PRINT
Our Workplace Press articlesPrices out of Control – Just like the Capitalists who Rake in the Money
What about all those excuses the big companies are peddling for high prices? Lies, every one of them.
We are not running out of oil – the big oil companies don’t even open up wells in the fields they have, not to mention the fact they have shut down over half the refineries they were running 30 years ago.
As for food prices – don’t look at China and India. They haven’t caused the problem. They export more food than they import.
The cause of high prices is not a lack of food or oil – the cause is the greed of big companies. Exxon-Mobil takes in more money, over 400 billion dollars a year, than do the entire economies of most countries – including that of Saudi Arabia! But ExxonMobil is not content, it wants still more money. And so does every other highly profitable company in the country.
Every industry in the country is dominated by just a few companies: oil, chemicals, steel, health insurance, pharmaceuticals, food processing, automobiles, etc. These few companies in each industry decide how much is produced and marketed. They set the prices, even when those high prices mean that few people can buy. And they create fictional shortages to justify high prices.
Today, with prices spiraling almost out of control, the economy is heading into a down spin. Who can afford to buy the products and services being produced today? Fewer and fewer of us can afford a new car, much less a new house and all the things that go in it. So production of big items is cut, and that flows down into production cuts in everything else. Millions of workers have been thrown out in the street already. How many more?
Big business calls this the free enterprise system and its defenders say it is run by competition. No, there is no competition – and it’s hardly free.
Today, we are living through a war being carried out by a tiny class of very wealthy people against the whole laboring population, including the very young, and all those too old or too sick to work.
This is capitalism in all its glory, walking around naked for everyone to see.
And it’s a really ugly sight.