The Necessity of Captialsim

Thought experiment time:

Suppose everyone in the country woke up tomorrow with an extra $10,000 in the bank (or in a shoebox under the mattress).  What would happen?  Well, everyone would probably go out and buy stuff, pay off loans, and generally flood the market with cash.  Once flooded, supply and demand kicks in as the supply of goods and materials can't keep pace with the demand for them, everything becomes more rare (because it's all gone) and prices sky-rocket as demand soars.  It's the simple reason the government can't just print more money to pay off our federal debt.  Now everything's more expensive because we all have more money, and now we have to spend the same relative amount of cash to attain the same good as we did yesterday.  Now take that same situation and spread it out over a year.  What would happen if every single person made $50,000 a year?  Same end.

See, one of the main concepts of capitalism is that some people need to be poor in order for it to work.  If everyone had job security, no one would worry about losing their jobs (duh).  Sounds common sense, but, alas, it really isn't.  With 100% employment, there's no real worry about getting canned because, number one, there's no one to fill your position, and number two, you could just walk next door and get a job.  No one wants that.  If everyone made $50,000 (a low amount to many, I realize), new cars and houses would no longer be status symbols.  And we all know how much people love their status symbols (read: egos).

This post admittedly was inspired by an article I just read, as 2014 marks the 50-year anniversary of LBJ's war on poverty in which he aimed at raising all impoverished American's into the working middle class. But, again, it really isn't that easy, is it? Consider, if you will, the ramifications of all American's getting a college degree (I say "getting" because it's fairly clear many are rubber stamped...I mean, the Seahawks cornerback, now famous for his tirade after the win over the 49er's in the team's eventual Superbowl-winning season - who, by the way, I'm sure is unfairly maligned and probably truly does good in his community - holds a degree from Stanford. Yes, Stanford.). Anyway, back to the point. If everyone, every single person in the country held a degree, what happens next? We're all told to go to college to get a good job and make a decent living. But if everyone does that exact thing, suddenly graduate degrees become the new bachelors. Which is more or less already happening anyway. Go figure.

So again, we have the necessity of inequality. After all, the basic tenet of capitalism is to turn a profit. If the business owner(s) recognize a greater profit can be realized by closing a factory, they have the total power to do so. If they find that a greater profit can be had by paying employees as little as possible for as few hours as possible, then by all means. So I believe the real question, then, comes down to: can the government impose job creation?  I would say not a chance. Obviously we've been trying for quite some time, and can certainly see the vast difference it makes. So it comes, again, to those with the financial sway. And I doubt that will change anything anywhere any time soon.