How little profit for a capitalist to not be greedy?" & a progressive answer

Someone asked this question at Yahoo Answers:

What rate of return for a capitalist is not considered greedy?

Here is my response:

I would not begrudge someone any rate of return so long as they didn't screw their workers, the environment, people in other countries, or bribe politicians to rig the system to give them monopoly power to do so as oil companies and media companies have done.

In the case of media companies, we give them public airwaves essentially for free instead of charging market value, and allow them to combine to the point that they can choke out opinions they don't like.

We give an even bigger gift to oil companies: we use our diplomatic, intelligence, and military to give them control of Middle Eastern and other oil reserves, and overthrow any governments that threaten that control. In exchange, they don't try to increase production or cut us a break on the price, or even offer to repay the trillion dollar plus cost of the war even though they will reap tens of trillions in profit from it.

In some cases, like pharmaceuticals, we give the companies taxpayer money for research, and they thank us by charging us MORE than anyone else in the world, and fighting to keep those drugs whose development we funded from going generic.

Very often these same companies that we do so many favors for with our taxpayer dollars bend over backwards to get out of paying taxes themselves, so that they end up paying a lower percentage of their income in taxes than you and I.

Even if they got no direct support from the government, they used our roads, our police and fire departments, workers educated in our public schools, and other infrastructure to accumulate their wealth, so they should be grateful to only have to pay a percentage of their PROFITS instead of their INCOME like the rest of us do.

If somebody has a new product or idea that people want, I wish them all the profit in the world.

A better question to ask is what return should Americans be getting on our tax dollars? Should we get public schools with classes small enough for students to actually learn? Should we get meat inspectors who are more concerned about our safety than incurring the wrath of his boss who came from and plans to go back to the meat industry? Should we get a foreign policy designed to make us safer instead of more enemies for America and more profits for a handful of corporations?

If America was a business, and you were a stockholder or customer, what would you expect to get out of it?

3 Questions before any war (or buying that another country is a threat)

Based on our experience in Iraq, an only slightly more than superficial reading of the history of our other wars and military actions, and a modest dose of common sense, we should always ask these questions before any war.

1. How many times over could we nuke that country off the map if they attacked us?

If it was Russia or China, maybe only 5-7 times. If it was a smaller country, the pilots would get bored after the first 30-40 runs.

2. What would this country gain by attacking us?

However cruel or unpleasant leaders of other countries may be, they didn't get to that position by being stupid. No leader of a country would take an action that had ZERO chance of success. Even Hitler's stupidest move, invading Russia, had some chance of success. What is the possible gain of any of our current or future boogey men in attacking us?

3. What business interests would profit from us attacking that country, and what has that interest done for us to deserve that sacrifice of tax dollars and lives?

Those first three address the kind of truly embarrassing childish lies and ommissions have been allowed to sell the American people.

But their is a second level of lies that has some credibility in academic and even military circles related to 3 about "strategic access" to resources. Therefore, some corrallaries are necessary:

3A. If someone says we need "strategic access" to a natural resource that country has, what would that country gain economically by denying us access besides ideological bragging rights? Would withholding the product do far more economic damage to them than us?

If a country has only one product, like OIL, cutting off the customer that uses 25% of the product would create a glut for other consumers, lower prices, dry their treasury and elites bank accounts of income, and possibly cause a recession or depression for their own people even more than it hurt us.

3B. If someone says that country may jack up prices if we don't invade, would the current price of that commodity plus the cost of military action in tax dollars,lives, and international resentment be less than their hypothetical exorbitant price?

These questions or some variation of them should be asked by every reporter, congressman, senator and American whenever military action is proposed.

Even Democrats have sold some variation of these lies about Iran saying Iraq was a distraction from the "real" threat of Iran. Their threat in reality is the same as Iraq's or Venezuela's: that the country might keep a decent share of their oil income and American companies won't get all they want (or any at all). And if a country like Iran gets nuclear weapons, the political cost of going in to take that oil will be too high.

The Democrats have made some steps in the right direction in their brief time back at the wheel. Declaring something like this would plant them firmly in the center of the reality-based community instead of being nearer neighbors to it than the GOP.




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