Fixing the Rules for the Rich

“We do not live in a laissez-faire economy in which there is no interference from government and people are allowed to do as they please, operating the economy by making contracts with one another. We have rules. Over the past three decades the rules affecting who wins and who loses economically have been quietly and subtly rewritten.

“The richest Americans and the corporations they control shaped and often wrote these new rules and regulations under which our economy now functions. The rich and their lobbyists have taken firm control of the levers of power in Washington and the state capitals while remaking the rules in their own interests. They have also imbued private organizations with the power to make rules that few outside the process understand, but that influence the distribution of income. These same people also just happen to be the primary source of the campaign donations that put politicians in office and keep them there. Politicians, as lawmakers, enact the rules. As presidents and governors they appoint both the administrators who decide when to enforce the rules and many of the judges who interpret them.” — David Cay Johnston, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expenses (and Stick You with the Bill) (New York: Penguin Group, 2007), 12,13.

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Remind me again why modern capitalism is supposedly so uniquely new and different? –  “Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, who write misfortune, which they have prescribed to rob the needy of justice, and to take what is right from the poor of My people, that widows may be their prey” (Is. 10:1,2).

Doug Jones

See also: Why Big Business Loves Regulation and Inspirational Election Thoughts from Gore Vidal