corporations are financially more powerful than most countries. Virtually all large corporations dominate the marketplace, dominate consumers and dominate suppliers (and they also dominate the government). They have few competitors and through common goals and purpose, they form oligopolies that dictate price to both customers and suppliers and policies and laws to the government.
Things are tending towards the feudal situations of the Middle Ages and the coal mining towns in the 1800’s where the corporation owned the mines and owned and ran the entire town. The company paid the employees in company money, which could only be used in company stores. The only homes that could be bought or rented were company homes. The only bank was the company bank. The police were company police. Employees and their families were vassals to the company. The United States is actually moving in the direction of pure and total capitalism : bridges, roads, schools, and services are being privatized. A significant percentage of the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been privatized. There were more mercenaries in Iraq than US military. This privatization is not only extremely expensive, but it also reduces or eliminates public control and accountability to the people. Privatization of what rightly and naturally belongs to the people results in deprivation and injustice. For certain things must be shared by all of the people and not hoarded by a few. This movement towards total and absolute capitalism is the primary cause of the current economic crisis.
The current US economy is significantly out of balance and there are six main factors which reflect this imbalance that if not rectified soon will cause the current crisis to exceed the Great Depression in length and severity.
1. Unrestrained prices; primarily but not limited to energy, health care, education, and food
2. The ever-widening economic disparity between the top one percent of the population and the lower ninety-nine percent of the population that constitutes the working class
3. The increasing instability of the working class’ ability to work and produce and the increasing rate at which workers are prevented from working at their full potential
4. The financial rape of the working class by an uncontrolled and out-of-control financial industry.
5. The continued failure of the US government to balance its budget and to cease borrowing money.
6. The enormous flow of money out of the US economy caused by the fantastic trade deficit, the excessive expenditures of the US government on foreign aid, military operations (the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the maintenance of over eight hundred military bases/located outside the United States) and the extensive operations of various governmental departments outside the United States. No economy can survive when such a large percentage of its GDP flows out of its system.
What needs to be done to reverse the current economic crisis and restore the proper balance to the United States economy ? What needs to be done to restore the proper subordination within this nation, that is, the subordination of the government to the Will of the People? What follows are more details of the causes of the current economic crisis and the actions required to restore balance to the US economy and subordinate the government to the Will of the People and these actions are based on Christian economics. The application of Christian economics to the US economy is the solution to this current crisis that is affecting over 100 million people in the United States.
Origin of the Current Economic Crisis
The median household income is approximately $57,000 a year. That means that half the families within the United States have gross incomes of less than $57,000 a year and net incomes of less than $42,500 a year after paying Federal tax, employment taxes, etc. This is $3,540 a month. Since there are approximately 126 million households, that means there are about 63 million families or between 150 million to 200 million individuals who fall into this income class. Most families who have a net income of less than $3,540 a month live from pay check to pay check. They have little to no money left over after paying their bills. If prices increase on the average by 3 percent a year and their incomes increase by a similar 3 percent, there is no problem. But if prices increase significantly more than their incomes, they are in trouble. There are also many families whose net incomes are greater than $42,500 a year who also live from pay check to pay check because of medical expenses related to unexpected medical reasons or because the families were spending money on education for their children.
Since 2000 the prices of basic necessities such food, clothing, electricity, heat, transportation, education and healthcare rose between 40 to 50 percent, while the average income rose about thirty percent. Food, electricity, heat, transportation and healthcare account for about 65 percent or more of the family budget for those whose net income is in the lower 50 percent of household incomes. Since these families were already living from pay check to pay check, they did not have any extra money or income to absorb these year over year increases in the prices of basic necessities. In order to survive financially and pay for these price increases, a significant number of these 58 million families used credit cards (and home equity loans if they were home owners) to bridge the difference between the higher expenses and their inadequate monthly net income. Many families also refinanced their homes reducing their equity to pay for education and healthcare. This, of course, was only a temporary fix. Soon, their credit cards reached their limits, and they could not use credit to pay for basic necessities. Complicating their already desperate financial situation, once these families reached the limits on their credit cards, their interest rates increased as well as their monthly payments.
Since these families were already financially constrained, they now had to play the ‘who should I pay’ game. This was and is a strategy used by families (tens of millions of families) who do not have enough money to pay all of their monthly expenses. Because there was not enough money, these families were forced to pay their bills late and pay irregularly. Paying credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, utility bills, water bills, and phone bills late incur late fees. Late fees are a scheme used by businesses and municipalities to increase revenues and profits. Late fees can be significant (ranging from 5 to 10 percent) and when almost every expense involves a late fee, the family’s monthly obligations, which already exceeded their income, increased significantly. And, now on top of the additional monthly expenditures because of the increases in the prices of basic necessities and increased credit card and home equity payments they suffered with higher interest rates and late fees which further worsened their financial situation. Besides the burden of continuing price increases which exceeded income increases, millions of people lost their jobs due to outsourcing from 2000 to 2008.
For millions of families in these situations (prices growing faster than income, loss of employment and reduction in income due to outsourcing), they reached a breaking point. What did these people do? They only way to financially survive, at least for a short period of time, was to stop paying their mortgage—their largest monthly expenditure. While these families could make partial payments on their mortgages, the mortgage companies did not allow partial payments preferring instead to foreclose and re-possess people’s homes. And there was no one there to help these people.
Such is the origin of and main reason for the recession (now called the Great Recession) which started in 2008 and lasted for five years. And, what is most troubling is that this situation (though not as extreme as ten years ago) is continuing and expanding to more families due to job loss, continued price increases, and the vulturous policies of the credit card, finance and banking corporations. Student debt has tripled in the last ten years and is now over $1.4 trillion. Auto loan debt has doubled in the last ten years and is now $1.3 trillion. Home ownership is down 9 percent in the last ten years and rents are up twenty to twenty-five percent.
However, the news media has claimed that the cause of this 2008 Great Recession was sub-prime mortgages, mortgages given to families who could not afford to pay them. Obviously, the families who were given the so-called sub-prime mortgages were able to make the monthly payments at first. But then something happened so that they could
