Economic Ramblings and Thoughts according to Elandria

[Elandria Williams]

What is the basic role of the economy? Is the economy really broke and if it is when was a time that it was operating correctly? We live in a country and in a world where the US economy was built on free labor, stolen land and resources. The United States of America was built on the backs, land, and hands of people who had little to no control or ownership of the services that they provided. The richest people in the land, the landowners and owners of the largest corporations, were the first presidents, governors, senators and representatives. In order to be included in that list you must have owned land which knocked out most of the population in the United States including Indigenous people trying to save their land, Black people both slave and free, and poor and working class white people. At this time there was no such thing as a middle class you either had land or didn’t. This is what the economy of the United States was built on.

Free market ideology oftentimes seems removed from the political and social plane in which we live on. In the news today people continue to say why we don’t just let the market and the economy play out. Unless your people were of the owner class from the beginning it took hard work and lots of luck to rise up. The reasons for the rise was not the market playing out but the hard work and struggles of our forefathers and foremothers to fight for pay, the eight hour work day, benefits and all of the rights that some people take for granted today. Things have not changed much in this country if you look at whose home is being foreclosed, who is losing their jobs, and who is struggling every day to pay their child care bill. Many people in our midst are not getting close to a living wage and instead are being paid wages that don’t even add up to $10,000 a year. Yet we continue to believe that the people that are supposed to be bailed out are not the unsuspecting customers that because of greed of mortgage companies and banks were given loans that the loan officers knew that they could not afford. Instead of helping out families that no longer have homes we instead are bailing out the banks and the mortgage companies that started the crises to begin with the government’s help of course.

It is time to change the conversation about the economy so instead of us talking about the scarcity of resources and how union workers who get paid $25 a hour need to have less money and benefits we instead talk about why it is okay for someone to have $8 billion dollars and other people are sleeping on the street. The idea that the economy at any point worked is false. There have always been people on the margins and not because they made the decision to stay at home at not work. In fact they worked harder than everyone else, building the capital building, working the fields, carrying for people’s children, laying down the railroad, going deep in the coal mines, and working in the factories doing back breaking work. These are the workers that in our country have worked the hardest not the person at the bank who is there because their grandfather started the company by stealing land and resources from people. The President Elect of the United States looks kind of like me except he is not the child of slaves which is maybe why he felt that he had the right to run for President. Either way we have been encouraged to feel that we are citizens of the United States and since we have been here for 400 plus years we might as well make it the country that the piece of paper called the Declaration of Independence prophesied. Everyone knows that the inalienable rights that were declared are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

People enjoyed the movie the Pursuit of Happyness but do we really believe that as a nation. So many people took from the movie what an amazing man he was to pull himself up by his bootstraps and make it. The real question is why in the richest country in the world is someone homeless and getting evicted. That is the question that we have to answer. Are we going to continue to determine our policies for how people are treated out of a scarcity model or are we going to instead have an outlook of abundance? There are no shortages of houses or land in the United States. Why do people’s homes have to be foreclosed? Why is it okay that people are evicted out of their homes over and over again due to gentrification. How can an individual own a resource that was put on this earth by God or a power that none of us even understands? Why does Appalachia where I live have some of the richest resources in the country and be in the oldest mountains in the world but is the poorest region in the country and those mountains instead of being cherised and revered are being cut off so that our rampant consumption can continue?

My mother and father can remember times when there were no plastic, economies were mostly local and many, many more people owned farms and had at least a small plot to grow some vegetables. That meant that no matter what happened with the “markets” you had some food and people were able to barter locally for supplies. All of this credit was not even heard of and even though most people were extremely poor the value of the dollar was understood. I grew up in a time where the bigger the better and even my 9 year old nephew thinks that having a laptop is a normal thing to put on his Christmas list. It is time for a reckoning. In business now companies are moving to more democratic ways of operating. What about if we made democracy come true in our society? What would it look like if we actualized the demands that were in the Declaration of Independence and modeled what true democracy looks like? The patriots wanted to throw the yoke of inherited rulers but instead of throwing off the yoke we have recreated it. There is an unequal distribution of resources not based on who worked hard or didn’t but on who your father or mother was. Iif they came here on the Mayflower, stole people’s land and owned other people you will have money for days and years due to trusts and inheritances. The true dream of democracy was not written down in the Constitution of the United States or the Wealth of Nations. The true dream of democracy is a cooperative system by which all people have the right to take leadership on issues that impact them not just through the ballot but through a participatory process of budgeting, elections, policy making, and organizing.

Our economic crises is not a crises that just happened but a process put in motion by Milton Friedman and followers by intense deregulation, the dollar having no backing and massive speculation instead of facts. We can’t solve this economic crisis by holding on to a false idea that our economy ever worked. If we have as the basic premise that this economy is based on some people being poor not middle class but poor and barely surviving and others have extreme wealth due to the exploitation of these people. Some people call this socialist or communist but in looking at the history of the United States whenever anyone was fighting for justice whether it be civil rights, the 8 hour work day, maternity leave, or violence against women laws it was branded as socialist or communist. It is easy to believe that foreclosures and evictions should just happen if you have never been homeless or have any family that has not always had a fabulous home. Thinking that some people are just not ready to own a home sounds great if you have always had a home to go to. Does democracy mean that only some people are able to be happy and others don’t even have the means to pursue it? Some people make $5/hour and barely making while others are making 5 billion a year and those people above are working for them doesn’t sound like a democracy or happiness to me.