The Thirteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth Amendment

 

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

 

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

-       Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution 

 

By Gregg Wall (2-5-2022) 

 

Where are America’s great abolitionists?  And why have they forsaken us? 

 

The questions are not rhetorical, but an acknowledgement that all Americans are enslaved at birth, in the service of national debt that has largely been accumulated making the rich catastrophically wealthy.  Some place the national debt at $30 trillion, with every newborn American facing, presently, approximately $90,000 in debt hanging over their head the second they exit the womb.

 

The libertarian US economy means Americans are enslaved, indentured, cast into involuntary servitude in ways too numerous to count; but rest assured, by the end of this piece, we will enumerate some of the most egregious examples. 

 

First, what is slavery?  Contemporary definitions include, but are not limited to: Forced labor, Bonded labor (more traditionally, called indentured servitude, that is labor to repay a debt), Child labor, Descent-based slavery, Trafficking, and Early and forced marriage. 

 

The Thirteenth Amendment also refers to involuntary servitude… labor demanded under contract or peonage, generally, to repay a debt.  And here, indentured servitude would fit the bill. 

 

As America has little or no safety net, Americans are often forced to work in deplorable conditions, often at pay dictated – not by market forces, or via a living wage established by the government – but by monopolies and monopsony.  Moreover, globalization and technology means that an employer can shift jobs overseas the moment a monopolist feels labor is getting out of line or threatens to unionize. Technology has reached a point, where jobs often can be easily automated.  The Washington Post placed the number of Americans working for less than $15 an hour at 39 million. 

 

Somewhere between 33% and 40% of American workers are employed in the gig economy, which is only expected to grow.  That is to say, doing jobs with substandard pay and that are rife with wage theft.  And what is the foundation of the gig economy… the idea, basically, is to give employers control over employees, but then turn around and say they are contract labor, so employers can escape all manner of employee benefits, taxes, and scrutiny. 

 

And the outcome for the worker, who are paid a nonliving wage or engaged in gig work?  Often substandard living conditions, and greater and greater amounts of personal debt – on top of the aforementioned national debt – that compels them to keep grinding it out, in indentured servitude.  In short, workers cannot escape the debt and taxes that surround them, which has an impact on their mental and physical health and their family life. (Moreover, the US government uses the national debt to extract taxes from everyday Americans, at rates the wealthiest can’t be bothered to pay, if they pay anything; and then the government uses the same debt to enforce punitive austerity upon the American people.)

 

And with the consolidation of the US economy, into cartels and monopolies (thank you Private Equity & Wall Street), many workers simply do not have choices, particularly in regards who they work for. 

 

So we can see that tens of millions of Americans are enslaved by a system that is entirely rigged against them.  And our U.S. Congress?  They could afford greater worker protections and in fact, Dems have won office on promises to expand worker protections, like: a living wage, a child tax credit, and a Medicare for All health care option.  But our day traders in the Congress, once ensconced in power, have little appetite to curtail the profits associated with increasing their donors’ and big business interests’ greatest cost, employee wages. 

 

And so the cycle repeats and the number of Americans indentured, enslaved, by a failed libertarian economic model grows and expands. 

 

 

 

 

But the fun doesn’t stop there.  Americans are not only indentured by the Federal government, that they have little or no say in, but they are indentured by the concentration of wealth.  We’ve all read the statistics, the wealthiest ten percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans.  That wealth seeks a home, and that home is usually in businesses and opportunities that prey upon and indenture Americans even further.  Rather than compete, create jobs, start up a business, capital in America, as often as not, engages in rent seeking behavior and the easiest means of rent extraction is in debt and debt service fees. 

 

Payday lenders serve the underbanked with usury. 

 

For-profit medical care means indentured workers often forego critical medical care and medicine they need, so as mitigate or prevent going deeper into debt.  Which makes for an unsafe labor force and ever rising medical bankruptcies, as workers often wait until it's too late to seek treatment. 

 

Student debt…  in the land of the enslaved, home of the indentured… has climbed to 1.7 trillion dollars and counting.  So that rather than encourage education, the cornerstone of any healthy democracy, America has created yet another stop sign or barrier to entry (which precludes Americans from escaping what has become a caste system in the land of systemic racism). 

