’s a better way. One way or another massive change is coming to America; I’d like to propose we get ahead of it. Regulate capitalism before it collapses entirely.

Mitch.