Profits - a system of economic crises, hardships and war

 

(Above: Homeless by Fernando Goncalves)

Written by: John G. on 14 April 2023

A look at Australia’s economic system shows it operates for business to profit. It is capitalist.

In every industry, business is dominated by a handful of large-scale corporate operations, whether it’s petrol, mining, supermarkets, transport and logistics, chemicals, fast food, steel, concrete, telecommunications, banking, electronics, and so many more parts of the economy. 

Profiting in a big way is done by very few rich financial moguls. The big players are from the US, Britain, Japan, China, Europe which rule the roost. A handful of locals try to keep their place in the wake of the big multinationals. 

The dominance of US corporate giants has Australia caught up in US war preparations. $365 billion nuclear submarines, US troop placements, nuclear bombers are brought forward. The US prepares to stave off the growing grab by Chinese billionaires to bring countries, markets and resources into their domain away from US supremacy. The system of exploitation in empires feeds and feeds off economic strife. 

The enormous build-up of money in the hands of the biggest monopolists is astounding. Think Amazon’s Jeff Bazos’s personal wealth of US $125 billion, an unimaginable sum. 

Forbes Magazine estimates there were 2,688 billionaires across the globe in 2022; 735 in the US, 607 in China, 166 in India, 134 in Germany, 83 in Russia.

They have been making so much money, they have been running out of places to profitably reinvest it. Investments in machinery, mines, infrastructure assets and labour can produce goods and services way above what can be sold. Markets for goods and services have been flooded. 

Speculation becomes rife. Stocks on the New York Stock Exchange and others are priced at many times the concrete value of the operations behind the stocks. Assets and labour can’t be used to profit so are left idle, unemployed and underemployed. 

Governments issued trillions in bonds and created enormous pools of credit to boost flagging markets. Money loses its buying power. The buying power of wages drops. Education, health, aged care and other services get neglected. 

The spiral into this crisis of inflation, hardship and people deprived of necessities has been driven by excess of ability to produce everything people need. 

The snag holding our well-being to ransom is the excess of means to produce which can’t be mobilised to make profit for the big corporates. The system is choked up.  

We get by when things are good for making profits. We get squeezed when it cycles into crisis.  

While the system for producing what we need to live depends on big corporates making a profit, we’ll have the cycle of boom driving to a bust and hard times.