 

Commercial financial interests, private equity & investors – fueled by the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies – have piled into residential housing.  In yet, the latest move to jack up rents and remove the American dream, home ownership, out of the grasp of tens of millions of Americans. Homelessness and evictions are on the rise. 

 

In today’s headlines, inflation is often written about… but what is inflation?  Given record profits, inflation is little more than rent seeking by America’s monopolies and utilities in the form of consumer price gouging.  Just one more way, for those in power, to keep workers indentured, on the precipice of household disaster, and easily enslaved.

 

And what does all this do to American children?  The US ranks near the bottom of advanced nations in child wellness, per UNICEFF.  Shockers, Scandinavian countries, w/ healthy mixed economies and social safety nets, ranked at the top of child wellbeing.  Per the Washington Post: Of 41 nations ranked on child poverty, the United States was fourth from the bottom.

 

Meanwhile, the ten wealthiest billionaires (almost all Americans) saw their wealth double during the pandemic, in a US economy and by a government that is entirely rigged in their favor.  And aside from a plutocratic tax code, and a juiced stock market, the next biggest way to increase one’s wealth is to exploit business’ largest expense, labor. 

 

It’s no exaggeration to say that tens of millions of Americans are indentured and therefore, enslaved, in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.  And this piece just scratches the surface on the numerous ways Americans are caught in debt traps, that all but ensure their lives, their children’s lives, are made a living hell with little or no way out. 

 

So that increasingly, what it means to be ‘free’ in America means to be indentured and enslaved. 

 

It’s time, long past time, for the abolition of slavery, and the creation of an economy and a government that works for all Americans, not merely those holding the reins of power.  For just as the economy can be financially engineered to exponentially increase the wealth of a privileged few, the US economy can also be engineered to work for all Americans.  

 

There is no social justice without economic justice.  And as POTUS Kennedy said, Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.  And to take that a step further, economic & social freedoms are indivisible, and when one American is impoverished, all Americans are impoverished... a shadow of their lesser selves & a diminishment of America's potential greatness. 

 

And so the questions arise again: Where are America’s great abolitionists?  Where are our congresswomen and congressmen?   Where is the president, and what of his unfulfilled promises to the American people? 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022

A government of, by, and for the people…

A government of, by, and for the people… 

  

The Canadian government announced Tuesday that it had reached what it called the largest settlement in Canada’s history, paying $31.5 billion to fix the nation’s discriminatory child welfare system and compensate the Indigenous people harmed by it.

 

-       Canada Pledges $31.5 Billion to Settle Fight Over Indigenous Child Welfare System, NY Times

 

The bill banning conversion therapy in Canada received royal assent on Wednesday, making it into law.

Bill C-4 makes providing, promoting or advertising conversion therapy a criminal offence.

 

The bill defines conversion therapy as the “practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, or to change a person’s gender identity to cisgender.”

-       Conversion therapy ban receives royal assent, now law in Canada, Global News

  

By Gregg Wall (1-22-2022)

 

Close your eyes and imagine a government of, by, and for the people. Imagine, if you will, a democracy that actually functions… that delivers for its citizens and protects them, not only from pandemic but economic deprivation.  A government that respects not only the liberties of conservative Christians, but the freedoms surrounding bodily autonomy, personal identity within the LGBTQ community, and reproductive rights & health care for women.  Imagine a multiparty system that gives voters a wide range of choices and a parliamentary democracy that actually follows through - and delivers - upon the winning candidate’s mandate. 

 

When I moved to Canada two years ago many Americans warned me about the pitfalls of socialized medicine, but I’ve encountered none of that.  Canada has excellent health care system, with a per capita cost of approximately $7,000 (Canadian), versus $11,000 (U.S.). Factoring the exchange rate… that’s half the cost.  Are my taxes higher in Canada?  Absolutely, but when you load up my U.S. taxes with health care insurance, copays, deductibles, and ever skyrocketing pharmacy & medicine costs, Canada runs a healthier medical system at a fraction of the cost.  Adjusted for health care expense, my Canadian tax rate is far lower than my U.S. tax rate… thanks again, to American health care monopolies & Big Pharma and their unseemly taxation.

 

Nor does the steady diet of libertarian & neoliberal claptrap, we are fed in America, play out.  Socialized medicine and price controls are supposed to yield shortages of medical care and inferior medicine.  But the only shortages I’ve witnessed, in Canada, is when the antivaxxer community insists upon their freedom to become ill, with self-inflicted COVID; and then, subsequently, clog up emergency rooms and ICUs (depriving children and patients – who took the vaccine - of the care they so richly deserve). 

 

These privileges and rights Canadians enjoy are also very much desired by the American people… PM Trudeau, Liberals, and the NDP have passed gun control, and with the help of Canadian Conservatives, in December, gay conversion therapy/torture was made illegal.  Yes, you read that correctly, with the help of Canadian Conservatives.  In Canada, abortion isn’t subjected to the vagaries & whims of nine unelected, unaccountable politicians dressed up in black frocks, and installed by billionaires (as women’s health care is within the United States).

 

The American people are overwhelmingly supportive of all these things: Medicare for All; a woman’s right to choose her own reproductive destiny; responsible caps on price gouging from Big Pharma monopolies; a fifteen dollar minimum wage; cannabis legalization; and substantive gun control laws.  And yet, the U.S. congress run by a failed duopoly - controlled by billionaires and multinationals – consistently defies the will of the American people and fails to deliver.  To such an extent, that what we call American democracy is clearly little more than kleptocracy, oligarchy, and day traders engaged in role play.  And as an art form, American politicians suck at it. 

 

What a shock to the senses to watch the American experiment break down into petty squabbling, while the connected and the powerful buy the Congress and loot the Federal government. Fiscally, the United States is in free fall, with thirty trillion in national debt.  While Canada -- what the American GOP would call a socialist state -- is thriving, with a national debt to GDP ratio that is the envy of the West.  

 

So yes, I thank my Goddess that I live north of the 49^th parallel. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of this is to say, Canada is perfect, but it’s continually advancing, w/ the government solving problems that the private sector simply is not equipped to, or would rather not, solve.   Take for instance, $10 a day childcare or stepping up on reparations for First Nation’s children.

 

The U.S. cannot even pass -- wildly popular -- simple economic & social backstops for the American people and positive green legislation, under BBB… let alone legislate protective democratic safeguards.  And yet, Wall Street needs another bailout, America needs endless war funding… and the two parties swing into bipartisan action & comity, but only after realigning their stock portfolios.

 

Canada presents us with a working example of an exceptional democracy & hope, America… but first we need to pry away the wealthy’s stranglehold over the U.S. economy and government and introduce more political parties.  And the structural economic and political defects must be addressed, like eliminating the Senate.  In Canada, the Senate is the upper house, and they serve merely, in an advisory capacity.  A lesson for the U.S.?  

 

Why not take a page from private equity: save some money, downsize, eliminate the U.S. Senate, and go unicameral?  And offload this failed body, the U.S. Senate.  Good luck finding a buyer. 

 

I share these things with all who care to read them, not to gloat; but to give thanks for a democracy that delivers, that actually governs.  

 

A Canadian government, as Mr. Lincoln wished …  of, by, and for the people. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022

The Private Sector’s Wage and Price Controls…

The Private Sector’s Wage and Price Controls…

 

Price controls may be enacted with the best of intentions, but they often don't work. Most attempts to control prices often struggle to overcome the economic forces of supply and demand for any significant length of time. When prices are established by commerce in a free market, prices shift to maintain the balance between supply and demand. 

 

-       Price Controls – Investopedia

 

By Gregg Wall (1-8-22)

 

There were two interesting stories I was looking at writing this week, one, on private sector wage and price controls, and a second, what good democratic government looks like, right here in Canada, with the recent passage of LGBTQ protections (w/ the elimination of conversion therapy) and reparations for First Nation’s children.  

 

So, I flipped a Toonie… Polar Bear, the economics story; Monarch, the Canadian good governance story.  

 

And we get polar bear and wage and price controls. 

 

Entering college in the early eighties some of my earliest memories in economics class concerned the heresy of government intervention into markets.  This was a time when laisses-faire was ascendant, inflation was being tamed by a man named Paul Volcker, and the economy and the Reagan Revolution were about to take off.  So, of course, it would come as no surprise that wage and price controls were talked down in the classroom and roundly berated by professors and textbooks.  Afterall, the market was all knowing.  Wage and price controls interfered with markets and business interests, and said controls were known to fail.  At that time, ironically enough, President Nixon was pointed out as yet the latest example where wage and price controls had been enacted and were a failure; that is to say, they did not cure inflation, which would grow to double-digits by the late seventies. 

 

Some additional points the textbooks made: if the price control is set too low, it can cause shortages, as manufacturers cannot breakeven at the established price point.  Quite simply, they cannot make a buck and they stop producing.  Or producers and manufactures may take short cuts and the quality of goods and products suffer.  So best to let sleeping dogs lie, shelve the government intervention, and let markets take care of things?

 

But the reality is price controls do work… and there is no better example than right here in Canada, where drug manufacturers, Big Pharma, are subject to pricing constraints set by the Federal Government and regulatory authorities.  And I’m happy to report there is no price gouging, vis-a-vis the United States, and there are – surprise – no shortages of medicines in Canada.  In fact, as best as I can tell, if the price control is set above the cost inputs of said medicine, or product (ingredients, labor, factory, overhead, tax, with a nominal profit margin), there is zero reason for said price control not to work.  There is zero excuse for price gouging that is endemic within the U.S. 

 

Moreover, the entire premise of the libertarian argument, against price controls, assumes that we have a much purer form of capitalism than is practiced in the U.S. today.  Real capitalism is traditionally defined as many competing entrants/entities in a given marketplace, versus the perversion that exists in America today… an economy that has been allowed to metastasize into cartel and monopoly, in sector after sector after sector.  Ideally then, many competing entrants, competing against each other, holds greed and unwarranted/unmerited price increases in check.

 

But that’s not what we have in America today, is it? 

 

As mentioned, in America today, we have a monopoly economy where unelected and unaccountable corporate dictators set their own prices, or price controls (characterized as exhibiting zero restraint), and, as they increasingly are the only game in town, throughout rural America, they set the going hourly wage.  As they face no competition – and there is no price or wage discovery, beyond what said monopolist or corporate dictator sets - there are no checks on greed and the prices set by monopolies and utilities.   And as congress is entirely corrupt, bought off and paid for, and often fully invested in these companies… the government serves as zero check against the predatory wage & price controls put in place by America’s monopolies and utilities.  Our American regulatory agencies and Justice Department – which have done little to enforce antitrust, and regulate monopolistic price fixing, manipulation, and Wall St – are in fact, entirely captured. 

 

But the chaos and nihilism doesn’t end there.  For just as the consumer is gouged, workers and suppliers face the complete opposite, they are shorted.  Their wages & earnings stagnate.  As there are no competitors for their labor, nor safety net to help labor through employer/labor negotiations, the American worker must accept what Walmart, Amazon, or the local utility offers. Suppliers and many mom & pops too, like cattle producers, are crushed by monopsony power, as a cartel of meat processors dictates the price per head of cattle (as we read recently in a New York Times piece). 

 

Wall Street of course plays a role as well, a convenient one for many monopolies and it is this:  Wall St speculators bid up commodities and cost inputs, which monopolists are all too happy to pass onto the consumer.   The ever-rising commodity price, thanks to Wall St speculators, also provides a convenient excuse for the monopolist to hike prices ever higher, and of course, a convenient reason to tack on additional overhead, markup, and profit load.  The prices soar higher and higher under monopoly and utilities, w/ zero checks provided by a functioning free market economy, competition, and zero American government intervention.  It's the mirror image of government setting price, except today we have unaccountable corporate dictators, or CEOs, setting price & wages.

 

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been reading Jung’s Synchronicity, but my subconscious in bubbling up many theories once used against the government (by libertarians and the neoclassical school of economics), like wage and price controls, and they are manifesting themselves, in of all places, within America’s neoliberal economy.  (Notice too, shortages are appearing when we hand the economic car keys over, entirely, to the private sector, monopolies, and cartels.)

 

Such irony then, that wage and price controls are manifesting themselves in the private sector, under the perversion that is the monopoly/statist economy, and to the complete detriment of consumers, labor, responsible government, and the economy itself.   

 

And to the exclusive reward of a predatory elite. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022